Carnegie Hall’s last full presentation of Beethoven’s symphonies — Simon Rattle leading the Berlin Philharmonic five years ago — made a case for why this stale cycle should be retired. David Allen, who reviewed the concerts for The New York Times, wrote that climbing this musical mountain again just “because it’s there,” as George Mallory said of Everest, simply is no longer enough.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped Carnegie from bringing Beethoven back to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth, with about a fifth of its season devoted to the sonatas, quartets and concertos. And the symphonies: The hall has programmed not one cycle, but two. The first, led by John Eliot Gardiner with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, concluded on Monday; the next, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, begins March 13.

The twins are far from identical. Conductors can take any number of approaches to a cycle, like commissioning new works as curtain-raisers — which, let’s be honest, is unfair to contemporary composers — or surrounding each symphony with other pieces that illuminate its inspirations and innovations. Mr. Gardiner offered the symphonies in order; Mr. Nézet-Séguin mixes them up, with the First on the same program as the Ninth.