Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

[BachQ]

Another fact I recently discovered about Beethoven: his family were of Dutch origin, and their surname 'Beethoven' simpy means 'Beet garden'.

I just read that yesterday as well ........ "hoven" means "garden", and, apparently, "beet" means "beet" ........

[BachQ]

Beethoven's cello pieces are the first sonatas in the history of music to treat the cello as an equal partner for the piano. Recording the deaf maestro's complete sonatas is meaningful in that one can ruminate the very essence of his life and works. *** Beethoven's five cello sonatas represent all of what is commonly considered his three periods, from the Classic period, when he was searching to find his own identity to get away from the shadow of Mozart and Hayden, and to have his own musical world; from the Romantic period, when Beethoven achieved his highest artistic goals; and finally the Spiritual period, ``where he really reaches out in his inner feelings and translates that into the art, which is called music,'' ***

[Lethevich]

Another fact I recently discovered about Beethoven: his family were of Dutch origin, and their surname 'Beethoven' simpy means 'Beet garden'.

I thought it meant "beetroot farmer" or something. I recall reading in numerous places that while his name (the van instead of von, especially) is obviously of Dutch origin, his family had been well established in Germany for several generations.

Edit: I assume that the things I read on this were written to debunk the occasional "Beethoven was almost the best Dutch composer" claim

[BachQ]

I thought it meant "beetroot farmer" or something.

Well, a "beet" is a "root" ........ And a "farm" is a "garden" of sorts ........ Thus, "beet garden" = "beetroot farmer"

[karlhenning]

Or, perhaps, as many Flemish towns have names ending in -hove, Beethoven's ancestors may have come from Beet Town.

To a Bostonian, this has the ring of truth.

[BachQ]

Russian Roulette
Pianist Olga Kern alternates between grace and bombast at the Schermerhorn

by John Pitcher




Turgid Pianist Olga Kern It must have been warhorse night over at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Last weekend, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra under Albert-George Schram devoted much of its program to two of the most well-worn blockbusters in the repertoire: Beethoven's "Emperor" Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony. Both works were splendidly—though not always subtly—performed.



Russian-born pianist Olga Kern was on hand for the Beethoven, and not surprisingly she brought her usual bombs-away style. But she also brought a degree of warmth, sophistication and lyricism that was, at least for this pianist, both welcome and surprising.



Kern certainly has an interesting story. A decade ago, she arrived at the 10th quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as a rather ordinary-looking brunette named Olga Pushechnikova, and because of her unfocused playing she never advanced beyond the preliminary round. Fast-forward to 2001 and the 11th Cliburn Competition. The pianist has a new name (Kern), a new look (a blond in a hot red dress) and a new approach to piano playing (basically bombastic). She took no prisoners in her bracing account of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 during the final round and won the gold.



In the years since, Kern has understandably developed the reputation of a piano-pounding daredevil, yet in Nashville last week she also revealed polish and poetry. Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto is itself a remarkable synthesis of the heroic and the poetic, and Kern gave both qualities their due. There was plenty of sparkle and dazzle in her performance of the concerto's outer movements, but there was also considerable grace—she played trills and ornaments with rice-paper-like delicacy, and she approached the slow movement with the immediacy of a love song. Schram and the NSO, likewise, played down the regal pomp in the "Emperor" and instead performed with heartfelt exuberance.



Kern saved the fireworks for her two solo encores. The first, a Rachmaninoff arrangement of Mussorgsky's Hopak, was played with muscle and athleticism. Her performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee (another Rachmaninoff arrangement), on the other hand, was played at such a blistering speed that it was almost unrecognizable. It was breathtaking to be sure. But it wasn't very musical.



Schram and the NSO opened last week's concert with American composer Russell Peck's Gabriel. Lasting all of six minutes, this concert overture shows the archangel in three different guises—as the messenger who told Mary that she would give birth to the Savior Jesus; as the angel who gave the Koran to Mohammed; and as the trumpeter who would herald the end of the world.



On a superficial level, Peck's score certainly seemed to suggest all of these scenarios, from the sweetness and light of the Annunciation to the minor-key darkness of the apocalypse. All the same, the music was so short, so sweet and so predictable (in his program notes the composer likens his score to a movie soundtrack) that you had to wonder: would one of God's mightiest preternatural creations really march to the beat of a musical bonbon?



There was little subtlety in the NSO's reading of the Tchaikovsky "Pathétique" Symphony, in large part because the orchestra's resident conductor Albert-George Schram seemed to know only two conducting gestures—give me a big sound, and give me a really big sound. (At one point, Schram may have been attempting a third gesture of give me a really, REALLY big sound when he lost his grip on the baton, which went flying toward the first violin section.)



The musicians, for their collective part, made the most of Schram's conducting style, and in the process delivered a "Pathétique" Symphony that sounded intensely Russian—their passion was more febrile, their melancholy was darker and their climaxes were edgier. The hyperemotional Tchaikovsky no doubt would have approved.

[Gurn Blanston]

Interesting description of her: wonder what she looks like...



----------------
Now playing: Schubert: Winterreise - Martiti Talvela / Ralf Gothoni - Die Nebensonnen ('Drei Sonnen sah ich'), song for voice & piano (Winterreise), D. 911/23 (Op. 89/23)

[BachQ]

wonder what she looks like...

That's really shallow of you, Gurn ....... anyhow, we have no idea what she looks like ........

[BachQ]

Olga Kern playing the D Minor PC of Rach

http://www.youtube.com/v/f8hiYyZ440k

[Gurn Blanston]

That's really shallow of you, Gurn ....... anyhow, we have no idea what she looks like ........

Aw, now, d, how could I resist that?



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Now playing: Soler Works for 2 Organs - Mathot / Koopman - Soler Concerto #1 in C for 2 Organs 2nd mvmt

[scsinger01]

so tonight im going to listen to the 9th symphony in it's fullness   i have coffee (not to keep awake, just to add to the atmosphere) and a bag of sunchips. wish me luck

[BachQ]

so tonight im going to listen to the 9th symphony in it's fullness   i have coffee (not to keep awake, just to add to the atmosphere) and a bag of sunchips. wish me luck

Which of the 219 versions will you be listening to?

[BachQ]

Dating from the late 1950s, these generally fine performances show Solti's consistency as a Beethoven interpreter. In fact, timings are virtually identical to his later versions (give or take a repeat or two). Even at this comparatively early date a craggy directness entirely appropriate to Beethoven characterized the conductor's approach--and how many contemporaries at the time took the exposition repeat in the Eroica's first movement? (CLICK FOR MORE)

[BachQ]

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor"; Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major Op. 101
Hélène Grimaud (piano) / Staatskapelle Dresden / Vladimir Jurowski
Deutsche Grammophon- B0009840-02(CD)

This is without question the best recording that Hélène Grimaud has made for DG. The opening "Emperor" gushes forth like a sparkling fountain, at a freshly invigorating basic tempo. Give credit to Vladimir Jurowski for his excellent collaboration, and to a Staatskapelle Dresden that really stays on top of its collective toes. Grimaud even manages to make something special out of those upward scales that so often signal the pianist's entrances and exits. Only in the slow movement does she indulge in a touch of the preciosity that mars some of her more recent efforts, but it's a fleeting memory at best, and the finale goes with all of the joyful enthusiasm that anyone could ask. (CLICK FOR MORE)

[BachQ]

October 27, 2007
Beethoven's Evolution, From Playful to Grand
By ALLAN KOZINN
fr NYT.com


If your yardstick is whether a work is well known, chronological surveys of Beethoven's piano sonatas move slowly at first: It isn't until the Sonata No. 8 in C minor (Op. 13) that the first nickname ("Pathétique") appears. Yet the "Pathétique" was composed in 1798, still early in the story; it was another six years before the "Eroica" made Beethoven a bona fide symphonic revolutionary.

One thing Andras Schiff is showing in his Carnegie Hall traversal of the sonatas, played in the order Beethoven composed them, is that a handful of relatively small but decisive steps lead from the Haydnesque playfulness and Mozartean elegance of the earliest works to the grand proclamations — sometimes elevated, sometimes brash — of the mature ones.

In the second installment, on Wednesday, the three Opus 10 Sonatas traced that journey vividly. In the Sonata No. 5 in C minor (Op. 10, No. 1), Beethoven begins with a thoroughly Haydnesque theme but is in his own rhythmically jagged territory before the end of the first page. That work's slow movement looks to Mozart in its graceful, singing top line, but in the rippling finale, Beethoven leaves his predecessors behind.

Mr. Schiff, oddly, did not stop between this work and the Sonata No. 6 in F (Op. 10, No. 2), which moves the narrative further by setting graceful themes against dark, brooding accompaniments. But he did pause for a bow before the Sonata No. 7 in D (Op. 10, No. 3), the black sheep of this trilogy and the most dramatic: Some of its rumbling figuration seems almost to nip at the heels of the "Pathétique," composed a few months later. In Mr. Schiff's reading, the Seventh Sonata looked ahead in other ways too. He played the Menuetto, for example, with a fluidity that made it sound, if only for an instant, like Chopin.

The "Pathétique" had the second half of the program to itself, and Mr. Schiff played it with a thrilling tempestuousness. His readings of all four works had elements in common that say a lot about the current fashion in Beethoven playing. Tempos were brisk, for example, and movements proceeded at speed to the last note, with no hint of rallentando.

Chordal passages (and not only those marked sforzando) were played with an assertive sharpness that sometimes made them sound like brash interruptions amid more courtly surroundings: just the kind of thing Beethoven would do. On the other hand, in music marked pianissimo (or even simply piano), Mr. Schiff made no concession to the size of the hall: these passages were whispered.

Mr. Schiff was generous to a fault in his encore. He played Bach's Partita in C minor (BWV 826), complete and with all the sectional repeats.

[BachQ]

Classical CD Highlights: November
By Michael S. Markowitz
01 Nov 2007


Beethoven: String Quartets, Op. 18 (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907436)
Beethoven: Late Quartets (Philips Originals 289 475 8685)
Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 9 (Hyperion CDA 67611)

The Tokyo String Quartet continues its Beethoven cycle with the master's first six essays in the genre, the Op. 18 set. The album, a two-disc set priced like a single disc, follows the Tokyo's acclaimed recording of the "Rasumovsky" Quartets.

Philips releases, at a budget price, the Quartetto Italiano's performances of the composer's late quartets. The three-CD set completes the reissue on Philips Originals of the Italiano's entire Beethoven cycle, considered one of the finer ones.

The London Haydn Quartet plays the Op. 9 quartets of guess-who on a new Hyperion release. The set, another two-for-one issue, marks the ensemble's label debut.

A work often played by string quartets, Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, is performed in its orchestral version by Jordi Savall and his Le Concert des Nations. The recording, made in the Spanish church that was the site of the work's first performance, includes biblical quotation in Latin interspersed between the movements.

[BachQ]

BEETHOVEN, PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4
MOZART, PIANO CONCERTO NO. 24

Clara Haskil, piano
Orchestre National de France, conducted by André Cluytens
(Pristine Classical)

Reissues celebrate great artists of the past
By David Perkins, Globe Correspondent  |  November 4, 2007

Whatever you may think of the classical music scene on CD - some say it's dead, some say it's coming back - one thing is certain: Reissues are bringing us some thrilling performances from the past, in improved sound. Here are some of the best recent issues.

LvB 4 / Mozart 24

When the Romanian pianist Clara Haskil died in 1960 at 65, it was the end of a life filled with physical pain and illness. As a child, she had been fitted in a plaster cast to prevent scoliosis. At 45, she had a brain tumor behind one eye surgically removed. When she sat down at the piano, however, this slight, shy, bent woman was transformed into a goddess.

Two CDs of vivid live performances, originally brought out by Music & Arts, have been refurbished by the British firm Pristine Classical. The first is of concertos by Mozart (No. 24 in C Minor) and Beethoven (No. 4 in G), performed in 1955 with the Orchestre National de France, under André Cluytens. The orchestra often suffers from poor tuning and ragged ensemble, and unfortunately Pristine's cleanup job makes this even more evident. But Haskil!

In the Beethoven, the opening chords are a bit hesitant, but the run after the opening orchestral statement flows like water down a sluice. Her tone is bright, the passagework fearless and clear. This is very Mozartian Beethoven: airy, buoyant. The second movement has tragic grandeur and spaciousness and ends with an exhausted sigh. The finale has a few fudged notes, but that's the price paid for excitement and spontaneity.

In the Mozart, the orchestra's all-out playing and fat string tone seem dated in our era of leaner, more pointed playing. But Cluytens sets driving tempos, and Haskil finds all the singing quality and tragic depth in what some consider the greatest of Mozart's 28 concertos.

[c#minor]

I was thinking of going to the concert at the Schermerhorn, but i had to go out of town. What a shame i missed out on that one.

[BachQ]

GMG's very own Mark Antony Owen has given this recording of the LvB VC an enthusiastic thumbs-up:



Says Mr. Owen:

"Faust takes a good, clean line throughout, tempi never drag (damn you Rostropovich/Vengerov  ), and she uses Beethoven's own cadenzas from his piano transcription of the Violin Concerto - she took Schneiderhan's violin transcriptions of said cadenzas, but re-adapted these a little so that they conform to what Beethoven originally wrote. It's a superb and refreshing performance, and the engineering is a tad less claustrophobic than in the pairing."

[BachQ]

Helene Grimaud -- LvB Piano Sonata no. 30



mvt 1

http://www.youtube.com/v/GVaOeEb_sm0