Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

[BachQ]

Does anyone else find the Choral symphony creepy and bone chilling? 

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but "creepy and bone chilling" are not the first words that immediately spring to mind upon listening to LvB's Choral Symphony .......

Which recording were you listening to?

[BachQ]

New York Times

April 5, 2008
Music Review | New York Philharmonic
Beethoven Sets the Stage for Gloomy Hues of War
By BERNARD HOLLAND

Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony always comes as a surprise. The image of British music's pastoral (or is it pasteurized?) scene turns ugly. Don't look for any village greens or shepherds singing. The Fourth, as played by Colin Davis and the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday, is angry, bleak and sardonic, a worthy precursor to Shostakovich in his most desperate hours.

If it were not for this particular piece, Vaughan Williams and his music might fit that old conceit about pet owners and their pets looking alike. Just as Ravel, to take another example, was small, dignified and elegant, if slightly overdressed, Vaughan Williams, from his pictures at least, looks overweight, calm and slow-moving. The eye might infer a subdued but generous soul; it does not seem desperate.

Some people attribute the Fourth Symphony's bad mood to the political environment, but this was only 1934, and Hitler had barely gotten started. Maybe it was the world economic depression in full swing, with music being used as a Dow Jones-like indicator of disappointment and anxiety. At any rate, the Fourth is on a war footing. The first movement is a battle zone; the second a wrecked and empty landscape; the third a grim march.

The Philharmonic came alive for the performance, with a fierce unanimity in rapid string passages and great subtlety from winds and brass. Mr. Davis, a regular visitor who does this orchestra a lot of good, is also a patriot, and rarely leaves home without some kind of British music under his arm.

The first half of the program was Beethoven: the second "Leonore" Overture and the Fourth Piano Concerto with Richard Goode. If the "Leonore" performance sounded blunt and businesslike, tough but honest may be a fair appraisal of the piece. Hearts began to melt in the concerto accompaniments, written with the uncharacteristic softness and amiability that sometimes came over Beethoven's soul.

Among Mr. Goode's virtues was a willingness to toy with several tempos while giving the impression that only one was in play. The first movement in particular was a study in surge and subsidence, and Mr. Davis, who has been bird-dogging soloists for a very long time, was never left behind.

[lisa needs braces]

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but "creepy and bone chilling" are not the first words that immediately spring to mind upon listening to LvB's Choral Symphony .......

Which recording were you listening to?

I have three well regarded recordings, and there is something positively creepy about this symphony, especially the first two movements. 

[Gurn Blanston]

While I probably wouldn't use the same adjectives, I do understand what you mean. Perhaps it is the hunting around for a tonal center, the suspense of not knowing what key you are in precisely, which can affect you even if you aren't really a key seeking person, and bother you quite a bit if you are!  Not sure the 2nd movement does that so much, but the 1st movement? Yes, it's a wonderful part of the tapestry.



----------------
Listening to: Ronald Brautigam - Mozart Vol.2 - K 284 Sonata #6 in D 3rd mvmt - Theme and Variations

[Haffner]

 I suppose the 4th movement of the Furtwangler does have a creepy intensity at times.

[BachQ]

From The Times
April 11, 2008

Nigel Kennedy: Beethoven/Mozart
Geoff Brown


The weather might be bonkers, but at least this spring we have Nigel Kennedy. A few weeks back, this mature bovver boy, 51 at the last count, had a Festival Hall audience agog over his performance of the Elgar violin concerto. And all because of his playing's five-star splendour, not his personal antics. Now, on CD, jaws can drop a second time over this splendid account of a greater concerto still: Beethoven's.

On violin tone alone, Kennedy's account with his Polish Chamber Orchestra is exceptional. Vibrato is cut right back; throughout he aims for a clean line, not some rhapsodic meander. The epic first movement unfolds with an unusually firm sense of purpose; every detail of attack, stress and phrasing is freshly considered by soloist and orchestra (directed by Kennedy when his hands are free). In the introduction, note the crisp articulation of the orchestra's four repeated notes; Kennedy makes those notes the work's motto.

The peak is climbed in the slow movement. The tempo's expansive spread may blur the structure slightly, but when Nigel's trilling like an angel and offering sensational pianissimos I stand in awe. Be careful when listening to this: you may forget to breathe.  For the finale, Kennedy starts by veiling his tone; then up he leaps, all silvery sparkle. Beautiful playing throughout, but no preening or mincing: this is a performance to revisit time and again.   

[BachQ]

'I became obsessed with Beethoven's obsession'

'Smitten' by the 'Diabelli Variations,' Moisés Kaufman 'knew I wanted to write a play' (Guess what opens in La Jolla tonight?)
By Valerie Scher
UNION-TRIBUNE CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC

April 13, 2008
HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune

After attending a play one night, the prominent playwright-director Moisés Kaufman visited a Manhattan record store, looking for a CD to add to his extensive classical music collection. The clerk suggested Beethoven's "Diabelli Variations," a masterwork Kaufman knew little about. So the clerk explained how Beethoven became obsessed with an insignificant little waltz by the music publisher Anton Diabelli. And after initially refusing to compose a variation, as Diabelli had requested, Beethoven changed his mind and composed what turned out to be one of the greatest sets of variations ever written.  "As soon as he told me the story, I was smitten," recalls Kaufman, who purchased Alfred Brendel's highly-regarded recording. "Why did Beethoven write the variations? That's the question that gnawed at me. I knew I wanted to write a play."

The result is "33 Variations," which launches its first West Coast engagement tonight at La Jolla Playhouse. Blending mystery and musicology, "Variations" premiered last year at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. It recently received the 2008 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, which included a $25,000 cash prize – the largest national playwriting award.

Kaufman is not alone in his fascination with Beethoven. Hershey Felder's "Beethoven, As I Knew Him" comes to the Old Globe next month and in June, the 2008 Mainly Mozart Festival opens with a program showcasing all five of the composer's piano concertos. The San Diego Symphony is also getting into the act, with a Beethoven Festival slated for next season.

"33 Variations" – which consists of 33 scenes – isn't meant to be a biography of the composer. Or an analysis of his score, which was completed in 1823.

Instead, it's a play with music. Pianist Diane Walsh will perform about two-thirds of the variations, with projections of Beethoven's manuscript serving as a backdrop.

[BachQ]

LvB's Fifth Symphony arranged for solo piano:

1st mvt http://www.youtube.com/v/yKrbvB6ITks

Performed by Frederic Chiu 

[BachQ]

Pollini plays the Diabelli's variations by Beethoven


Fuga and last variation http://www.youtube.com/v/AMbyH8AyAGU

[BachQ]

New York Times

April 18, 2008
Music Review | Andras Schiff
Deconstructing Beethoven, One Piano Sonata at a Time
By ALLAN KOZINN

Andras Schiff is playing Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas at Carnegie Hall, and he's taking his time: his traversal began with two concerts in October and resumed on Wednesday night. After a fourth installment on Friday, the series picks up with four similarly spaced concerts next season. The exigencies of touring (for Mr. Schiff) and concert marketing (for Carnegie Hall) dictate their own logic, but it's a pity the concerts were not in closer succession. Mr. Schiff is presenting the works mostly in the order Beethoven composed them, rather than the order in which they were published (and consequently numbered).

If the point is to show Beethoven's development, spreading the concerts over two full seasons works against it. That said, Mr. Schiff hasn't adhered strictly to the chronology. His concert on Wednesday examined works composed between 1795 and 1800, and should therefore have included the "Pathétique" Sonata, composed in 1798. But the "Pathétique" closed Mr. Schiff's second concert, in October. As the evolution of Beethoven's style goes, that makes a difference, and in a lengthy interview in the program Mr. Schiff gave no reason for this displacement.  He began this time with the Opus 49 Sonatas, a pair of early works belatedly published in 1805 as Nos. 19 and 20. They appear as the 9th and 10th Sonatas in Mr. Schiff's reordering, and in that sequence they tell us a lot. Each work makes a sharp distinction between melody and accompaniment, in ways Beethoven's later works do not, a point Mr. Schiff emphasized in his cogent, vital readings by giving the innocently straightforward top lines a bright, ringing tone, and keeping the left-hand figuration subdued, if not quite muffled.

In the two Opus 14 Sonatas (1798 and 1799), as in the "Pathétique" (Op. 13), theme, accompaniment and decorative figuration are woven inextricably into a single texture. The most striking quality of Mr. Schiff's playing here was its transparency: it gave you a fine-grain look at the intricacy of Beethoven's structures but kept the bigger picture in crystalline focus. He made some unusual tempo choices. The Allegretto of the E major Sonata seemed peculiarly slow. But mostly Mr. Schiff adopted the brisk, driven tempos and sharp articulation favored by Beethoven players (and listeners) these days. After the intermission Mr. Schiff gave a luminous account of the Sonata No. 11 in B flat (Op. 22), with a magnificently ruminative, songlike slow movement at its heart. As an encore, he played Bach's Partita in B flat (BWV 825) complete.





By the Book


By FRED KIRSHNIT
April 18, 2008


Hungarian pianist András Schiff was back at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening, continuing his three-year series presenting the 32 sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven.

[BachQ]

Beethoven: Symphony No 7; Music by Weber, Rossini and Wilms, Budapest Festival Orch/ Fischer



Tim Ashley
Friday April 18, 2008
The Guardian


"What would it have been like to hear Beethoven's Seventh Symphony at the first performance?" Iván Fischer asks in a sleeve note. His aim, in this instance, is not to recreate the 1813 concert that included the symphony's premiere, but to emphasise its revolutionary nature by placing it alongside less extreme music written contemporaneously. In some respects, he is overcalculating in making his case. The additional pieces - the adagio from Weber's Clarinet Concerto, the overture to Rossini's opera L'Italiana in Algeri and the banal finale of the Fourth Symphony by the obscure Johann Wilhelm Wilms - are extracts rather than complete works, the point being that Beethoven exploits their stylistic traits more radically in the Symphony itself. As a totality, the disc is consequently bitty, but the performance of the Seventh ranks, without question, among the greatest ever recorded. With the Budapest Festival Orchestra playing as if their lives depended on it, it's superbly articulated, thrillingly elated and emotionally exhausting. Weber, on first hearing the work, wondered whether its composer was insane, and for once you understand why. Utterly compelling.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Dmitri, I appreciate your Beethoven 'cuttings' very much! 

[(poco) Sforzando]

but the performance of the Seventh ranks, without question, among the greatest ever recorded. With the Budapest Festival Orchestra playing as if their lives depended on it, it's superbly articulated, thrillingly elated and emotionally exhausting. Weber, on first hearing the work, wondered whether its composer was insane, and for once you understand why. Utterly compelling.

I always love this "without question" stuff, as if nobody should have the temerity to disagree, and if you do, you're proving yourself lacking in taste or discernment. I've heard some pretty wretched performances (not to mention compositions) that "reviewers" have told me are "without question among the greatest." 

[MN Dave]

I always love this "without question" stuff, as if nobody should have the temerity to disagree, and if you do, you're proving yourself lacking in taste or discernment. I've heard some pretty wretched performances (not to mention compositions) that "reviewers" have told me are "without question among the greatest." 

The second movement of the 7th is so me.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The second movement of the 7th is so me.

And the 1st, 3rd, and 4th besides. But those are truly without question among the greatest.

[Kullervo]

The intro to the 1st movement never fails to make me take a deep breath.

[M forever]

His aim, in this instance, is not to recreate the 1813 concert that included the symphony's premiere, but to emphasise its revolutionary nature by placing it alongside less extreme music written contemporaneously.

What an idiotic program concept for a disc. As if we didn't alrready know that.

[BachQ]

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 1 & 2 / Bronfman, Zinman





The period-instrument movement has accomplished some wonderful things, not least of which has been the improvement of performances that aren't on period instruments. *** while David Zinman's Beethoven symphony cycle with these forces was underwhelming, his concertos have been just the opposite. The same qualities of lightness, elegance, and speed that underplayed the symphonic drama of those works permit a splendidly integrated, witty, and emotionally affecting interplay between solo and orchestra. This is true not just of the slow movements, whose lyricism never turns sweaty, but also the finales, where the catchy syncopated rhythms and quicksilver phrasing from both Bronfman and Zinman make these two "learning works" a delight--nowhere more so than in the early Second concerto (which predates the First). Seldom has this work's first movement sounded freer and shapelier, less like Mozart on steroids. These performances are every bit as winning as those on the companion disc of Concertos Nos. 4 and 5, and I can hardly wait to hear No. 3. Yes, they are "of a type", one fully in keeping with today's tastes and theories about how this music should sound--but of that type they stand with the best. Terrific sound too.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

[M forever]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Thanks for making that so big and red, like a warning label. So I didn't waste my time reading that review.

[Haffner]

Thanks for making that so big and red, like a warning label. So I didn't waste my time reading that review.

Ditto. Big Dave "yay" (translated "yawn").