GMG Listening Group — Beethoven Symphony № 6 :: 12-18 June 2011

[DavidW]

Listened to the Szell last night, a pleasant enough symphony. A bit too much on the sunny side for me but worthy nonetheless.  Will listen to other versions as I have time.

Well you can always listen to Pettersson's 6th instead!

[Coco]

Ack! In my last library raid I picked up three opera recordings and two discs of Renaissance vocal music... and no Beethoven! I'll try again next week.

[North Star]

Count me in, I have the Immerseel/Anima Eterna box. What should I do with it? 

[DavidW]

Count me in, I have the Immerseel/Anima Eterna box. What should I do with it? 

Give it to me.

[North Star]

Give it to me.

An intriguing suggestion, I'll have to think about it...

[DavidW]

On a more serious side, listen to the 6th a couple of times and look back over the Agon thread to get a feel for how Karl likes to do things.  Now he will mold the discussion around questions or insights that you have, so if you come up with anything now or when we start the discussion make a note of it and post when the time comes.

[Palmetto]

Preliminary passes going in the background while I work.  I'm not listening with full attention yet, just getting a general feel.

[karlhenning]

That's cool. (Tell tell Ludwig van I said so, though . . . .)

[Bogey]

I will give two a spin in the upcoming event.  I believe I will go with my current favorite of Hogwood for this one and maybe the Bruno Walter one that I have not given a decent listen to.

[karlhenning]

Splendid, Bill!

[Xenophanes]

My favorite recording is Ansermet/OSR, which I first got on a London STS LP.  Maybe it's just imprinting, but I still like it after many years and now on CD. It's beautifully recorded. Beethoven gives a tourist's view of the country, with birds singing, babbling brooks and peasants dancing, nothing about  peasants with hard, dirty hands working and sweating, although the storm is impressive enough with thunder, lightning, wind and downpour.

Others following close on are Leibowitz/RPO on Chesky and Otmar Suitner/Berlin Staatskapelle on Denon, which is quite pleasant. I also picked up a used CD with Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC SO which came with somebody's BBC Music Magazine, and it's well worth hearing.

The recording from the Karajan 1962 is rather too business like, I think, and I never have warmed up to Bruno Walter's Columbia Symphony recording, even though many regard it as a classic.

[Coco]

Does anyone else, like me, prefer to ignore the programmatic aspects of the symphony?

[karlhenning]

Does anyone else, like me, prefer to ignore the programmatic aspects of the symphony?

I don't know if I quite ignore them, but they've so long been internalized, they're far from the forefront of my listening to this piece.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Does anyone else, like me, prefer to ignore the programmatic aspects of the symphony?

Oh, Gewitter, Sturm coming up! I prefer to not ignore them.

[Palmetto]

Does anyone else, like me, prefer to ignore the programmatic aspects of the symphony?

Well, as a newbie, I decided to take this approach.  I knew nothing about this work coming in.  I -very- briefly reviewed a set of notes at All About Beethoven, enough to learn B. had specific images he intended.  Since those notes will still be there, I've decided to listen first without reading them in detail and let my own initial impressions form.  (Attentive listening, not the 'playing in the background' I've been giving it the last two days.)  Once I've run it a couple of times, I'll go back and read a couple of set of notes and see if what I get is what he thought he was conveying.  I'll chase that with another pass to see if I can hear what he intended.

[Xenophanes]

Does anyone else, like me, prefer to ignore the programmatic aspects of the symphony?

Then you would no doubt love Karajan 1962, which is quite businesslike. Even so, it's hard to ignore the bird calls and thunderstorm.

[starrynight]

My favourite Beethoven symphony so I look forward to see what interesting things people have to say about it.

Avoid the Bohm recording, too slow.   

[karlhenning]

Is the Storm a movement all on its own, or is it a essentially a prelude to the fifth movement?

[prémont]

Is the Storm a movement all on its own, or is it a essentially a prelude to the fifth movement?

You may call it a kind of prelude to the fifth movement, as the fifth movement expresses thankful feelings after the storm has ceased.
But you may also call it a kind of postlude to the third movement, as the peasant dancing in this movement is "brutally" interrupted by the storm. All in all I see these three movements as an integrated unity.

[Gurn Blanston]

Is the Storm a movement all on its own, or is it a essentially a prelude to the fifth movement?

No fair getting a jump start, Karl    Are you going to start an entirely different thread when time comes?



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