Wonderful works in need of a great recording!

[(poco) Sforzando]

There, another mystery solved. Why do people have to make such a big deal out of it all, it's so simple really...

I suppose if (all together now, from Porgy + Bess) "Methusaleh lived 900 years ... "

[The new erato]

Finn Mortensen: Symph op 5, probably the best symphony written by a Norwegian composer.

[ezodisy]

Gavriil Popov - Symphony No.1

Massive, expresionistic, gnarly dissonant behemot of a piece in dire need of first class orchestra and  conductor. Two recordings exist so far: one with barely adequate orchestra - Moscow State Symphony/Gennady Provatorov (Olympia)

I found the recording on Olympia very intense, a hell of a lot more gripping than the Botstein (whose Hartmann is poor too). I think it'll take quite a while to find a conductor who can do credit to this work -- someone who loves (and can handle) big sprawling symphonies and who has an intense character, at least on the podium. Rozhdestvensky might have conducted it well, alas...

[Brian]

No matter how many witnesses said this, I have trouble believing it. Just try to imagine: the Allegro at 11 minutes*, scherzo at 9 (maybe a repeat was cut?), and the slow variations zipping along at 12. You've got 13 minutes left for the choral finale. Good luck. And we're supposed to think an orchestra and chorus in 1824 barely familiar with this music was "marvelous"? I don't know how hard B's orchestral parts are, but I doubt they're easy to master for performers who might have been doing little more than sight-reading. I have sung bass in the choral finale (it's a killer) and have played most of his piano music. The late music especially is very awkward to play. I can believe 60-65 minutes, not 45.

--
* Leaving aside the controversy about B's metronome mark for the trio of the scherzo, if the Allegro is played at B's quite fast mark of quarter = 88, the 547 bars alone would take about 12.5 minutes.

The slow variations can be done quite nicely up to about 10 and a half minutes, ish. That leaves a little under 15 minutes for the finale - still absurd.

[M forever]

Beethoven: Symphony No 9
Okay, so there are a LOT of great recordings of this symphony. But there are no great recordings which attempt to match the tempi which Beethoven directed for the symphony. Several witnesses of the Symphony's premiere claimed that it took only 45 minutes to play, and was marvelous.

Sure there are a number of very good recordings which try to follow the tempi Beethoven "directed" for it - in the score, through the metronome markings. As interesting and somewhat puzzling as Smart's remark is, you shouldn't get too hung up about it. It is just one guy who reports that these other people said that. And even if these people include Beethoven and some of his friends, Beethoven gave very explicit metronome markings in the score and that, the printed performance instructions contradict what he allegedly said, even if there may be one or two metronome markings which may be errors. These still don't sum up to such a massive difference in timing.

I read up on that and find it interesting that Smart himself doubted that that was true, and said so, so there is no reason to assume would have made that up (and if he had, why?). But maybe, if Beethoven and his friends really said that, they had a reason: a few sentences later Smart mentions that Beethoven voiced strong interest in coming to London, and obviously he looked to Smart for local support. Maybe he and his friends said that because Beethoven had many times been criticized by contemporaries because many felt his symphonies were too long and too difficult to play, so maybe they just said that to disperse fears that the new symphony might be too long and too hard too perform.

Smart mentions that there were only 2 rehearsals for the symphony, and given how challenging the piece still is for musicians and singers who have had endless opportunity to practice it, to this day, it probably wasn't that "marvelous" from a technical point of view. It was probably pretty chaotic in places. Interestingly, Smart also mentions that the recitative was only played by 4 celli and 2 basses - I can easily see how they may have given up on that for the moment since it would have taken a lot of time to rehearse that properly. But apparently, the premiere still a great success and the music swept a lot of people away.

I don't know how hard B's orchestral parts are, but I doubt they're easy to master for performers who might have been doing little more than sight-reading.

A lot of it is extremely difficult to play well, for various sections in the orchestra, and I am told that a lot of the choral parts are also very hard to sing. Some of the string writing is at the very limits of what physically playable - if you are very good. Most people still can't play it that well, but mercifully, the tutti and the chorus cover that up. There is absolutely no way this could have been played that fast.

Besides, a lot of the music makes a lot of sense from a text enunciation point of view. The tempi indicated in the score make sense because they result in, for the most part, rather natural tempi which aren't too different from how fast you would recite the text if it was spoken, not sung. And that natural ness was something Beethoven always aimed for (and very often achieved).

So it all makes sense, except that single remark, relayed to us only through a third person who himself wasn't too convinced of the truth behind. Whether or not Beethoven really said that, or whether or not he may have said that to disperse concerns his music might be too long and difficult, we will never know, but it is fairly irrelevant anyway, because what matters is not single, disconnected pieces of "evidence", what counts is *context* and the evidence we draw upon to reassemble a hopefully "authentic" overall picture of the music as it originally was has to fit in a context in which it makes sense.

That whole subject, as I never tire of repeating, is way more complex than a lot of people think.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The slow variations can be done quite nicely up to about 10 and a half minutes, ish.

Actually you've got me there in a sense, because if played at B's metronome settings, there are 157 bars in the movement - 121 bars of Adagio in 4/4 (later 12/8) at q or dq=60, and 36 bars of Andante in 3/4 at q=63, which believe it or not come to just under 10 minutes! I have certainly never heard a performance that fast. The strings would have to play sixteenth-note triplets in some of the more ornate variations, meaning they'd have to articulate nine notes per second at times. I don't think even Norrington, who made a point of following Beethoven's metronome marks, went quite that fast. Gardiner needs 12:05, and Harnoncourt, in a performance that alone would make his COE set worth keeping, feels pretty fast at 13:34. But one's sense of speed is not governed alone by the clock. The players' articulation, the conductor's shaping of the whole design, the acoustic characteristics of the hall they're playing in - all these have an effect on one's perception of tempo. 

So much for "ish."

[(poco) Sforzando]

A lot of it is extremely difficult to play well, for various sections in the orchestra, and I am told that a lot of the choral parts are also very hard to sing. Some of the string writing is at the very limits of what physically playable - if you are very good. Most people still can't play it that well, but mercifully, the tutti and the chorus cover that up. There is absolutely no way this could have been played that fast.

Hardly surprising. As stated above, I've sung in the chorus to the finale; B's demands on the basses' vocal range (up to the F just above middle C) are extreme. It's perhaps worse for the choral sopranos, having to sustain a high A over several bars at one spot.

As a pianist, I also know Beethoven's demands on players are considerable. The earlier music is often very difficult, but it tends to fit fairly well under the hand at a time when B. himself was still a performing musician. In the later work, after he had ceased performing and playing, the pianistic demands become far greater - awkward shifts in hand position, difficult leaps, passages where the two hands are so close together as to collide more often than not, passages almost impossible to finger. So it's hardly surprising his orchestral parts as just as hard.

[lukeottevanger]

Hardly surprising. As stated above, I've sung in the chorus to the finale; B's demands on the basses' vocal range (up to the F just above middle C) are extreme. It's perhaps worse for the choral sopranos, having to sustain a high A over several bars at one spot.

....although here's where my earlier flippancy becomes more relevant, because, as is often pointed out, that high becomes something like a much more manageable A flat at Beethoven's pitch.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Brian Havergal.  So much composed, so little performed (some not at all!), and so good too.  Other than recordings of the gargantuan first symphony, the rest of his works just get tickled at here and there, if at all.  Havergal deserves much more respect, more concert time and more airplay - of that I am certain.

As resident Brianite I share this sentiment entirely, of course! Havergal Brian has only got a few of his symphonies performed and recorded to a standard that does them justice (especially 6, 16 (Lyrita) and 7, 8, 9 (EMI); I don't like the acoustics of the Maida Vale studio in the Third on Hyperion).

I know I'll have to become as old as Brian himself (96) to see this sorry state of affairs change, if at all.