Celebrating Simon Rattle: 1995 Beethoven Symphony Cycle

[Petrushka]

There is a feast of programmes coming up on radio and television celebrating Simon Rattle on his 60th birthday. I've tried to find a full schedule on the BBC website but can't find one. Can anyone else?

Starting tomorrow at 19.30 every night until next Friday Radio 3 are broadcasting a Beethoven symphony cycle that Rattle and the CBSO gave in Frankfurt in 1995.

Required listening for me, especially as I saw a lot of Rattle at this time including some of his Beethoven.

His recordings with the VPO from 2003 garnered mixed reviews so it will be interesting to see how these live performances from 20 years ago compare.

[DracoM]

If I hear that b****y trail for it again, "iconic" tho' Rattle may be, I shall scream!

[edashtav]

If I hear that b****y trail for it again, "iconic" tho' Rattle may be, I shall scream!

You're so f.....g right, Dracom. The trail is a trial.

[jayne lee wilson]

Gone are the days - temporarily I hope - when I could have laid in rations & hunkered down for a five-night musical vigil... but I'll try to dip in to the cycle.

Any record companies going to offer us a high-res download or a CD box...?

[teamsaint]

Gone are the days - temporarily I hope - when I could have laid in rations & hunkered down for a five-night musical vigil... but I'll try to dip in to the cycle.

Any record companies going to offer us a high-res download or a CD box...?

With your technical knowledge and kit, I would have thought you could produce excellent off air recordings Jayne?

Or are the broadcasts not good enough quality?

[jayne lee wilson]

With your technical knowledge and kit, I would have thought you could produce excellent off air recordings Jayne?

Or are the broadcasts not good enough quality?

Dunno yet do we?
But R3, despite being a euro-flagship of webcast quality, are still slummin' it at 320 kbps AAC...
I think I'll be able to hear No.1 anyway.... and Rattle's CBSO catalogue from mid-80s to mid-90s still seems to me his best legacy, so - very curious about this LvB.

[DracoM]

You're so f.....g right, Dracom. The trail is a trial.

And at the end of the Str Qt concert, Ian Skelly trailed it again, and blow me, but Jonathan Swain did it AGAIN literally ten seconds later back in the studio.

[Petrushka]

Dunno yet do we?
But R3, despite being a euro-flagship of webcast quality, are still slummin' it at 320 kbps AAC...
I think I'll be able to hear No.1 anyway.... and Rattle's CBSO catalogue from mid-80s to mid-90s still seems to me his best legacy, so - very curious about this LvB.

I wonder why it's lain in the vaults for 20 years without being broadcast? It quite often means it wasn't good enough for one reason or another but the BBC would hardly be dragging it out now and making such a hoo-ha about it (sorry DracoM, watch the blood pressure) if that was the case. Having heard Rattle a great deal at that time both in Birmingham and London I'd agree that his CBSO period especially in the mid-90s remains his best period.

[Nick Armstrong]

I wonder why it's lain in the vaults for 20 years without being broadcast? It quite often means it wasn't good enough for one reason or another but the BBC would hardly be dragging it out now and making such a hoo-ha about it .

The thought had occurred to me too... I wonder what the answer is. So much for live concerts in the evening, was my other thought.

(I've only heard the s.......g trailer twice as R3 hasn't featured heavily over the past few days)

[BBMmk2]

I am glad that the BBCtv are advertising this on their schedules.

It's all good fop Radio 3 surely?

[Stanley Stewart]

Merely a hunch but I have a feeling that the CBSO Beethoven cycle has been broadcast before - must check my minidisc collection in due course. I certainly have Rattle's "Arrivederci Brum", (6 Sept '98): Mahler 2, etc, on a separate off-air video/ DVD recording but the broadcast of his Beethoven symphonies cycle still linger in the mind. Anyone else have these memories?

[aeolium]

Merely a hunch but I have a feeling that the CBSO Beethoven cycle has been broadcast before - must check my minidisc collection in due course. I certainly have Rattle's "Arrivederci Brum", (6 Sept '98): Mahler 2, etc, on a separate off-air video/ DVD recording but the broadcast of his Beethoven symphonies cycle still linger in the mind. Anyone else have these memories?

I don't recall hearing any, SS. I do remember hearing some very good broadcasts of Rattle with the CBSO in early C20 music, including that of the Second Viennese school, and I remember a concert at IIRC the Salisbury Festival at which they played inter alia the Haydn 90 symphony with its false ending (and they later recorded it). But I most associate Rattle's time with the CBSO with their performances of music from the first half of the C20 - perhaps this is the music with which SR feels the greatest affinity?

[jayne lee wilson]

Symphony No.1 in this Frankfurt Alte Oper cycle came off well, a "good, modern" performance with a light agile feel ("white wine" as Rattle said about the CBSO of this vintage), but never venturing far into any historically informed styling. The intro to the the 1st movement seemed quite warmly Romantic, but the allegro then scudded away at a fair lick. Useful additional weight was injected into the orchestra by the double-basses, spread centrally across the rear of the platform. Fine playing here, alert and precise with polished, fairly prominent winds and a lovely string tone.
I felt the andante a little too suave and relaxed; lovely playing again, but I did miss the gutsiness and textural character of period instruments here. Scherzo and finale moderately fast, precise and clean, though reminding me more of Gunter Wand and the NDR in their character and phrasing than any later HIPPS-interpretation. Again I missed the individuality, the greater listener involvement that such a historically-informed (or at least, motivated) sonic and dynamic profile can offer.

Overall, I found the performance a shade lacking in sheer character, if very well-prepared and dispatched. (A rather low-alcohol white wine, perhaps). Via R3HDs webcast or FM the broadcast quality was fine, fairly 3-D with good dynamics and a warm, full tonal character.
(A few "noises off"...platform movements, but possibly some slight tape faults too...?)

I couldn't stay for the complete Eroica, but across the first 10 minutes or so there was an obvious loss of audio quality on both FM and the webcast: a frequency-restricted, rather "dark" sound, with muted dynamics. Worse still, the iTunes R3HD feed suffered HF distortion, noticeable on violins, though FM and the R3 iplayer Homepage feed (via JRiver publicradiofan) were clean.

[Flosshilde]

Merely a hunch but I have a feeling that the CBSO Beethoven cycle has been broadcast before

They are being quite definite that the recordings haven't been heard before. Mind you, that could mean that the performances were broadcast live, and recorded for a future broadcast that never happened.

(I can't remember the exact words of the trailer - do they say that the recordings have never been broadcast, or the performances?

[Stephen Maddock]

The performances definitely have not been broadcast anywhere before - the CBSO engaged Floating Earth to record them in 1995 (in Frankfurt), in the hope of selling the recordings to German Radio, or the BBC. At the time nobody was interested, so they have been sat in the CBSO archive ever since. My predecessor as Chief Executive, Ed Smith, reminded me and Roger Wright about them early last year, and the plan for this week came out of those conversations.