Eroica

[Nick Armstrong]

I saw Eroica when first broadcast in 2003, I recall being quite gripped by it but Beethoven is a bit of a passion with me. I've found the original blurb from the BBC press office
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre...9/eroica.shtml

I'm watching again - I realise I saw it back then too.

Love the way it's the ladies who are portrayed as 'getting it' first during the initial run-through of the piece !

I'm appreciating it far more this time

[Anna]

Love the way it's the ladies who are portrayed as 'getting it' first during the initial run-through of the piece !

Ooh, I say, i'nee BOLD!! I fell in love with Beethoven about 10 years ago, and then I fell in love with Roger Norrington and his boxed set <shriek> I will resist jokes about musicians and do I wish to either to become enlightened or historical.

Funny, after the Beethoven, from the sublime to the other, Nirvana in their only recorded concert. A good night on BBC4

[MrGongGong]

I watched it again
and loved the way that it showed how this piece changed music (as Haydn said)
funny in a way that so many "classical music lovers" would find the same kind of revolution putting the SOUND of the music at the centre equally disturbing today !
I liked the way that it showed how the musicians and composer escaped from the narrow confines of their employment , something that I have seen with many musicians I have met.

[Anna]

Would it be good to have a Beethoven thread I wonder, or are we all totally in love with him so that as long as he is played it don't matter who do it? (for my sins, before bed, I have H Von K on, just as a wind-down from Nirvana and being (possibly) manic)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I fell in love with Beethoven about 10 years ago, and then I fell in love with Roger Norrington and his boxed set <shriek> I will resist jokes about musicians and do I wish to either to become enlightened or historical.

There may be better conductors to fall in love with if you want to be historical.

[Nick Armstrong]

I fell in love with Roger Norrington and his boxed set <shriek>

Sir Todger's box has never exerted any attractive force on me, I'm relieved to report!

I have looked on my shelves to see what Eroicas I have, though:

Furtwangler
Bruno Walter
Svetlanov/USSR SO and yet that's the one I'm most tempted to give a spin
Klemperer / Philharmonia (the one my parents had on LP, that one with a rococo gold arch / gate on navy blue)
Bernstein / VPO
Paavo Jarvi / DKP Bremen (download)
Jaime Martín / Orquestra de Caduqués
(& Cluytens "in the post")

(PS Great turn as Haydn by Frank Finlay, by the way... )

[Chris Newman]

I've often thought that Colin Firth could make a good Beethoven in a Biopic.

I agree the Frank Finlay vignette was a delight though I really remember him as Salieri. He took over from Paul Schofield.

[Anna]

There may be better conductors to fall in love with if you want to be historical.

Oh, did I say historical? I may have meant hysterical (con passione!)

[Bryn]

Not to worry, Anna. Some folk just can't take Beethoven without the patina of Wagner accreted to it.

[Stunsworth]

Would the musicians really have been able to play it through so well when they hadn't seen the score before and there was no conductor?

After saying that I thought it worked well in illustrating just how revolutionary the symphony was.

[Nick Armstrong]

Would the musicians really have been able to play it through so well when they hadn't seen the score before and there was no conductor?

That was indeed the disbelief that one had to suspend to get anywhere with the film. I happily went with it.

[MrGongGong]

From what I understand about music history
the absence of a "conductor" was accurate historically !

(must have saved em a fortune !! in cash and hissy fits )

[Stunsworth]

That was indeed the disbelief that one had to suspend to get anywhere with the film. I happily went with it.

As far as the programme went I had no problem with that. I realise it was all fiction, but I did find the various parties reaction to the piece interesting. Especially that it was largely the women and servants who thought it was a transcendental piece of music. They after all were the people waiting to be liberated - either by politics or music.

[MickyD]

Thanks for all the comments and advice folks; to continue the underlying scurrilous theme in some of your posts, tonight I put Eroica on my hard disk.

[BBMmk2]

Sir Todger Todgerrington, gah!