Your desert island disc Beethoven symphony recordings.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Adagio is crotchet = 60, but the beat is 4-4, and the harmonic changes occur on the minim (ie every two seconds. -ish!), whereas the Andante the beat is 3-4 and the harmonic changes are on the crotchet (just under a second each. -ish.), so it feels as if the Tempo is a little over twice as fast.

Best Wishes.

[Tony Halstead]

No, Biffo, you haven't 'got it wrong'!
I own the 'new Bärenreiter' score of #9 edited by Jonathan Del Mar, following the autograph as closely as possible, and I see that those metronome marks and tempo/ mood headings are absolutely correct.

[Biffo]

Thanks for the last two postings. I was going by the indications in the booklet notes for the Mackerras/RLPO set, a score would have made it clearer. Listening to the actual performance, the tempo of both themes seems more or less identical and Theme I doesn't seem very 'cantabile' when taken so fast. The movement makes sense in the context of the whole performance but sounds hurried when played on its own. In a more 'traditional' performance (Szell/New Philharmonia) there is greater differentiation between the two themes.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It's surprising the Captain Slow (aka Otto Klemperer) took the slow movement of the 9th at quite a lick (and it's very effective, as is Karajan's "slow" movement in the 7th). But this numerical obsession can be taken too far. The question for a conductor should be - "Does the end result sound good?" rather than "Am I going to be compulsive/obsessive about the number to the right of the Italian tempo marking?"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... alternatively:

The question for the conductor should be "Does the performance match, as closely as we can make it, the notes and indications that the world's greatest composer wrote in his score?" rather than "Am I going to make it sound like my favourite recording from fifty years ago?"

Best Wishes.

[Biffo]

Just to add that Gardiner takes the movement at a practically identical tempo (and overall timing) to Mackerras but does get the Adagio theme to flow and sufficiently diferentiates the Andante theme. Both are trying to follow the indications in the score but with, to my ears, different results.

Klemperer is two minutes quicker than the young upstart Abbado (VPO, 1987) but I am not sure I would describe his tempo as 'quite a lick'.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... alternatively:

The question for the conductor should be "Does the performance match, as closely as we can make it, the notes and indications that the world's greatest composer wrote in his score?" rather than "Am I going to make it sound like my favourite recording from fifty years ago?"

Best Wishes.

You can do that with a computer programme such as Sibelius or Finale. But Haitink, Furtwangler, the Kleibers and Karajan never sound like a computer.

[vinteuil]

You can do that with a computer programme such as Sibelius or Finale. But Haitink, Furtwangler, the Kleibers and Karajan never sound like a computer.

... no; they sound like what they are - performers of the 1940s /50s / 60s / 70s , much taken with the well-upholstered sumptuous sound world which was particularly in vogue then...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You can do that with a computer programme such as Sibelius or Finale. But Haitink, Furtwangler, the Kleibers and Karajan never sound like a computer.

Modified Touché, Alpie (aside: curse him for chosing some of my "favourite recordings from fifty years ago!) Aloud: but do you not agree that these conductors (and Szell, Reiner, Klemperer, Mravinsky ... ) "sound better" the closer they get to what Beethoven wrote in his scores? Would you accept a performance whose conductor looked at the first page of the Fifth and decided it would "sound well" if the orchestra ignored the f dynamic (on the grounds that Beethoven's Italian was a bit ropey) and played the opening bars pianissimo?

It's an absurd proposition, I know, but why is it less absurd than assuming that the world's greatest composer didn't know what he meant by the most basic of metronome marks?

[silvestrione]

Thanks for your observations Waldhorn, about Abbado's Sony version of 9, and its ignoring of the metronome mark for slow movement. It made me think. I listened to it again last night, before I read your comment, and to my ears it sounded about right. But then I do listen to Furtwangler's version a lot! However Karajan 1977, which I also like, I presume is much faster.

Last night I was also just a little disappointed with the apocalyptic moment with trumpet call and strings, in the slow movement, so Klemperer 1957 live may be about to take over as the desert island choice.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Modified Touché, Alpie (aside: curse him for chosing some of my "favourite recordings from fifty years ago!) Aloud: but do you not agree that these conductors (and Szell, Reiner, Klemperer, Mravinsky ... ) "sound better" the closer they get to what Beethoven wrote in his scores? Would you accept a performance whose conductor looked at the first page of the Fifth and decided it would "sound well" if the orchestra ignored the f dynamic (on the grounds that Beethoven's Italian was a bit ropey) and played the opening bars pianissimo?

It's an absurd proposition, I know, but why is it less absurd than assuming that the world's greatest composer didn't know what he meant by the most basic of metronome marks?

What you appear to be saying is that it isn't always straightforward. Of course Beethoven knew what be meant with his metronome indications, but as far as I know, he wasn't autistic and he certainly wasn't obsessive.

[Chris Newman]

I have a set of Chicago SO recordings with Carlo Maria Giulini which includes Beethoven's 7th. By that time in his career the maestro had slowed right down and as with most conductors made the trumpeter curse by slowing the Assai meno presto trio(s) of the third movement (Presto – Assai meno presto) right down to a dirge. However I heard him conduct the symphony with the New Philharmonia in the 60s where he barely slowed down at all. It was very effective and convincing: Rumptypum Rumptypum Tiddlyumtittypom: a skipping jig almost. One rarely hears conductors do this but most take the instruction to go quite a bit less fast very literally. Does Jonathan Del Mar have anything to say on this?

[akiralx]

9 BPO/Abbado, the version on Sony, 1996
Hmmm...
'Slow movement' (VERY slow) played ('interpreted' ) at a metronome speed of about 40.
Beethoven asks for 60, so, one beat per second.

Though the Abbado recording's slow movement comes in at 13'57? So not too slow, surely?

[Bryn]

What you appear to be saying is that it isn't always straightforward. Of course Beethoven knew what be meant with his metronome indications, but as far as I know, he wasn't autistic and he certainly wasn't obsessive.

Oh no, certainly nothing obsessive about Beethoven.

[VodkaDilc]

With 59 opinions to read through, I could have missed it - but no-one seems to have mentioned the very stimulating set by Immerseel and Anima Eterna.