BaL 24.12.22 - Beethoven: Symphony no. 9 in D minor

[Ein Heldenleben]

Controversially perhaps I regard the ninth as somehow conductor proof . It hardly matters what outrages are committed in terms of tempo (usually as Bryn hints far too slow) it doesn’t dull the impact for me. The dealbreaker for me is the standard of singing inthe final movement - the amount of vibrato and pitch accuracy. Also whether the chorus can really hack it….

[Bryn]

Ha Ha, Bryn , I thought that would rouse you.

Face it, it may be very pretty but it's not what the composer intended. Why not go the whole hog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQfa...5MErN5&index=3

[Bryn]

Controversially perhaps I regard the ninth as somehow conductor proof . It hardly matters what outrages are committed in terms of tempo (usually as Bryn hints far too slow) it doesn’t dull the impact for me. The dealbreaker for me is the standard of singing inthe final movement - the amount of vibrato and pitch accuracy. Also whether the chorus can really hack it….

Or for some, whether the final movement should be put to one side and an alternative found.

[smittims]

Thanks, Bryn, but we're not going to have that argument again. It was naughty of me to provoke you.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Or for some, whether the final movement should be put to one side and an alternative found.

Yes interesting thought. Also applies to Mahler of course..esp Mahler 4

[Bryn]

Yes interesting thought. Also applies to Mahler of course..esp Mahler 4

Which, after all, was initially intended as part of the 3rd. I am happy to go along with the composers' decisions, in both cases.

[Pulcinella]

Which, after all, was initially intended as part of the 3rd. I am happy to go along with the composers' decisions, in both cases.

And we are lucky to have such a variety of performances and interpretations to suit all personal whims (and the ability to hit the stop button after the third movement!).

[Ein Heldenleben]

And we are lucky to have such a variety of performances and interpretations to suit all personal whims (and the ability to hit the stop button after the third movement!).

Thing is I’m more likely to listen to the final movement in isolation than any of the others . Very rarely in music is there something genuinely new. Without that movement there would have been no Mahler .

[Bryn]

Thing is I’m more likely to listen to the final movement in isolation than any of the others . Very rarely in music is there something genuinely new. Without that movement there would have been no Mahler .

Funnily enough, the final movement (PCO et al, Schuricht) is all I knew as a child. It was the 'flip-side' of the 5th, which is what my father bought the LP for. He never for the disc with the other three movements of the 9th. Of course, when I did get to hear the first three movements, they did sound a little familiar, due to the way he composed the final movement, or "symphony within a symphony" as Charles Rosen had it.

[Barbirollians]

If you forced me to choose one I suspect it would be the 1954 Philharmonia/Furtwangler . Though I am very fond of many others - the live Testament Klemperer that I think Stephen Johnson chose as the winner , the 1951 Bayreuth Furtwangler on Orfeo, the late and fabulous Stokowski etc etc .

Interestingly, TS when he wrote about the symphony in his Guardian series chose as his five reference versions - the 1942 Furtwangler, Norrington LCP , Gardiner ORR, Chailly and Bernstein's Berlin Wall performance.

[Bryn]

If you forced me to choose one I suspect it would be the 1954 Philharmonia/Furtwangler . Though I am very fond of many others - the live Testament Klemperer that I think Stephen Johnson chose as the winner , the 1951 Bayreuth Furtwangler on Orfeo, the late and fabulous Stokowski etc etc .

Interestingly, TS when he wrote about the symphony in his Guardian series chose as his five reference versions - the 1942 Furtwangler, Norrington LCP , Gardiner ORR, Chailly and Bernstein's Berlin Wall performance.

Strange that he chose the LCP/Norrington. RN has since openly admitted to misreading aspects of the final movement in that recording. The later recorded performance with 'his' Stuttgarters is much to be preferred, I feel, though there is still much else to be admired in the earlier recording.

[jayne lee wilson]

Thing is I’m more likely to listen to the final movement in isolation than any of the others . Very rarely in music is there something genuinely new. Without that movement there would have been no Mahler .

Yes, a multi-layered formal innovation, and an emotional revolution...bouleversant!
One of my favourite moments in music, to listen to and to think about (and overwhelmingly, shockingly new in the recent Freiburg/Heras-Casado recording, the true and apt summit of an ear-opening but admittedly imperfect interpretive conception).

But...."no Mahler"? How does the Mahler 1st relate to it? Or 5 through 7? Etc....
Wasn't Mahler a janus-faced artistic revolutionary himself?

[Wolfram]

Strange that he chose the LCP/Norrington. RN has since openly admitted to misreading aspects of the final movement in that recording. The later recorded performance with 'his' Stuttgarters is much to be preferred, I feel, though there is still much else to be admired in the earlier recording.

Quite right about some of Norrington’s choices in the final movement of his LCP recording. He takes the Alla Marcia episode very slowly, I suppose in an effort to give his tenor more space to articulate the difficult music Beethoven gives him, but then he shoots himself in the foot by having to maintain that tempo through the orchestral passage that follows which just doesn’t work at all. He doesn’t play it like that in his live Stuttgart recording.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, a multi-layered formal innovation, and an emotional revolution...bouleversant!
One of my favourite moments in music, to listen to and to think about (and overwhelmingly, shockingly new in the recent Freiburg/Heras-Casado recording, the true and apt summit of an ear-opening but admittedly imperfect interpretive conception).

But...."no Mahler"? How does the Mahler 1st relate to it? Or 5 through 7? Etc....
Wasn't Mahler a janus-faced artistic revolutionary himself?

I suppose because they being both realised that symphonic thought should maybe even could
only develop through song and the voice:
Maybe Wagner isthe true picker up of the gauntlet thrown down by the 9th
Finale . Even the opening theme of Mahler is 1 was song originally - oddly similar to
to An Die Freude and in D major.

[Petrushka]

I suppose because they being both realised that symphonic thought should maybe even could
only develop through song and the voice:
Maybe Wagner isthe true picker up of the gauntlet thrown down by the 9th
Finale . Even the opening theme of Mahler is 1 was song originally - oddly similar to
to An Die Freude and in D major.

The finale of the Brahms 1 would most likely have been different without the near quote of the 'Joy' theme - as would the opening of the Mahler 3 which quotes the Brahms exactly.

There have been occasions when I've been so caught up in listening to the 'Choral' that the entry of the bass voice has come as a real shock.