What’s Your Favourite Symphony?

[vinteuil]

The Choral Fantasia is nice isn't it? More fun.

... I love it




.

[BBMmk2]

Bruckner composed 9, very great, very original, utterly distinct symphonies (and two fairly interesting apprentice works..)... what on earth is this "affliction" you speak of? Apart from overwhelming musical genius?

Or perhaps you would like to point out where, in any individual movement, Bruckner is "far too repetitive"? And what he might have done differently? How often, for example, in the finale of his 7th, is the first theme repeated in its original shape? And how many variants of that melody (and the third main idea, closely related to the first) do we hear as the movement progresses?
Far from being too repetitive, Bruckner's themes undergo a process of continuous, often densely contrapuntal, evolution, as they attempt to establish, and/or challenge, various harmonic plateaux. Especially in the finales, the music constantly changes thematic shape and structural direction, often at speed.

Bruckner learnt from Beethoven's 9th, yes; but it was really only an inspirational launchpad for his own far-flung, endlessly imaginative and inventive, symphonic world.

***
As for the finale of the Beethoven 9th, it's worth quoting Robert Simpson (yet) again:

"The last moment of the 9th is an organic blend of variations and sonata, with both introduction and symphonic coda, and not without a suggestion of rondo. Structurally it is a summing-up of classical possibilities, all expressed in a single huge design with astonishing certainty of touch; it even has the shade of the classical concerto in it, as if Beethoven, like Bach in The Art of Fugue, were intent on encompassing everything he knew in one mighty act".

I'm not really surprised that some listeners find this combination of instantly, universally appealing melodic and jazzily rhythmical inspiration, the shout-out-loud joyful abandonment, with a free-flowing structural comprehensiveness and complexity, a tough call.
I think again of Basil Bunting's poem on Pound's Cantos:


"On the Fly-Leaf of Pound’s Cantos
There are the Alps. What is there to say about them?
They don’t make sense. Fatal glaciers, crags cranks climb,
jumbled boulder and weed, pasture and boulder, scree,
et l’on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger.
Who knows what the ice will have scraped on the rock it is smoothing?

There they are, you will have to go a long way round
if you want to avoid them.
It takes some getting used to. There are the Alps,
fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble!"

The Symphony No.9 by Ludwig Van Beethoven shows little sign of crumbling just yet...

Certainly the case that Dr Robert Simpson puts forward is certainly mind changing, as is the poem opf Basil Bunting. Many thanks as usual Jayne!

[pastoralguy]

The Choral Fantasia is nice isn't it? More fun.

I still love the recording by John Lill and Sir Alexander Gibson conducting the SNO and Chorus which, iirc, was a coupling for the First Piano Concerto on CfP. I can remember buying that record from the SNO's Friends Stall at the Usher Hall in winter 1977!

[BBMmk2]

I still love the recording by John Lill and Sir Alexander Gibson conducting the SNO and Chorus which, iirc, was a coupling for the First Piano Concerto on CfP. I can remember buying that record from the SNO's Friends Stall at the Usher Hall in winter 1977!

My favourite is Pierre Laurent Airmard, CoE and Harnoncourt.

[Barbirollians]

My favourite is Pierre Laurent Airmard, CoE and Harnoncourt.

The recent live Argerich from Lugano is pretty special.

[LMcD]

Favourite symphony today: Elgar 1. This after listening to Sir Adrian Boult's life-affirming performance at the 1976 Proms, released on a BBC Music magazine CD which I found in a charity shop.
Favourite symphony tomorrow: probably Elgar 2.

[cloughie]

Favourite symphony today: Elgar 1. This after listening to Sir Adrian Boult's life-affirming performance at the 1976 Proms, released on a BBC Music magazine CD which I found in a charity shop.
Favourite symphony tomorrow: probably Elgar 2.

Does that depend on you finding it in a charity shop today?

[cloughie]

The Choral Fantasia is nice isn't it? More fun.

Indeed so!

[kea]

"The last moment of the 9th is an organic blend of variations and sonata, with both introduction and symphonic coda, and not without a suggestion of rondo. Structurally it is a summing-up of classical possibilities, all expressed in a single huge design with astonishing certainty of touch; it even has the shade of the classical concerto in it, as if Beethoven, like Bach in The Art of Fugue, were intent on encompassing everything he knew in one mighty act".

I've always seen the finale of Beethoven 9 as derived primarily from the operatic finale—which obviously can be influenced by sonata form, variations, etc (or in preclassical cases, was the progenitor of such forms). The text is obviously different but I'm not sure much is lost if one substitutes Des besten Königs Wink und Wille for O Freunde, nicht diese Töne, and O Gott, welch ein Augenblick! O unausprechlich süßes Gluck! for Seid umschlungen, Millionen, and Wer ein holdes Weib errungen stimm' in unsern Jubel ein for Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium. (Or the words of any other operatic finale, given a sufficiently heroic opera.) It has several important contretemps, solo recitatives, ariosos & quartets, moments of grandeur and solemnity, but works itself up into quite a lather in the coda and ends with the orchestra alone (simulating the fall of a curtain). I certainly think that's the way many listeners of Beethoven's day and age would have heard it, at least.

[Alison]

There is a marvellous unfathomable depth to Elgar 2.

[Richard Barrett]

The Choral Fantasia is nice isn't it? More fun.

One of LvB's very worst moments, to my ears!

Returning to his 9th Symphony, I'm sure people who heard it at the time would indeed have found it an astonishing irruption of the operatic stage onto the concert platform; but in the time since it was written I think it's become more and more clear that Beethoven struggled with the affirmative nature of its message, and ultimately couldn't pull it off (Adorno has something interesting to say about this which I read so long ago I can't remember the details, I'll have to look that up). Interestingly, Simpson's comments as recounted by Jayne don't mention the supposed message of the music at all, only its points of structural interest (as, IMO, you'd expect from Simpson who seems to have been exercised by little else where his own work was concerned!). I know this discussion about Beethoven's 9th has been had many times before, but I think it's always interesting - there are very few artworks in any discipline which divide opinion between those who feel it's self-evidently a pinnacle of the art and those who feel it trips disastrously over its own ambition.

I couldn't imagine having a "favourite symphony". I find it impossible to make any kind of relative value judgement between say Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Bruckner, Mahler, Webern, Messiaen... what do they have in common apart from the generic title of a multi-movement work with orchestra?

[BBMmk2]

The recent live Argerich from Lugano is pretty special.

How could I forget that one!

[kea]

I'm in a somewhat weird position as someone who likes the finale of the 9th more than the other three movements, but doesn't think any part of the symphony measures up to eg the 7th or 8th.... and perhaps the self-conscious put-upon "greatness" of the piece has a lot to do with it. (Of course the self-conscious "greatness" doesn't bother me at all in the Missa Solemnis.) I think also by the late 1810s the symphonic genre had kind of run dry for Beethoven, which is perhaps why the 9th can sound at times like a rehash of the symphonies in the early 1810s—when he originally started planning the work, as far as I know, but other projects intervened. By the time he actually came to complete it, his taste had very obviously moved on, or more accurately moved backwards in time to the 1740s or so >.> and thus it feels somehow less interesting than the two symphonies it was planned in tandem with.

I personally just pick whatever symphony comes to the top of my head. Today, I would go with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4.

[Barbirollians]

There is a marvellous unfathomable depth to Elgar 2.

Especially in the Larghetto when the harps come in towards the end. The oft disparaged Barbirolli 1960s recording is immensely moving at that point.

[BBMmk2]

Especially in the Larghetto when the harps come in towards the end. The oft disparaged Barbirolli 1960s recording is immensely moving at that point.

Have to play this later, I think. it's sometime since I have heard it.