How many of the Beethoven symphonies do you actually LIKE?

[gurnemanz]

The question is easy to answer: I actually like them all.

I can remember randomly catching the Ninth's choral section aged about 16 in the mid 60s and like all my friends totally into pop, rock, Dylan etc. It didn't just actually like it. I think it knocked me sideways at the time and that experience almost certainly played a big part in diverting me down the classical path which I have trodden ever since.

Like Darkbloom I have recently read the Swafford book as recommended on here. Now pensioned off, I had plenty of time to do the job properly and played works as I went along. The musical and biographical insights thus gained, certainly led me to appreciate them even more.

I went through a similar process while reading Elizabeth Wilson's excellent book on Shostakovich. (Also recommended here)

[Stanfordian]

The question is easy to answer: I actually like them all.

I can remember randomly catching the Ninth's choral section aged about 16 in the mid 60s and like all my friends totally into pop, rock, Dylan etc. It didn't just actually like it. I think it knocked me sideways at the time and that experience almost certainly played a big part in diverting me down the classical path which I have trodden ever since.

Like Darkbloom I have recently read the Swafford book as recommended on here. Now pensioned off, I had plenty of time to do the job properly and played works as I went along. The musical and biographical insights thus gained, certainly led me to appreciate them even more.

I went through a similar process while reading Elizabeth Wilson's excellent book on Shostakovich. (Also recommended here)

I actually like them all too. A ground-breaking composer!

[Once Was 4]

OK, likes:

I think the Eroica is one of the greatest of all symphonies, perhaps the greatest. I like it so much I prefer not to hear it too frequently, lest my listening stale.

I have loved the seventh since in my teens buying an LP cond Rowicki who did interesting things with the slow movement, much praised by 'TH' (Trevor Harvey?) in the Gramophone at the time. I sometimes think of Wagner dancing to Liszt's piano.

The eighth, since hearing the Scherchen recording with madcap finale tempo.

The sixth, albeit I have sometimes deliberately used it as a soporific . Although I'm fully aware of all its movements, it often feels like one continuous rhapsody.

I don't really like the ninth, as I don't feel the last movement works in the context of the whole work. But I usually enjoy the first movement.

The canon seems to me one of the pinnacles of Western art.

Sir John Barbirolli apparently disliked the 6th and also the 1st, 2nd and 4th. This I was told by the late Arthur Butterworth who was Sir John's 2nd trumpet at one time and who also disliked the 6th (and he said that he was driven out of the Halle by Sir John's passion for Mahler!) This could possibly be because of Sir John's romantic view of music. He used to always do the Eroica with six horns and the 7th with five.

Have a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIeUDW47u4 She passed away recently at the age of 98. BTW: she used to blame the state of her knees on the fact that she was a rock climber, as well as a cyclist, in her youth.

[Barbirollians]

Sir John Barbirolli apparently disliked the 6th and also the 1st, 2nd and 4th. This I was told by the late Arthur Butterworth who was Sir John's 2nd trumpet at one time and who also disliked the 6th (and he said that he was driven out of the Halle by Sir John's passion for Mahler!) This could possibly be because of Sir John's romantic view of music. He used to always do the Eroica with six horns and the 7th with five.

Have a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIeUDW47u4 She passed away recently at the age of 98. BTW: she used to blame the state of her knees on the fact that she was a rock climber, as well as a cyclist, in her youth.

Can't find any obits of Livia Gollancz - anyone seen one ?

Barbirolli recorded the First Symphony so he evidently did not dislike it that much. I am sure Michael Kennedy also mentions in his biography that he was not fond of the Pastoral but even great conductors can't be perfect !

[Serial_Apologist]

The sixth, albeit I have sometimes deliberately used it as a soporific . Although I'm fully aware of all its movements, it often feels like one continuous rhapsody.

I was just this morning listening to the Sixth, in the Furtwangler/VPO recording from the 1950s, which probably epitomises as much as any version my concurrence with your description of the work as "feeling like one continuous rhapsody". It doesn't come across to me as a symphony, more as a suite, inasmuch as Beethoven did not "do" that much with his thematic material beyond repeating it, unlike in his other symphonies, which is what for me makes for their "rewardingness".

[Once Was 4]

She died on March 29th so perhaps obituaries are still to come. A wonderful player of the 'Old English' school as can be heard on the Halle recording of Bax's 4th symphony and Vaughan-Williams' 5th symphony which I understand is available on CD (and the cover is shown in that interview plus a snatch of the Bax which she talks about). The other players in the Bax would be James Dennis (2nd - later went to the LSO but had a serious alcohol problem), Enid Roper (3rd who remained in the orchestra alternating between 4th and bumper until 1968) and Raymond Meert (4th). Raymond Meert had been 1st horn and had come out of retirement to help the war effort. Ms Gollancz said that he "bitterly resented playing 4th to two girls" (her words , not mine!)

[Alain Maréchal]

I like them all and play them frequently. I have just spent the weekend renewing my acquaintance with Kempe/Munich which I had forgotten I owned. Big-band, but not too big, slightly old-fashioned German horn and wind playing (i.e. to my taste), beautifully recorded and very "opinionated". No 8 goes near the top of my favourite recordings of it. I recommend you seek them out.

[Stanfordian]

I like them all and play them frequently. I have just spent the weekend renewing my acquaintance with Kempe/Munich which I had forgotten I owned. Big-band, but not too big, slightly old-fashioned German horn and wind playing (i.e. to my taste), beautifully recorded and very "opinionated". No 8 goes near the top of my favourite recordings of it. I recommend you seek them out.

Good suggestion. I'll see if I can dig out that recording and give it a spin.

[Bryn]

I like them all and play them frequently. I have just spent the weekend renewing my acquaintance with Kempe/Munich which I had forgotten I owned. Big-band, but not too big, slightly old-fashioned German horn and wind playing (i.e. to my taste), beautifully recorded and very "opinionated". No 8 goes near the top of my favourite recordings of it. I recommend you seek them out.

Since they were originally issued in quadraphonic sound the SACD set seems the one to go for. A snip at around £1,100. The EMI stereo remasters from 1995 are available at the QOBUZ site for somewhat less.

[Alain Maréchal]

Since they were originally issued in quadraphonic sound the SACD set seems the one to go for. A snip at around £1,100. The EMI stereo remasters from 1995 are available at the QOBUZ site for somewhat less.

My LP set is quite satisfactory, even though I am playing it through only two speakers. Update: I also own a Disky set of CDs. I am constantly surprised by my shelves. I never catalogued anything (and several transmanche removals have undone what order there was in the first place).

[Barbirollians]

She died on March 29th so perhaps obituaries are still to come. A wonderful player of the 'Old English' school as can be heard on the Halle recording of Bax's 4th symphony and Vaughan-Williams' 5th symphony which I understand is available on CD (and the cover is shown in that interview plus a snatch of the Bax which she talks about). The other players in the Bax would be James Dennis (2nd - later went to the LSO but had a serious alcohol problem), Enid Roper (3rd who remained in the orchestra alternating between 4th and bumper until 1968) and Raymond Meert (4th). Raymond Meert had been 1st horn and had come out of retirement to help the war effort. Ms Gollancz said that he "bitterly resented playing 4th to two girls" (her words , not mine!)

Sad news - she died very recently indeed which may indeed explain the lack of obituaries . Uncanny that she died the same day as another Livia of very advanced years - Livia Rev .

[Darkbloom]

"Irving"? "Alexander Wheelock", surely?

I think I'll go and lie in a darkened room for a while. Not sure where Irving came from.

[Bella Kemp]

Apologies if this observation has already been posted by another, but if you dislike any of Beethoven's symphonies just remember that millions love them all and go back and treat yourself to another listen to numbers one and two (yet more apologies but I think you have to be a Martian not to love 3-9)

[Richard Barrett]

if you dislike any of Beethoven's symphonies just remember that millions love them all

Many more millions love all kinds of things! Hardly a convincing argument I think...

[Bella Kemp]

Yes - point taken: I was being a little silly! - many millions love chocolate ice cream and bananas more than Beethoven - but my observation was embedded in a thread read mostly by music lovers and musicians and so made certain presumptions that one would not have made elsewhere. And maybe, gosh, after all, one shouldn't have to turn to reason or argument when it comes to Beethoven (such things will always fail) - just listen.