Beethoven - an antidote to Composer of the Week

[Andy Freude]

Re people of South Asian heritage appreciating the classical music of their region's culture, in my experience, very few do. Of the many I have worked with, only a very few have shown even the slightest identification with it. Rather similar to my experience re indigenous colleagues and European classical music.

I suspected as much. I imagine very few things have 'universal appeal' if one means that they appeal to all human beings. Mind you, I think Beethoven would have universal appeal if everyone understood what he was getting at with his confounded music. Perhaps.

[Oakapple]

This is from Prokofiev's diary for 1918. He was in Japan at the time.

Piastro's concerts are mainly interesting in that they represent attempts to play serious compositions to an alien population which is nevertheless starting to take an interest in European music. On the one hand, the attitude of the Japanese is extremely attentive, on the other it is obvious that with all their studious attention they do not understand anything and would not be able to tell whether what you were playing them was a Beethoven sonata or something improvised out of your own head. The things that engender enthusiasm are superficial effects like pizzicato, pearly runs on the piano, that king of thing.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well done for flying the flag for music often wrongly judged to be “difficult” or only for an “elite.” If they were more people with your commitment I would be confident that Beethoven will still be as popular in 250 years time. I remember once reading that the biggest buyers of the DG Karajan Complete Symphonies were the Japanese - more evidence that LVB is like Shakespeare “not of an age but for all time .”

Absolutely - and they've been designing and making some of the greatest hifi on the planet for at least 50 years now, largely inspired by - Western European Classical Orchestral Music ....

(Oh and, producing some of the best classical remasters too...)

(***great post Bella Kemp #42..... similar experiences here as musically-untrained LGBT.... terrible middle-class musical snobbery in the 1970s, nearly pushed me away....)

Beethoven for Everyone, for Ever!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Absolutely - and they've been designing and making some of the greatest hifi on the planet for at least 50 years now, largely inspired by - Western European Classical Orchestral Music ....

(Oh and, producing some of the best classical remasters too...)

(***great post Bella Kemp #42..... similar experiences here as musically-untrained LGBT.... terrible middle-class musical snobbery in the 1970s, nearly pushed me away....)

Beethoven for Everyone, for Ever!

Yes my Trio tuner amp is fifty years old in 2023 and I’m listening to R3 on it now

[Ein Heldenleben]

Like you, I'm looking forward to this year and will try to remain positive. In 1969/70 I spent a year in Germany as my year abroad from my German degree and experienced the full force of Beethoven's 200th anniversary celebrations in the country of his birth. As a student, I had a poster of Beethoven in Byronic stance on my wall on which I had written: “Vom Herzen, möge es wieder, zu Herzen gehen!” as B had said of his Missa Solemnis. I used to listen to it when I was depressed. 50 years on and retired, I recently took the time to work through Jan Swafford's tome, "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" fairly meticulously, (recommended on this Board), breaking off to listen to works as I went along.

I find this thread is a bit off-putting and negative and I have felt more like contributing an antidote to the thread rather than to the BBC programme. There are obviously countless other analyses of Beethoven's life and music available. Schama and Alsop are not "bloody idiots" and I am happy to hear what they have to say. The informal style isn't completely my cup of tea and I have not (yet) gained that many new insights but I have no sense of needing an "antidote", as if someone were trying to poison me.

Your post inspired me to finally start Swafford which I bought on Kindle a year ago. It isn’t page numbered and I couldn’t work out why the percentage counter wouldn’t move off 1% . I then discovered it’s 1100 pages ! I will finish it by the end of this anniversary year ...

[Richard Barrett]

Isn't the point that 'white Europeans' (in fact, not all of them, but some of them) have all the necessary advantages which introduce them to western classical music (though only a minority follow up sufficiently to 'get it'?). Other cultures have their own musics - I wonder if all people of Indian heritage appreciate Indian classical music? It's not that people from other cultures can't (for some inexplicable reason) appreciate western classical music as that their individual life circumstances haven't brought them sufficiently close to it to enable them to hear it in a sympathetic and encouraging environment. I don't really appreciate the classical music of other traditions, but I doubt that's due to a racial inability!

Exactly. I'm not making an "assumption that Western classical music is really only for 'white Anglo/Europeans'", I'm pointing out that many people and institutions do make exactly that assumption when they talk about the "universal appeal" of Beethoven's music. What I'm saying is that it's an unhelpful term to use.

[David-G]

But can't people at least consider, that devoting a WHOLE YEAR to Beethoven, at the expense of others - and as if at this very time when it is all coming unstitched, he might well appear to being portrayed as western music's redemption on behalf of the whole world - is a bit much?

I don't know what's coming unstitched, or what on earth that has to do with Beethoven - but no, given that it is Beethoven and it is rather a special anniversary, it is not too much at all.

[David-G]

Yes my Trio tuner amp is fifty years old in 2023 and I’m listening to R3 on it now

Well done your Trio! My Technics SL-110 turntable and my Spendor BC3 speakers will celebrate their 50th in 2022.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well done your Trio! My Technics SL-110 turntable and my Spendor BC3 speakers will celebrate their 50th in 2022.

Nice speakers Spendors - I know them well. My 50 year old KEF Cadenzas are still hanging in there though the foam has rotted away. On thread - they have faithfully reproduced an awful lot of LVB over the years

[jayne lee wilson]

Well done your Trio! My Technics SL-110 turntable and my Spendor BC3 speakers will celebrate their 50th in 2022.

Not much from Japan in the BBC-inspired Spendors, but a nice piece on them here....

https://www.hifinews.com/content/spendor-bc-iii-vintage

.....the name came from...Spencer and wife Dorothy ...the "wide baffle" principle is still doing great musical things in the Harbeth designs of the present day; Dudley Harwood founded Harbeth, the name formed from his wife's, Elizabeth....sorry to go off thread (think of it as a noncommercial break), but have your Spendors ever needed a service?

[kernelbogey]

Forty-five year old Wharfedale Dentons not coming unstitched here.... They cope nicely with the extremes of Herr Beethoven's compositions (and just now that young Giuseppe Verdi's).
And btw (and to return to topic) I don't need an antidote to the COTW: I've found it illuminating, intelligent and articulate. I've been listening to Beethoven a tad longer than the Dentons, and I nonetheless find Simon S's and Marin A's commentary opens new vistas on the man and his music.

[bluestateprommer]

...given that it is Beethoven and it is rather a special anniversary, it is not too much at all.

Some NYC-based commentators who might be inclined to agree with you write here:

Daniel J. Wakin, NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/a...-quartets.html

George Grella, New York Classical Review: https://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2...250-beethoven/

[BBMmk2]

I’ve started to listen to that blue coloured box set of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, played by Emil Gilels. Very good recordings. Pity he didn’t record all of them though.

[Sir Velo]

given that it is Beethoven and it is rather a special anniversary, it is not too much at all.

What happens in 2027?

[Bryn]

What happens in 2027?

The new Bayer edition of the complete works is issued in the form of a slow-release pill, available in plain or enhanced (with synthetic THC) versions.