Beethoven, Ludwig van that ilk (1770 - 1827)

[antongould]

Having just read the Mahler thread I wondered if LVB also generates a wide variety of views .... to me he is, that possibly rare thing, a genius - or is this the most obvious thing that has ever been stated .....

[jayne lee wilson]

I often worried that I'd worn the symphonies out through too many hearings. Then I discovered Toscanini's 1939 live NBC Cycle on M&A and suddenly I couldn't live without them again! I sought out another transfer of the cycle on Immortal Performances. In this cycle, the works became iconic once more. It was all quite wonderful.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DJSUO74/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Finally the wave of enthusiasm comes to shore... but then I tried Pristine Classical's restorations of Mengelberg's live Amsterdam performances in 1940.... Beethoven lives once again, and with such vivid individuality...!

Interestingly, I always head for - 1 and 2, then 4, 6 and 8 each time, often repeatedly. I find I tend to ration out the experience of those other, more epic, odd-numbered symphonies... I play 3 most often, 9 least of all - it has to be a rare treat. I'm always all ears for -do they repeat the 5th Symphony Trio & finale exposition, and what about the tempo for the 7th Symphony's trio...?

Conversely, I'm always looking out for new recordings of the concertos and symphonies, especially HIPPs or scaled down, chamber-orchestral realisations. Like the marvellously creative, renewing, refreshing Sudbin/Vanska Concertos 1&2 on BIS, which came in for an extraordinarily stuffy, carping Gramophone review.
It made me quite cross, it really did...... so I played them once more, with feeling and intensified pleasure.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks for starting the Beethoven Thread, anton - the sheer scale of the project has always cowed me! He'll need a sub-Forum all to himself, I'm sure - to be continued ...

[greenilex]

As a former teacher of hearing impaired students, I am very interested in deafness and creativity.

LvB became more creative as his impairment progressed...or am I wrong?

Sand in the oyster?

[cloughie]

Every now and again a chance purchase brings a surprise. For next to nothing in a charity shop a while ago I bought the Pastoral Sym played by the Munich Sym Orch conducted by Hans Swarowsky on a budget label. Not a bad performance but the coupling was really lovely - and new to me - the Piano Quartet Op16, arranged from the Piano and Wind Quintet.

[BBMmk2]

I purposely do not play the symphonies too often, for fear of will I get fed up with them?

[Alison]

I purposely do not play the symphonies too often, for fear of will I get fed up with them?

It just needs a stirring performance such as Blomstedt's Philharmonia Seventh to set off fresh waves of enthusiasm.

[french frank]

Coincidentally: I see Rattle's BPO set just released on vinyl, 30 mins ago in my Inbox, €299.

[Richard Barrett]

So far almost only symphonies have been mentioned. Like many people, I guess, I overdosed on Beethoven's symphonies at an early stage of my music-appreciating life. I was very glad when HIPP recordings started turning up because I found (and still find) the "modern" orchestra sounds bombastic in Beethoven, as if the developments in instruments and playing between Beethoven's lifetime and a few decades ago, developments with of course his music as a central point of reference, were all about "let's keep playing Beethoven LOUDER!"

These days I'm much more likely to get obsessed over some jewel-like detail in his quartet or piano music, all those rhythmic subtleties that don't have so much of a place in his orchestral music, like the metrical ambiguity of the last movement of the "Tempest" sonata. That may seem like I'm concentrating on technical abstractions, but one of the things that makes Beethoven's music so compelling (and not only his of course) is that all those details and moments have a deep expressive poignancy which is inseparable from what might come across as their ingeniousness.

I was going to mention the "late" string quartets in particular, but let's remember that as far as Beethoven was concerned they were not "late". They were something more like the products of a creative imagination which had finally found total expressive and structural freedom, that is to say a beginning rather than an ending.

[Bryn]

By sheer chance, last nightI watched "The Secret of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" from just a year ago. Ian Hislop, JEG, at al did a good job, I thought. Shame it does not appear to be available on YouTube.

[pastoralguy]

I still have the 'Beethoven Experience', the BBC's first 'Total Immersion project when there was a week of Beethoven's music 24 hours a day. ALL of which I recorded on mini-disc. One day, I'm going to find the time to listen to it.

[Parry1912]

Following the Mozart 225 box can I say that I'm already looking forward to what Decca/DG are going to do for Beethoven's 250th in 3 years.

[pastoralguy]

Coincidentally: I see Rattle's BPO set just released on vinyl, 30 mins ago in my Inbox, €299.

A bargain at twice the price!

[Stanley Stewart]

I find it refreshing to revisit an original off-air 2003 video, later transferred to DVD,
Eroica, a re-enactment of the events surrounding the composition of Beethoven's
Symphony No 3. Set against the revolutionary climate of the 19th century, the 91mins documentary charts the composer's struggle to cope with the gradual loss of his hearing,
and explores his almost inexhaustible passion for music.

A first rate cast, Ian Hart as Beethoven, Jack Davenport, Prince Lobkowitz and a superb vignette from Frank Finlay, Joseph Haydn, earnestly listening to a complete performance before seizing his moment as he departs, "Everything is different from today". Orchestre Revolutionaire/
John Eliot Gardiner. Writer, Nick Dear, Director, Simon Cellan Jones.

[Petrushka]

Impossible to tire of the symphonies. I've got loads of recordings of them and every now and again have a concentrated enthusiasm to go through an entire cycle. JLW's singing the praises of the 1939 Toscanini and 1940 Mengelberg gives me a very strong urge to hear them, especially the latter. Birthday next week so I may well indulge.

Symphonies apart, it's the Missa Solemnis that reaches parts that no other music does and had Beethoven never written another note he would still be the greatest composer of them all.