Beethoven

[Robert Jones]

Robert - interesting comment about contemporary conductors and the "flow of Beethoven"....

My introductory conductors in Beethoven were Ormandy (Emperor Concerto with Rudolf Serkin) and Bruno Walter (5th Sym). Given you always have an affection for those particular "guides", I admit to having few recorded marvels since in terms of interpretation (and we're going back nearly 50 years). I liked Solti's set but there were no real highlights. I loved Perlman's Violin Concerto (Philharmonia/Giulini version) and the Eroica by which I measure all others is Karajan's 1963 recording. A review I read underlined the '63 Karajans as being "before the fetish of smooth perfection" which underlined the Berlin Phil's later reputation under Karajan.

In terms of malevolence, I once attended a live concert which started with Coriolan Overture. ........Sonically and emotionally it was stunning and I was pinned to the back of the seat! That such an old warhorse could come thundering off the stage.....I was totally underprepared!

Peter: I agree about Karajan. My first introduction to him was a CD he recorded of Sibelius in the early 1980s, slow, flaccid, boring. But a friend got me to listen to his earlier stuff, and he has that fire in the belly going on, I admit.

Walter was sublime with Beethoven. Are you speaking of his earlier, mono, recording of the Fifth? That's the one I have, and it's as perfect as Toscanini's Seventh, also with the NYPO.

Did Perlman and Giulini record Beethoven's concerto as well? I have them performing the Brahms.

BTW, I've hear a recent performance by the German conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra on NPR of the Beethoven Fifth, and man does he ever blow the dust off that score! He doesn't sound like a German at all, but a hot blooded Italian; it was like hearing Toscanini all over again, or Riccardo Muti.

[Wrighty]

Peter: I agree about Karajan. My first introduction to him was a CD he recorded of Sibelius in the early 1980s, slow, flaccid, boring. But a friend got me to listen to his earlier stuff, and he has that fire in the belly going on, I admit.

Walter was sublime with Beethoven. Are you speaking of his earlier, mono, recording of the Fifth? That's the one I have, and it's as perfect as Toscanini's Seventh, also with the NYPO.

Did Perlman and Giulini record Beethoven's concerto as well? I have them performing the Brahms.

BTW, I've hear a recent performance by the German conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra on NPR of the Beethoven Fifth, and man does he ever blow the dust off that score! He doesn't sound like a German at all, but a hot blooded Italian; it was like hearing Toscanini all over again, or Riccardo Muti.

The Walter 5th was with the NY Phil, circa 1955 and mono - coupled with Symphony 1.

The Perlman/Giulini Violin concerto was with the Philharmonia (early 80's I think) and is now EMI classics (Angel) on a series called Great Recordings of the Century.

I've not heard Eschenbach conduct - but there's an interesting note at the start of his Wikipedia entry....

Christoph Eschenbach learnt the art of conducting from George Szell...... plus he was mentored by Karajan for many years.

I see Szell's Brahms symphonies are being remastered - I had 2 and 4 and have yet to hear either of them surpassed. I guess his Beethoven approach was something similar.

If you trace back Walter and Szell to their early years as conductors, their work with 2 musical giants of the time underpins their subsequent artistic status - none other than Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.

I remember that Sibelius Karajan in the early 80's - second symphony I believe. Curious performance and especially with the main theme tempo in the finale.

With the mention of Sibelius my thoughts drift towards Tapiola.....rarely performed and not often recorded. If we are quoting works of perceived menace, awesome power, call it what you will.....Tapiola would be in the forefront for me. From the composer who holds an almost unique position in the panoply of creative artists comes a truly unique work. Is it's time yet to come??

[Judith]

Ah, yes, Charon, the rower! The middle section is indeed piu dolce, very heartrending, bittersweet. Glad to know someone else knows this piece. It's Rachmaninoff's most succinct yet thorough musical statement, a world-within-a-world, like Sibelius's "Tapiola."

The world-within-a-world reminds me very much of Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini". That's another one of my favorites. I suppose many people would see it as tragic, but I see it as heroic -- Francesca looking defiantly at her lover across the winds of hell, thinking, "We had that, and it's written permanently in time, and no one can ever take it away from us...."

Judith

[Alfonso Jones]

Not long after I met Rand, we began discussing some of the issues I was struggling with in my philosophy classes at UCLA. It became my custom to wrestle as hard as I could with positions held by thinkers such as Hume, or Decartes, or Plato, and by more obscure thinkers whom I was studying. If I thought a certain position was correct, I'd try to justify it; if I thought it was mistaken, I'd try to discover and name precisely why. If I was completely stuck, then I would take the problem to Rand. Often, I would bring my textbook with me, and show her the passage or passages that were creating problems for me, where, perhaps, I thought there was an error but could not identify it.

What usually happened was remarkable. Rand would read the relevant material, then give a non-stop presentatkon of how and where and why the philosopher had made mistakes, and what the correct answer should have been. And then -- and it was this that was more than remarkable, it was astonishing -- she would tell me what that thinker, because of what he had concluded on the subject, say, of metaphysics, would necessarily have concluded about epistemology, morality, politics, etc. And I never found her to be mistaken. Her power to see the world in a grain of sand was prodigious.

Rand understood this about herself; she knew that she could see vast implications in the smallest of signs.

Barbara

(I excerpted the quotes above from a longer post, found above...)

This is what I love about the writing of Ayn Rand - her ability to cut to the core, fundamental issue quickly.

Alfonso