Sunday Classics: Beethoven's "slender Grecian maiden between two Norse gods" -- the Fourth Symphony

Carlos Kleiber conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the first movement of the Beethoven Fourth Symphony, here "analyzed with the assistance of Robert Greenberg's Wordscore Guides."

"The Fourth Symphony, to me, expresses a divine lightness of spirit. . . . Coming between the drama of the Third and the 
Fifth Symphonies, the Fourth is a study in serenity. What emerges in this sunlit work
is a marvelous affirmation; I regard the Fourth as Beethoven's way of saying 'Yes' to 
life."

— conductor Josef Krips

"The Fourth is in some ways the most enigmatic of the Beethoven symphonies; it defies all our efforts to categorize it in a single epithet or two. . . . The symphony, in fact, abounds in unexpected strokes, not only swift alternations of mood but, within each mood, unpredictable happenings of all kinds . . . . "

— critic Ernest Newman

by Ken



I mentioned in last night's preview that it was listening to a 1959 Pablo Casals-conducted performance that got me to thinking once again about the four Beethoven symphonies that have spell-casting slow introductions, which prompted me to do something I'd wanted to do for ages: hack out those four introductions to listen to them all together. I don't know about you, but I had all kinds of fun with the result.



The symphony Casals was performing was the Beethoven Fourth (from the second of Music & Arts's two giant Casals: Festivals at Prades boxes), and it's the Fourth Symphony I wanted to talk about this week. The description of it as a "slender Grecian maiden between two Norse gods" is, famously, Robert Schumann's. How well it actually describes the piece is subject to discussion, but it unquestionably reflects the special feeling that a whole lot of music-lovers, including many musicians, have felt for this extraordinary piece, which was created between the momuments of Beethoven's Eroica and Fifth Symphonies.



I seem to recall that Josef Krips (1902-1974) was one of the conductors who expressed a special fondness for this symphony, and we're not only going to hear him conduct the opening movement, we're going to scatter through our hearing of the symphony some brief words he wrote aboout it (including the quote above) for the booklet of his Everest Beethoven symphony cycle.



To counterbalance the idea that the Fourth Symphony is all simplicity, sweetness, and light, we're also going to hear from the great English critic Ernest Newman (1868-1959), from the booklet for the original issue of Otto Klemperer's EMI Beethoven symphony cycle.





FOR OUR JOURNEY THROUGH THE BEETHOVEN

FOURTH SYMPHONY, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Beethoven the spell-casting introducer

In the piano reduction we can see just how short the magical introduction to Beethoven's First Symphony really is. The performance is by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by its then-music director, our old friend Christoph von Dohnányi.* (Our immediate interest is just the introduction, but feel free to listen to the whole first movement. It's a neat performance.)

*We've heard Dohnányi conducting, as I recall, Brahms's Double Concerto, Richard Strauss's Salome, Berg's Wozzeck, and his grandfather Ernst von Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Song.

by Ken



I'll explain tomorrow how I came to be thinking once again about the slow introductions Beethoven wrote for four of his nine symphonies. But they're some of his most treasurable music. As we've had frequent occasion to note, the great composers of the classical era loved every now and then to seize the opportunity to preface a typical symphonic allegro with a slow introduction.



It's an adorable bit of misdirection, for one thing, playing with the listener's expectations -- even outright teasing, as Beethoven did when he finally ventured a symphony, having already produced a substantial body of music in a wide range of forms. But it's also an opportunity to create an episode of special lyrical beauty in its own right.



I thought it would be fun to listen just to those four amazing introductions, so that's what we're going to do in the click-through.





TO HEAR BEETHOVEN CAST HIS INTRODUCTORY

SPELLS, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics recordings note: The Budapest's stereo Beethoven and James Levine's RCA Mahler highlight a massive Sony BMG reissue series

The great Budapest stereo Beethoven cycle --
for $21.14 (including shipping)?

by Ken

Sony BMG Classics, the heir to the whole of the RCA and Columbia-CBS-Sony classical catalogs, recently dumped onto the market a bunch of big CD boxes containing lots of exceedingly interesting recordings. Of course the packaging is no-frills, and more seriously I never know what to expect in the way of technical quality with these megadumps. But for the two sets I've already ordered -- the Budapest Quartet's Columbia stereo complete Beethoven cycle on eight CDs and the eight Mahler symphonies James Levine for RCA on ten CDs I've paid $21.14 and $22.40, respectively -- including shipping.

This is, in other words, about the same price that's being asked for many brand-new single CDs, which are apt to be, if they're lucky, maybe a tenth as good. If there were such a thing as a "record industry" today, you could ask, "Can you sustain a record industry with economics like this?" But there is no record industry, just a bunch of companies continuing for some arcane reason to put out records.

If I didn't already have nearly all of the contents of the nine-CD Arthur Rubinstein Brahms set on CD, I would have jumped at that; ditto for the four CDs' worth of Haydn symphonies conducted by George Szell, the nine CDs' worth of Isaac Stern playing Beethoven, and the eight CDs of Charles Munch conducting "Romantic Masterworks." Meanwhile
I'm still ogling the five CDs' worth of Mozart piano concertos played by Robert Casadesus with various conductors, and the six-CD set of most but frustratingly not quite all of the Prokofiev that Erich Leinsdorf recorded for RCA in his time with the Boston Symphony. And I haven't really checked carefully to see what I may have missed. (Oops, I just noticed that there's a six-CD set of some of Glenn Gould's Bach (presumably only an installment, since neither the Well-Tempered Clavier nor the French nor English Suites are here), and a six-CD set of Gould Beethoven (some sonatas plus the five concertos), and Günter Wand's first Bruckner symphony cycle, with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra.

And that's not even dealing with a bunch of Sony BMG and EMI operatic reissues. I'm trying to be good, really I am. But I'm weak.

FOR MORE ON THE TWO SETS I HAVE ON ORDER,
WITH SOME MUSICAL SAMPLES, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Bruno Walter comes to America

A 1958 interview with conductor Bruno Walter (1876-1962)

by Ken

Although the sound suggests that this interview was recorded on an Edison cylinder (it actually improves suddenly in the last minute or two), we know from internal evidence that it took place in 1958. The maestro explains in his charming accent that he "started conducting in eighteen hundred and ninety-four -- so, sixty-four years ago." In September 1958 Walter turned 82.

It's an interview where fairly pedestrian questions turn out to have fairly interesting answers. I actually transcribed some of it, for the benefit of non-audio-clickers, only I don't know what I did with the transcription, and I'm just not up to doing more transcribing just now. So let me commend to you Walter's description of the nature of a conducting career, especially the peculiar conditions under which a would-be conductor learns his craft -- without benefit of his actual "instrument" until he actually gets a job! Beyond that I hope you'll be charmed (I was, and I'm not easily charmed) by his description of the personal and imaginative qualities required of a conductor.

The interview is included as a bonus with the Guild International issue of Walter's 1941 Met broadcast performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, and our musical offerings tonight come from that performance.


TO HEAR SOME MUSIC, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: More of the Beethoven Septet and the Schubert Octet -- two Andantes

The start of the fourth-movement theme and variations of the Schubert Octet played by Chen Halevi, clarinet; Radovan Vlatkovic, horn; Sergio Azzolini, bassoon; Janine Jansen and Julia-Maria Kretz, violins; Maxim Rysanov, viola; Jens Peter Maintz, cello; and Stacey Watton, double bass -- from an undated AVRO (Dutch) telecast; we're going to hear more of this performance tomorrow.

by Ken

Last night we heard the minuets and scherzos that (in flip-flopped order) bracket the theme-and-variations fourth movements of the Beethoven Septet and the Schubert Octet. As promised, tonight we hear those theme-and-variations movements.

I suggested that the two works, for virtually identical ensembles. (Schubert simply added a second violin to Beethoven's lineup of clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass) are connected. This isn't hypothetical.) The composition of Schubert's Octet was in fact prompted by a suggestion from clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer, hoping to have another work to play which might tap into the popularity of Beethoven's Septet.


FOR TONIGHT'S INSTALLMENT OF THE BEETHOVEN
SEPTET AND THE SCHUBERT OCTET, CLICK HERE


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST: The complete Schubert Octet

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Sunday Classics preview: Beethoven and Schubert try to play it simple(r)

The rollicking Tempo di menuetto (third movement) of the Beethoven Septet is played by Jacques Meertens, clarinet; Jacob Slagter, horn; Gustavo Nunez, bassoon; Liviu Prunaru, violin; Michael Gieler, viola; Gregor Horsch, cello; and Thomas Braendstrup, double bass -- in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, November 2007.

by Ken

This week we ponder the musical questions:

(1) What happens when you have a clarinetist, a horn player, a bassoonist, a violinist, a violist, a cellist, and a double-bass player in the same place?

(2) And if there's another violinist as well?

The answer to (1) is: They play the Beethoven Septet. And the answer to (2) is: They play the Schubert Octet, which was written in 1824, some 24 years later, and consciously echoed the Beethoven, which was one of the composer's most attention-getting works in the early part of his career. Tonight and tomorrow night we're going to hear snatches of these two pieces -- and then Sunday the complete Schubert Octet.


FOR UPBEAT EXCERPTS FROM THE BEETHOVEN
SEPTET AND THE SCHUBERT OCTET, CLICK HERE

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