2019-2020 Season Preview: Owed to Joy

Carnegie Hall announces a season-long celebration of all things Beethoven.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Came back haunted: the spirit of Ludwig van Beethoven visits Carnegie Hall in the 2019-2020 season.
Photo courtesy Carnegie Hall, alteration by the author. 

The music of Ludwig van Beethoven, particularly the symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets, forms the central thrust of the 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall schedule. The schedule was unveiled today at the traditional yearly press conference at the historic venue. The emphasis on Beethoven is for calendar reasons: next year marks his sestercentennial or 250th birthday. (A more cynical blog than this might also add that Beethoven's music remains an evergreen source of tickets and subscriptions, but that's not something we'd ever say in print.)

Film Review: Copying Beethoven

Ed Harris' 2006 biopic hits some of the right notes.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A bewigged Ed Harris scores in Copying Beethoven.
Photo © 2006 MGM/United Artists.

Copying Beethoven was barely noticed when it came out ten years ago. Released by MGM/UA, this 2006 film by Agnieszka Holland stars Ed Harris as the composer in his 54th year, battling deafness and inner demons as he struggles to finish the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor. The film is a fiction, pairing Beethoven with Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) a 23-year old coal miner's daughter (no I'm not making that up) copyist and aspiring composer. She meets Beethoven when she is employed to correct and edit the players' parts four days before the premiere of the Ninth. 

Concert Review: Taking the Beethoven Cure

Christoph von Dohnányi returns to the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Christoph von Dohnányi. Photo © Decca Classics/Universal Music Group.

When Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was first heard by a Vienna audience, it was on a freezing cold night in the Austrian capital and part of a four and a half hour concert that also featured the premiere of the Sixth. So perhaps it was fitting that temperatures outside Avery Fisher Hall were bitter cold on Friday night for an all-Beethoven concert at the New York Philharmonic.

The program started with Beethoven's Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus. The venerable Christoph von Dohnányi (he's 83 and vigorous) led this brief work with vigor, creating clean orchestral textures to support Beethoven's rhythms and melodic ideas. It was the epitome of this veteran conductor's style: every note of the work's architecture crisply played, clearly balanced and driven forward with firm purpose.

If Prometheus was the young Beethoven's first public success, then the Piano Concerto No. 1 cemented his reputation as a budding orchestral composer and piano soloist. Here, Mr. Dohnányi was joined by pianist Radu Lupu, the eminent Romanian virtuoso who applies his skills strictly to music of the Classical and early Romantic eras.

The Post-Modern Beethoven

Reflections on the death of John Belushi.

by Paul Pelkonen

Lewd wig: John Belushi as Beethoven.
Image from Saturday Night Live  © 1978 Broadway Video/National Broadcasting Company.

Comedian, singer, dancer and Blues Brother John Belushi died 30 years ago today. Here's some  classic footage of Mr. Belushi hamming it up as composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

Consider it a tip of the hat to the New York Philharmonic's on-going Modern Beethoven festival, which features conductor David Zinman leading concerts that combine the composer's symphonies with works from the 20th century. Check out a Superconductor review of last Friday's concert.

Mr. Zinman's program this week features Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto, paired with Beethoven's Eighth and Fourth Symphonies. I don't think they'll be playing any Ray Charles:

Footage from Saturday Night Live © 1978 Broadway Video/National Broadcasting Company.

In other Belushi-related news, a New York Times blog post reported today that a team of Broadway producers are planning to bring a musical version of National Lampoon's Animal House to the Great White Way. No word on whether any Delta House alums will be involved in the show. (Personally, I'd cast Tim "Otter") Matheson as Dean Wormer.)

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Building the Digital Beast

(Ed. Note: This is Part I of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part II is on how to build and manage playlists. Part III is about managing the iPod. iPod, iPod Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

How to manage classical music in your iTunes.

If Beethoven had read this article, he would have
filed his Karajan recordings correctly, too.
Photo from Teapot Shortage.

Superconductor could not function without a massive iTunes library, accessible anytime on my Mac with two finger movements. I also keep updating the "Classical iPod", 155.5 gigs of carefully organized works--and the newer iPhone, with less storage capacity but a greater chance that my listening experience will be interruptive.

The challenge of keeping any classical music library updated is compounded by two things: the generally poor quality of CDDB (CD Database) listings, which drive iTunes' ability to assign names to your music) and that there is no existing industry standard or naming conventions applied across the board to classical music. Even if there were, nobody wants to pay coders or web people to do it. So it never gets done.

I did it, and at present, have about 200 gigs of music, relatively well organized. Here's how I solved the problem. Maybe it will help you follow suit.

Step One: Balkanize the Genre tab.
iTunes' factory setting has just one assigned genre for "classical" music. Everything in one field. Useless.

I divide works as follows:

• 20th Century: any instrumental music written 1900-2000.
• Cantata: Sung works for small ensemble. Lots of Bach.
• Chamber Music: Everything for small ensemble except string quartets.
• Concerto: if it has a soloist vs. an orchestra, it's in here. Includes piano concertos and violin concertos.
• Harpsichord: Like piano, but plucked. Solo works in here.
• Lieder: all art songs, even if they're not in German.
• Opera: The queen of arts.
• Operetta: because I roll like that.
• Oratorio: Religious-themed stage works. Lots of Handel.
• Orchestral: Catch-all category: tone poems, overtures, waltzes, etc.
• Piano: A soloist battling 88 keys. Some duo works for four hands.
• Sacred Music: Masses, motets. You know, church music.
• Symphony: If it is designated "symphony" by its composer, it goes here. From C.P.E. Bach to P. Glass.
• Violin: Solo and duo works for that instrument.

Now here's the good part. You can do this quickly. Select your files. (albums). Hit Command-I. An info box pops up. iTunes will ask you if you "think it is a good idea to edit this many files at once." It is.
Go to the Genre field at the bottom. Type in your new Genre. Wait for it to compile and presto-change-o, you've started to Balkanize your massive "classical" collection.

Step Two: Standardize your Fields: 
Once you decide what genre your files are, it's easy to start changing the fields to suit your music needs. You can change many of these fields at once for multiple files, and ITunes will reorganize your folders in your Library, putting the "books" on the right shelves. This is just the method that works for me, and I thought I'd share it.


Pick a disc of Beethoven symphonies. Let's say Herbert von Karajan, conducting the Beethoven Fifth. The 1981 cycle he did in Berlin. Here's how it looks, freshly downloaded from Amazon.com:

The Song Title field is all right, but the rest is a mess. The album is called "Beethoven?" Really useful. The composer's name is spelled wrong and there are no dates on him (I use the dates for search functions in playlists. May explain that later.) And worst of all, the artist is "Herbert von Karajan" with "Berliner Philharmoniker" broken out into a seperate field.

• Artist, Album Artist: for an orchestra, put the name of the orchestra (in English) with the name of the conductor. Like so: Berlin Philharmonic cond. Herbert von Karajan. You can do these for all works with the same orchestra and conductor and when they load into an iPod or iPhone they'll all wind up in the same folder.
• Album: should reflect a clear, unique folder for these recordings, One of the problems with iTunes is that two albums with the same title will wind up in the same folder in your iTunes. That can make "Beethoven Fifth Symphony" a very large file if you own more than one recording. Adding the conductor's name can clarify matters. If a conductor (like von Karajan) made multiple recordings of a work, add the date as a marker. So: Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981.
• Composer: Services like CDDB and Amazon have strange ideas about spelling the names of composers, or only using their last names. So you might have files tagged with "Beethoven", "Ludwig Vanbeethoven" or even "LvB." Choose a STANDARD style that works for you. I like this format: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

Here is the same file after a quick cleanup:

The Song Title is unaltered. Album is now called "Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981." This gives you the pieces, the conductor's name, and (important for Karajan) which cycle it is of the four he recorded in his lifetime. Composer's name is now spelt right, with those useful dates. And the Artist and Genre fields have been corrected.

That's pretty much it. Hope this helps you get started uploading (or downloading) your music and getting your portable classical collection to a place where everything is as it should be.

Bloomberg vs. Beethoven

An Open Letter to the Mayor of New York City.

New York's third-term mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

"He, too, then, is nothing better than an ordinary man! Now he will trample on all human rights only to humor his ambition; he will place himself above all others,--become a tyrant!"
--Ludwig van Beethoven.

The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor of the City Of New York
City Hall (260 Broadway)
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mr. Mayor:
Today, you declared Nov. 20, 2011 to be "Beethoven Day" in the City of New York. But by your recent actions, Mayor Bloomberg, you have shown yourself to be totally ignorant of the composer in question.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a fiercely independent artist who fought against tyranny. He broke the European system of patronage and "court" composers, eking out a difficult life as a freelance musician. A fierce republican, he famously reacted to Napoleon assuming the title of Emperor by striking the name "Bonaparte" from his symphony No. 3. The work is now known as the Eroica.

Under normal circumstances, "Beethoven Day" would be a great idea. WQXR's clever "Obey Beethoven" campaign has the composer's scowling mug all over the city. Recent performances by the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique have brought the composer's genius to the city's concert halls. And today WQXR has achieved something historic, an all-day marathon of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, played live.

But right now, things in our city are a long way from normal.

Less than one week ago, Mr. Mayor, you ordered a small army of riot police to "clean out" Zuccotti Park, the two-month home base of Occupy Wall Street. Protestors in the park were warned that they had less than one hour to remove all of their property from the Park before the police went in. And we know you ordered it. You went on the air and claimed responsibility for the actions of the police.

The poster for WQXR's "Obey Beethoven" campaign.
© 2011 WQXR/National Public Radio.

When the NYPD went in, they swung nightsticks, slashed nylon tents with razor blades, and attacked protestors. The media was walled out, with fire trucks blocking cameras and reporters from all three papers either arrested, attacked, or kept from covering the actions of the police. City councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was injured and arrested, and incarcerated for almost 24 hours. He identified himself as a city official, and was not allowed to talk to a lawyer.

The worst crime perpetrated against the protest was the partial destruction of the People's Library, a 5000+ volume collection of novels, philosophy, textbooks and even a bound copy of the Torah. The cops dumped these neatly stored books into Department of Sanitation garbage trucks. The trash compactors were activated. Over 2000 volumes were crushed into garbage, destroyed beyond repair. Some have been recovered, but many are badly damaged.

Beethoven's lone opera, Fidelio is another triumph over tyranny. Written in 1804 and revised in 1815, Fidelio is a "rescue" opera: the story of a wrongfully imprisoned nobleman, locked in a deep dungeon by a corrupt prison governor. The prisoner's wife, Leonore, cross-dresses and goes undercover as "Fidelio", an assistant turnkey at the prison. Eventually, her husband is freed and evil is defeated.

Mayor Bloomberg, you have arrested and charged over 1,000 people in your city in connection to the Occupy movement. You have allowed police to use "kettling", pepper spray, night-sticks and L-Rad sound cannons on your citizens. You ordered the large-scale destruction of books and personal property. Despite owning a media company, your police have prohibited journalists from doing their jobs and exercising their Constitutional right to free speech. And you have even had your own politicians, like Mr. Rodriguez, injured and imprisoned, denying them their right to speak to an attorney as guaranteed by Miranda v. Arizona.

Beethoven once said: "What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven." As one of those princes, you are not worthy of him.

Sincerely,

Paul J. Pelkonen
Editor, Superconductor.
Brooklyn, NY

Concert Review: The Struggle Within

The LSO conquers Beethoven's toughest work.

Sir Colin Davis leading the LSO.
Photo © 2010 London Symphony Orchestra.

When Ludwig van Beethoven wrote the Missa Solemnis, the idea of playing a Roman Catholic Mass as concert music was a completely new one. On Friday night, Sir Colin Davis led the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a powerful, sometimes wrenching performance that shed light on the titanic forces at play in the pages of challenging choral work.

This was the second of three appearances by the LSO, at Lincoln Center this week, and the last under the baton of this brilliant 84-year-old maestro. It also marked the first major event of the three week White Light Festival. Now in its second year, White Light is a Lincoln Center event that seeks to bring listeners to contemplate their own lives through the experience of music, art, theater and dance.

At first approach, the Missa Solemnis seems to sprawl, shifting wildly in instrumentation and style over the course of five movements. The choral singing is central here, with the great shout of "Kyrie!" that opens the work. Two long movements: the Gloria and Credo are fervent expressions of rock-solid faith. These featured impressive solo singing from the four soloists: soprano Helena Juntunen, mezzo Sarah Connolly, tenor Paul Groves and bass Matthew Rose. Beethoven would use the same vocal arrangement in his Ninth Symphony.

Mentioning the Ninth at this point is relevant, as the complex choral structures found in the Missa Solemnis act like sketches for the much more famous final movement, the Ode to Joy. In both works, Beethoven calls for massive tuttis, a military march, and even a mighty double fugue (on the words "In vitam venturi") at the end of the Credo. Also, both works are taxing to the performers, the product of a composer who had lost his hearing completely and was now writing music that ordinary mortals would have to struggle to perform.

Those mortals were up to the task, particularly the LSO chorus under Sir Colin's sure baton. They created real religious mystery in the slow, wondering phrases that open the Sanctus. This led to the Benedictus, with an eloquent solo violin part played by LSO concertmaster Gordan Nikolitch. The Agnus Dei whipsawed between peace and a belligerent, martial stance with its drum-rolls and trumpet fanfares. Beethoven clearly favored a God willing to kick some ass in this mortal coil.

Sir Colin Davis has always had a reputation as a singer's conductor, and he assembled a good team of soloists for this performance. Tenor Paul Groves and mezzo Sarah Connolly are familiar to New York audiences from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Soprano Helena Juntunen is a talented singer whose clear sweet tone sometimes struggled to be heard over orchestra, chorus, and her fellow singers. Matthew Rose was an impressive bass.

In the final movement, the chorus were the real stars. Even as the orchestra thundered and brandished its brassy weapons upon Beethoven's apocalyptic landscape. the massed singers turned Dona nobis pacem into a cry for peace and a mighty shout of humanity. The brew of strong choral singing with the powerful, flexible orchestra made this finale a heady experience. This is music from a troubled time in history. It speaks volumes to today's war and terror-torn world.

Melto Allegro: The Electric Beethoven

Beethoven goes metal. Image © TeeFury.com

Or: Another Article About Metal Meeting Classical Music.
Since the early days of heavy metal, the genre has always been strongly influenced by classical music. Deep Purple recorded Concerto for Group and Orchestra. Iron Maiden appropriated the galloping rhythm of the William Tell Overture for half the songs in their early catalogue.

Guitar playing took influence from classical music as well. Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) led the charge, incorporating classical-type scales and modes over blues stylings. In Germany, Uli Jon Roth's playing on the first five Scorpions albums influenced a generation of metal guitarists, including Metallica's Kirk Hammett.

In the 1980s, the influence of guitarists Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) and Uli Jon Roth (the Scorpions) led to an explosion of neo-classical technique among heavy metal guitar players. Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" showed would-be guitarists how to make their fretboards sound like a Bach fugue--in less than two minutes.


Guitarists like Yngwie J. Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert and Steve Vai incorporated sweep picking, arpeggios, and Bach-like tapping figures into their styles, often with dazzling results. Below, two versions of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth, illustrating two different approaches to re-imagining this seminal movement.



Mr. Malmsteen is better known for his high-speed arpeggiated chops than his ability to write good songs or keep a working band together. Note the upper "scalloped" fretboard, with grooves cut between the frets to allow for faster playing. And then there's the bling--which doesn't appear to slow the Swedish speedster down.


Steve Vai's career started when he was just 19, as a transcriber, and then a second lead guitarist for Frank Zappa's working band. Vai then went on to stardom with ex-Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth, introducing listeners to his trademark "laughing guitar" and expanding the instrument's range and depth. He has a different, less reverent approach to the music. I don't know the source of this performance.

Concert Review: Before the Tour, an Eroica

Lisa Batiashvili.
Photo by Mark Harrison © BBC Music Magazine.

Beethoven and Bartók at the Philharmonic
In two years as music director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert has established himself as a force for modernism, expanding the appeal of the venerated orchestra through experimental programming and bold initiatives. This week's one-two punch of Bartók's Second Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Eroica Symphony may not be among his most innovative, but it made for one of the strongest concerts of the season.

The Bartók concerto led off the evening, featuring skilled Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili in the complex solo part. Bartók conceived an extended monologue for the instrument, interspersed with occasional dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra. He incorporated microtonalities, Hungarian folk-songs and unearthly orchestrations to make an original statement for the violim and orchestra.

Ms. Batiashvili displayed formidable technique, bowing the long legato lines with a smooth action and then leading the listener up dizzying spiral staircases of scales. She doublestopped with speed and authority. As she raced along, the notes on paper sounded like a stream of consciousness, bubbling forth over the orchestra.

Sometimes, the violin would waltz like a frantic Gypsy. At others, it droned like a hurdy-gurdy at a street fair. The slow movement, with the atmospheric, almost impressionist use of low strings and triangle, contained some of the finest music-making of the evening. Throughout, the soloist maintained a complex interaction with Mr. Gilbert and his orchestra, and their rapport was exciting to watch and listen to.

Beethoven's Third Symphony represented a vast expansion of the form. Nearly twice as long as any symphony before it, the Eroica travels a wide range of emotions in its journey. Beethoven wasn't writing program music here, but the opening one-two combination of the questing first movement and the somber funeral march remains a potent experience.

The Philharmonic played this landmark symphony with robust energy, led by a dancing, exhorting Mr. Gilbert. He conducted from memory. Tempos were a little static in the first movement, and the funeral march positively crawled under its own weight. In the final pages before the coda, Mr. Gilbert let his orchestra loose in a paroxysm of minor-key grief that rent the heart.

Beethoven lightened up in the last two movements, although the manic energy of the dance movement seemed almost forced after the funeral march. Although the whirling scherzo was marred by some dodgy tones from the Philharmonic horns, the movement was played with sunny energy and determination to move on from the funeral procession.

The finale, with its pizzicato theme and variations remains one of the most exciting experiences one can have in a concert hall. As the final brass chords of Beethoven's grand second theme rang out, Mr. Gilbert brought this performance to an heroic end.

Dudley Moore Plays the Colonel Bogey March

Footage from the 1964 BBC2 Beyond The Fringe special, with the late, great Dudley Moore playing a Diabelli Variations-style take on the Colonel Bogey March by F.J. Ricketts. (That's the theme that was used in The Bridge on the River Kwai.)

This is essential viewing if you're a fan of stellar pianism--or P.D.Q. Bach-type humor.



Enjoy.

Bargain Basement Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven in 1805. Painting by Joseph Willibrord Mähler.
Collection of the Historisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

In the mid-1990s, at the close of the CD boom, a flurry of complete cycles of Beethoven recordings were released, featuring smaller orchestras and so-called "original" instruments mimicking the technology of the 18th century.

Two of those are considered here.

The contenders:
Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies
Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique cond. John Eliot Gardiner (DG Archiv 1994, 5 CDs)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe cond. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Teldec/Warner Brothers, Download)

These recordings feature John Eliot Gardiner's 60-piece Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique, a group assembled specifically to perform 18th and 19th century music with instruments that were contemperaneous to when these compositions were written.

The booklet cover for John Eliot Gardiner's Beethoven cycle.
© 1994 Universal Classics/DG Archiv 

Gardiner's players use authentic strings, which have a slightly rougher tone than modern instruments. The wind section features wooden transverse flutes, and finger-hole bassoons. Oboes and clarinets are shaped a little differently, and lack the complex key systems of modern instruments. Finally, a period orchestra uses copper kettledrums with goatskin heads, played with hard wooden drumsticks. The brass players use "natural" horns, where pitch is changed by removing a section of pipe (called a "crook") and replacing it with another.

The other difference between these recordings and "modern" sets by Herbert von Karajan or Claudio Abbado is the use of "metronome markings", the original tempo numbers specified by Beethoven on the scores of his later symphonies. Using these marks sometimes means that the works (particularly the Seventh and Eighth) hurtle along at a merry pace. The last movement of the Ninth is so fast that it's almost as long as the entire First Symphony.

The Teldec cycle was conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Austrian period performance specialist and cellist who was a pioneer of the period instrument movement of the '70s and '80s. The set is different. Harnoncourt chose to blend instrumental styles, placing modern strings and winds next to 18th century brass and percussion. This is a contrivance, but it makes for a blend of sounds that makes this cycle unique.

The reissue cover for Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Beethoven cycle.

Harnoncourt's choice of tempo is sometimes idiosyncratic, and generally slower than Gardiner, by an average of about three minutes. (The "Eroica" is three minutes slower. In the Fifth, there is almost five minutes difference. Harnoncourt's opening movement of the Sixth Symphony (the Pastorale) clocks in at 13'22" with all of the repeats intact.

Gardiner's performance takes 11'13", and his whole performance is three and a half minutes faster than Harnoncourt's. The Ninth is even more radical in Gardiner's hands. But again, the difference totals three minutes, with the English conductor finishing first.

The Gardiner set is currently available as a 5-disc box, with the discs in envelopes for about $20. That's a hell of a discount, considering that the set retailed for about $60 when it was first released. The Harnoncourt is available on Amazon as a digital download: with the whole set for just $15.

Concert Review: Kurt Masur and the Philharmonic Look Back

Kurt Masur

Kurt Masur returned to the New York Philharmonic this week. His return was marked with a boisterous performance of Beethoven's First Symphony, paired with an expansive reading of the mighty Seventh by Anton Bruckner, the symphony which began his 11-year tenure as Music Director in 1989. Despite a visible tremor in his hands, the maestro (who turns 83 this July) showed that his rapport with the orchestra is still strong and his touch on the podium as skilful as ever.

The concert opened with Beethoven's First Symphony. Mr. Masur's performance disputes the notion that this is a "light" Beethoven work. Yes, it's shorter than the Eroica or the heaven-storming Ninth, but the First shows the light of what is to come from Beethoven's pen. The slow movement demonstrates Beethoven's mastery of the fugue, with the theme tossed back and forth between the four string sections to thrilling effect. Under Mr. Masur's baton, the Mozartean finale resonated with warmth and good humor.



Mr. Masur led a tour of the magnificent architecture of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, guided by the heroic playing of the Philharmonic's brass section. He made sense of the structure of these mammoth movements, building huge arches out of the blocks of sound, taking the first movement all the way to its thrilling coda, a cascading chorale of brass and strings. Given the acoustic limitations of Avery Fisher Hall, and the difficulties of balancing a gigantic brass section (including four Wagner tubas) with the strings and winds, Mr. Masur's achievement is all the more remarkable.

The highlight of this hour-long symphony was the second movement. Written as a eulogy for Bruckner's friend and inspiration Richard Wagner, this is an Adagio that soars even as it mourns. The final passages, where the Wagner tubas come to the fore, was played with stirring force. Conducting without a score, Mr. Masur made the dance movement stomp and roar like a chained giant. The finale, with its noble theme and a return of the "cascading" brass from the first movement, brought the work to a thunderous, harmonious close.

Mengelberg's Old-school Beethoven

Wilhelm Mengelberg

As we continue to suffer through the heat I've been keeping cool with the help of my freshly loaded all-classical IPod. Recent listening has included Willem Mengelberg's superb recordings of the Beethoven symphonies and orchestral works.


This is a five-CD set of performances recorded live in in monaural sound, recorded live. Although this set is not currently in the Philips catalogue, it was released as an historic recording on the Philips "Original Masters" series which highlights famous performances from the Netherlands.

The conductor's brisk tempi and swooping lyric passages offer a glimpse back into an earlier tyle of conducting, Mengelberg's conducting is of another age, with a steady beat and a freewheeling style that recals Wihem Furtwängler. The Seventh and the "Eroica" are sublime, the Fifth is a worthy textbook for any young conductor.




Unfortunately for his conducting career, Mengelberg made these recordings during the Nazi occupation of Holland. After the war, the conductor was accused of collaborating with the Germans, and left Holland for Swiss exile where he died in 1951. He made no more recordings after 1945, but the ones he left behind, particularly the Beethoven cycle, are most illuminating to listen to.

Other current favorites include Maria Joao Pires' Mozart cycle on DGG, some nice Montreal Debussy under CHarles Dutoit, the famous La Scala Simon Boccanegra woith Claudio Abbado on the m podium, and the mono Beethoven cycle with Wilhelm Kempff at the piano. Like the aforementioned Mengelberg set, these Kempff CDs are out of print, but worth owning if you can find or download a copy.

In other news, the Mackerras Danae is now loaded, even though I had to type in all the trck titles myself. Seems CDDB doesn't know everthing...