Favorite set of Beethoven Symphonies

I've just received box of Giulini in America he has numerous B symphonies, they're very fluid and romantic but hit hard when called for. Giulini felt the line and support was everything and that tempo marking were to be played with if it all served the piece.

Sibelius made the most wonderful remark about tempi,

"The conductor must adopt the tempo that is natural under the [performing] circumstances."

I am sure that Beethoven would have been grateful for the performances of Giulini, Klemperer, and Kleiber [son et fills], and many others, for their natural tempi as much as for their sagacious observations on phrasing and architectectural considerations! It is even possible that a composer may be informed about the musical potential of his [her or their] work in he hands of a re-creative artist - the easy example being that of Adrian Boult working on Vaughan Williams' symphonies where the compressor dryly commented that Boult made the music have a real message.

ATB from George

This is an odd one. I only own one box of Beethoven symphonies, and it's the Gardiner set you praise so highly, Mike. The thing is, I'm not sure I like it that much. When I read your post I decided I'd give it a go with the CD of symphonies 3 and 4, but I found it left me cold. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for Beethoven, or maybe (horror of horrors!) his symphonies don't do it for me (though I love his piano sonatas and string quartets). Or maybe there's something about the Gardiner that turns me off. I know it's brisk and lively, with ferocious attack where it's needed, but it also comes across as almpst too technically perfect at the expense of something more elusive, which today I will call "soul".

All highly subjective, of course, but on the assumption that these are indeed great works, I'm beginning to think my enjoyment of them has been derailed by first encountering them in performances that just don't work for me. Maybe it's time I invested in another set!

Regards
Nigel

Droodzilla, you are not the only one who is left cold by the Gardiner Beethoven. For myself, they are completely satisfying, and especially the Eroica.

Thankfully, there are many other fine sets to try. But it may be that this music is not for you. I have to work hard to listen to the quartets - I feel no natural affinity.

I put this down to a flaw in character :-) But seriously, I hate it when I just don't get some music. In the end, it means you get to enjoy less music. That is always a punishment.

I've got 2 complete sets of Beethoven Symphonies :

Karajan 1970s - LP and CD. I bought the CDs as part of my CD versus LP comparison when deciding whether to buy a CD player. I also used to own some of this set on cassette. As it happens, I bought a Nakamichi CR7 instead of a CD player - that had to wait until the CDS appeared.

Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music (LPs)

Both have their merits, but overall I have always found the Karajan set "nicer" to listen to, and in many ways more satisfying. Perhaps I just prefer the traditional approach?

I also have various odd symphonies by other conductors, and will admit that my favourite 9th Symphony is the Bohm/VSO one from the early 1970s.

Sets are all very well and good, but all tend, IMO, to be a bit of a "curate's egg".

I would suggest a subscription to your local Lending Library (yes - they do other things besides books) and borrowing various symphonies by different conductors, although you may have to request specific ones. It's what I've done in the past when trying to find "the best" recording of a particular piece.

The recent Abbado Berlin Philharmonic set, with the first to eighth symphonies recorded live in Italy, are easily the best that I've heard, with the eminent Berliners playing like a vast chamber orchestra. Stunningly light and fleet, but packing enormous power, they make Gardiner, Hogwood and other 'HIP' performances sound puny.

Other complete sets that I have and like are Bernstein's Vienna Philharmonic accounts and Karajan's first (mono) cycle from the 1950s with the Philharmonia.

As George says above, any complete sets need to be supplemented with accounts of individual symphonies from both Kleibers, Klemperer, Boehm, and many others.

I have Abbado/Berlin on DVD, and they are quite fine.

Concerning the utility of sets, I find it valuable to see the Beethoven Symphonies as a body of work, from a single perspective, and find it worthwhile to do this for many conductors. Listening to them as a single body of work is a different sort of experience than regarding each symphony on its own merits. It seems enjoyable to do both. In general, it seems enjoyable to indulge as many perspectives as curiosity compels you to.

Dear Mike,

You know that I will advocate Klemperer above all!

So off the top of my head let us see:

1: BBC live in RFH, 1957.

2: BBC live in RFH, 1957.

3: HMV studio in 1955

4: BBC live in RFH, 1957

5: HMV studio in 1955, and just as valid, BBC live in 1957 in RFH.

6: Vox recording from 1950?

7: HMV studio in 1955

8: HMV studio in 1957 or just as valid the BBC live RFH performance

Choral: Live in BBC 1957 or 1961 in RFH, and better recorded thoough less visceral, the HMV 1957 studio set.

Add in such luminaries as Erich Kleiber in the 1954 recordings of Eroica [VPO] and 5 and 6 [Concertgebeow] and Carlos Kleiber with the VPO in 5 and 7, as well as Boehm's 6 [VPO] and you do have a real starting point for Beethoven symphonies!

ATB from George

PS: As sideline consider Boult's live recordings on BBC CDs of Schubert's "Unfinished" and "Great C Major" Symphonies, as well as the "phenomenal" Erich Kleiber recording of the "Great C Major" done in Koln, live in 1954! These ar treasure indeed [as are their couplings!].

Thanks for that George :-)

I am convinced that learning a new set of Beethoven Symphonies will achieve some good end.

Dear Mike,

You have my email.

If you need help with catalogue numbers, ...

I will sort them out for you.

None are expensive issues by now!

ATB from George

I have been listening to the Klemperer Eroica this morning. Because I have committed the Gardiner Eroica to memory, the Klemperer sounds too slow to my ears.

This points up the difficulty in really enjoying and comprehending different interpretations. Thankfully, there is an easy solution. The Klemperer must be afforded a decent number of listens, so that it becomes as familiar as the Gardiner.

If you really want to experience a different perspective, you have to develop an affinity for that viewpoint.

Once again, repetition is at the root of comprehension.

quote:

I have been listening to the Klemperer Eroica this morning. Because I have committed the Gardiner Eroica to memory, the Klemperer sounds too slow to my ears.

This points up the difficulty in really enjoying and comprehending different interpretations. ...

This is a real trap caused by over-exposure to favourite [or sometimes referred to as "definitive"] recordings.

If you go to a concert totally used to Gardiner's brisk tempi this then this excludes the possibility of enjoying another equally great angle from conductors such as Klemperer or Giulini for whom going the fastest that is technically possible was not even part of their visions.

This is no value judgment on any, but I find it crucial to have two contrasted performance of any music that will be often listened to from recordings.

Thus I have the masculine, and stark Helmut Walcha and the much more overtly poetic Marie Claire Alain in the organ oeuvre of Bach, currently three different sets of the Brandenburg Concertos, and several of each of the Beethoven symphonies, and amounting to two set of the Beethoven Quartets ...

If I go to a concert then I shall be most likely to listen with an open ear, as it will be different to any of the variegated recordings I have.

I suggest a period of rest from Gardiner, where the only Beethoven Symphonic perforamnces you listen to are from other musicians, and after a while you will find yourself able to listen to and enjoy a wide range of different ways from many great musicians.

I learned this lesson with the Brandenburgs owning three LP sets in a row of Menuhin's EMI Bath Festival Orchestra recording. I suddenly realised that these were creating my expectations of the music, when a different performance [which was admirable] failed to register with me.

Since then I have [or have had] sets by Adolf Busch, Mogens Woldike, [August Wenzinger, Benjamin Britten, Otto Klemperer, Adrian Boult, Herbert von Karajan], Hans Martin Linde, [Trevor Pinnock], and one other whose performers I cannot still remember, as well as knowing the set from the Virtuosi of England on the budget Classics for Pleasure label which strikes me as among the very best though not by famous names or on original instruments.

Beware the trap of being fixated on one recording as becoming definitive for you.

ATB from George

quote:

Thus I have the masculine, and stark Helmut Walcha and the much more overtly poetic Marie Claire Alain in the organ oeuvre of Bach

A slight tangent but I just spent a very enjoyable week working my way through Marie Claire Alain's recording of Bach's complete organ works. I believe it's her third set, recorded on baroque organs, as recently recommended on Radio 3's Building a Library. I found her lightness of touch (which is *not* superficiality) really opened up the works for me and I found myself enjoying these works when, in the past, I might have listened to them because they were "good for me". I like the way each CD is programmed as a recital, so you don't get bogged down listening to one prelude and fugue after another. She also chooses unusual registrations for some works which nevertheless work admirably, as well as adding to the variety of the set.

The new Harbeth speakers helped too - they have a wonderfully natural way with all music, and organ music has never sounded so good on my system.

I agree that the rigour and "architectural" approach of Walcha makes a nice contrast - and with the general idea of having at least two divergent interpretations of one's favourite works.

Regards
Nigel

Dear Nigel,

These two survey's of the music [the third from MC Alain and first from H Walcha] share many similarities in reality! Both are recorded on fine baroque or baroque style organs through out, and both have admirably "un-boomy" recordings so you can really listen into the inner music!

But as musical personalities, both are faithful to the text, yet reach contrasted readings. Walcha is often very straight, though certainly never wooden or lacking the necessary flexibility, but Walcha certainly is the stark leafless oak standing against the winter horizon - every detail clear yet perfectly part of the whole scene! MC Alain is one's favourite kindly aunty up in the organ loft gently giving the truth she finds in the music. Each has its valued set of facets to bring out of the music itself. I have found more pleasure in Walcha since getting the MC Alain recording, and enjoy her musicianship as much as Walcha's and seemingly the music is now detached from either for me, so that finding a performance of the music [where ever it is found] it is the music rather than the contrast to a known performance that speaks to me ...

ATB from George

quote:

Both are recorded on fine baroque or baroque style organs through out, and both have admirably "un-boomy" recordings so you can really listen into the inner music!

One of the delights of the MC Alain set is the documentation which, as well as commenting on the music, also has her thoughts on the organ chosen for each CD (its history, why she chose it, etc.). The project was clearly a labour of love, and that shines through in the performances. I forget which CD it is, but one of the organs used is far from having been perfectly restored, and you can hear lots of extraneous noises, as stops are pulled out, and pedals worked - somehow it just adds to the charm of the entire experience.

Dear Nigel,

I think that the MC Alain recording that I have is the second in that case - recorded between 1978 and 1980 on Erato - as the organs are in very fine condition with no excess of mechansim sounds or unruly chuffing pipes.

The Walcha set was recorded on wonderful instruments that do have some signs of being not in perfect condition, with some occasional sounds from the pedal board, and some unevenness in the ranks. Not enough to distract, but enough to suggest that in Germany in the immediate post 1945 period they may have had higher priorities for spending money on than restoring ancient musical instruments even if they were rare survivors [of the bombing raids], and historically significant especially with regard to Bach's music.

ATB from George

George, as you suggested, I am giving the Gardiner a rest for a while.

FYI, the Klemperer Eroica is slower than the Gardiner/ORR, the Jochum/Concertgebouw, the Abbado/Berlin, the Reiner/Chicago and the Szell/Cleveland.

At the moment, I think the slower tempo robs this symphony of its fundamental spirit. In any case, to my ears the slower tempo is like unplugging a light.

Dear Mike,

I am not sure I could put into works, exactly what I think this first movement is about beyond the obvious huge conflict ...

What a slower tempo can bring, especially in the hands of a master of long term tempo stability [with obvious short term modifications of course] is that the rhythm becomes more resilient and more powerful in its insistence, but most of all the momentum of the music towards its aural collisions and several, ever higher, climaxes become even more inevitable and incredibly powerful and natural in its clinch without any applied heating up or over-wrought accelerandi such as was once the fashion in the days of Furtwangler for example.

It is fair to say that Philharmonia of the 1950s was more than expert enough to have played the music at Gardiner's tempi, so one may assume that Klemperer's tempi are intended rather than accidental.

I am familiar with Jochum's recordings of Beethoven, but have never listened to them in a sense of comparison to the recordings I do have [at the moment two from Klemperer and one from Erich Kleiber].

The Jochum performances I have heard did not strike me as especially fast, but certainly very fine. I have never much cared for the styles of performance from either Szell or Reiner, but of course that is a personal reaction!

Erich Kleiber's performance is faster in the first movement than Klemperer's by quite a margin, and VPO take this tempo with ease, but the reason that the timing for the movement is actually one minute longer than Klemperer's recording is because Kleiber takes the exposition repeat [of almost exactly three minutes in this case], whereas Klemperer never seems to have taken it. Had Kleiber not made this repeat his recording would have been two minute faster than Klemperer, at 13 minutes 55 seconds as compared to Klemperer's 15 minutes 55 seconds in 1955. This is a fairly wide difference in tempo as it happens.

The point is that Kleiber's performance is specifically calculated to gain emotional weight from taking the repeat. I find both performances completely satisfying, but it is worth remembering that Beethoven was himself unsure about the repeat, and even Brahms dubious of it as he was of repeats in his own symphonies, provided it was not a performance for an audience, unfamiliar with the music ...

Klemperer's recording [1955, which I know you have] is whole minute faster in the Funeral March Second Movement! And you should perhaps listen to the two movements right through to find what Klemperer was doing. He finds an impetus that moves with the momentum of volcanic lava or seemingly motivated by the force of celestial gravity right across these two movements. In this performance the cataclismic clashes of the first movement are in fact taken as the impetus for the even greater tension of the Funeral March ... Funeral becomes the inevitable Tragic outcome of the unreslved tensions of the first movement ... which has so conclusively prepared the way for the darkness and despair to follow!

Listened to like this you will find that Beethoven's music here sounds even more extra-ordinary, revolutionary, the work of the greatest symphonist of the day, almost mould breaking, than in many more overtly driven performances! Kleiber's reading of the Funeral March does not strike me as being on the same level of ever building tension as Klemperer's, not for the playing itself, but for the way the First Movement contextualises it ...

But the consideration of the recordings should not stop there ...

The Scherzo and Finale are wonderfully presented in both Klemperer's and Kleiber's performances and serve to dissipate the mood of revolutionary Tragedy wonderfully, only going to show that whatever else the Eroica is, it may stretch the bounds of classical form, it does remain in spirit an entirely classical symphony and it would be Brahms who eventually would give us an unequivocally romantic one in his Third! I know many will say that Schumann and Mendelsohnn both wrote romantic symphonies, but the form Haydn left is so strong "and classical" that it took Brahms to write a symphony that completely avoids the “happy ever after ending” that characterises the classical period style of symphony long into the romantic period.

When a conductor makes a performance that can promote such thoughts about a work - let alone one which is totally compelling - then clearly the actual tempo chosen, faster or slower - is not the greatest factor governing the impact of the performance, though many continue to believe it is! Really it is the relationship of tempi across the whole work that is really important.

ATB from George

But at a faster tempo, the themes have more of a singing quality, and the voicing has more momentum. The orchestra finds its voice, and speaks as one.

I think this is also a refection of our different personalities :-)

quote:

I think this is also a refection of our different personalities :-)

Dear Mike,

But do read and follow through on the thoughts. They may be a dead end for you, but they may open up a new vista! I am open to many different ways [not all] with the greatest music ...

Apropo' Bach's Organ Music from above:

These two surveys of the music [the second from MC Alain and first from H Walcha] share many similarities in reality! Both are recorded on fine baroque or baroque style organs through out, and both have admirably "un-boomy" recordings so you can really listen into the inner music!

But as musical personalities, both are faithful to the text, yet reach contrasted readings. Walcha is often very straight, though certainly never wooden or lacking the necessary flexibility, but Walcha certainly is the stark leafless oak standing against the winter horizon - every detail clear yet perfectly part of the whole scene! MC Alain is one's favourite kindly aunty up in the organ loft gently giving the truth she finds in the music. Each has its valued set of facets to bring out of the music itself. I have found more pleasure in Walcha since getting the MC Alain recording, and enjoy her musicianship as much as Walcha's and seemingly the music is now detached from either for me, so that finding a performance of the music [where ever it is found] it is the music rather than the contrast to a known performance that speaks to me ...

ATB from George

I couldn't believe I listened through the entire symphonies!

quote:

Originally posted by kuma:
I couldn't believe I listened through the entire symphonies!

That's because you were hypnotised!

quote:

Originally posted by kuma:

I couldn't believe I listened through the entire symphonies!

Kuma, I can't see the image. Which set of Beethoven Symphonies?

This Toscanini set was my favorite for a long, long time, and I still enjoy them.

Every time you listen to these, you hear my trumpet teacher :-)

Lots of fire here!

I bought the Giulini in America he recorded with LA Phil as stated above. I've gotten to where I put the CD on not knowing the works and just letting the music take me to fantasy land. Not all Beethoven, Brahms which I always thought a snooze, Ha! on me. I love learning something new.