The beauty of YouTube is that one can compare performances of the same piece from different artists - conductors and orchestras in this case:

Von Karajan, begin (great camera work and direction, btw):
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Bernstein, middle
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Toscannini, end
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Great stuff from the deaf guy (completely).

Sherwood

That Toscannini was a treat. Thanks for posting it. I still prefer Karajan's precision but Toscannini's was fun.

Ian

And Karajan was a 911 driver. A quote that I heard attributed to him (here on the board somewhere) was translated as:

"The sound of a 911 is only outshone by good Mozart."

Ian

Agreed. Karjan just seems to "get it" - dynamics, tempi, it's all just right. Maybe it's because he's Austrian, I don't know. Now everything else just seems "wrong" to me. Funny, I know his 1963 DG recording so well I could tell in the first few seconds of the youtube clip that it was a different performance.

I'll never forget performing the 9th (in the choir) when I was doing my undergrad. Up there neat the top of my "life's achievments" list.

BTW, Karjan wasn't just a 911 driver, he drove a 959! :eek:
http://staging.motorbase.com/auctionlot/by-id/1402165506/

Guys, I have only part of Beethoven's No 6 on mp3s. I am trying to find the CD, but am having no luck.

Netherlands Symphony Orchestra
Jan Willem de Vriend conductor
Beethoven: Orchestral Works (album title)
dated: 2008

I'm enamored with this symphony and prefer this performance over other conductors (tempo is slower). I've searched amazon, google, yahoo, and live.com with no luck.

Any ideas?

That's a powerful, stirring piece to sing, in German no less. When I was in a choir class, we got to sing one of those medieval folk song - less stirring.

Some purists (classic music nazis perhaps) think Von Karajan strays too far from the composer's intent, e.g. increasing the tempo excessively, making himself the center of attention rather than the music, etc. Remember, these are views from the purists.

Classic music doesn't offer the leeway to be personalized by the performer much less contain any improvisation. You can pick up some interesting critique by browsing the comments following most any YouTube performance.

Recently, I went on a search for the various renditions of Nessun Dorma, Pavarotti's signature piece. Seems like many critics have other favorites. There were/are some great singers. Don't worry, it's only 3x2 minutes out of our lives.

Hey, everyone can sing along with this one:
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... but many folks love this TV guy:
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You decide. Good or just popular?

Sherwood

I have a DG LVB /von Karajan multi record set stashed in the attic.

Has it become possible to record this to big bit CDs?

It's worn but not beat up. If it can be cleaned up and keep its range It'd be a home run.

good question, huh ?

I'm not sure I agree with you here. For sure, there's less room for improv and interpretation than, say, a jazz band doing a rendition of a classic Ellington or something. But what makes a great performer is their ability to get "inside" the music and add their own interpretation. Just playing/singing the notes on the page isn't enough - you have to embody it and become it, which is what separates the pros from the amateurs. The same goes for conductors.

When I was in university I was talking to one of my profs who said same orchestra, same day, same sheet music, different conductors, completely different performance, even if they try to do it similar to each other.

In the specific example of Beethoven, he was notorious about being vague about dynamics and tempi. There are accepted schools of thought, but if you look at his manuscripts or early print editions, there's just not much there. If memory serves, there's not one proper tempo indication in the 9th symphony, just indications such as "allegro" or "andante", which, while indicating the composer's intent, are hardly specific. TO contrast, later composers like Mahler, and particularly anything into the 20th/21st century, almost exclusively use specific metronome markings, indicating for example quarter note = 120 (120 beats per minute).

I'm sure all those comments about Karjan are accurate, but perhaps Beethoven would've preferred it that way (I'd agree with that). I wish I could remember what recording he was talking about, but I read a quote of Stravinsky's once that he preferred Bernstein's (I think) way of conducting his music rather than his own. They both recording [can't remember which piece] with the New York Phil or the Met or whomever (it was in NYC, I'm pretty sure), both within a few years of each other, and Stravinsky said he thought his own interpretation of his own music was inferior.

"... is their ability to get "inside" the music and add their own interpretation. Just playing/singing the notes on the page isn't enough - you have to embody it and become it, which is what separates the pros from the amateurs. The same goes for conductors......"

That's a fine line you describe. I would side more with emotion and less the interpretation, but agree about getting inside the music. As with anything, the more you know about a subject, the more one is able to discern and appreciate the nuances.

I stayed up way too late this morning listening to Mr. B's songs.

HNY,
Sherwood

Listening to the Missa right now (the whole thing).
Gardiner - The Toscanini NBC Radio Orchestra live version of 1940 came in second - this time.

Listening to only part of a great piece of music is like stopping at second base - not shabby but Oh, there is so much more.....

I took my own advice and on the drive up to the lake for New Years Eve I put on the 9th and turned it up much louder than the provincial police would probably approve of. Made the drive totally pleasurable, whereas it's usually about 75% snoozefest and 25% nice country drive.

It occurred to me that the 9th is truly something to be taken as a whole, compared to some of Beethoven's earlier symphonies. The 7th is another masterpiece, but isn't so much "more than the sum of its parts" like the 9th. The first 5 minutes of the 4th movement of the 9th explain why, and if I'm not mistaken, that was something that was never done before, though done much after (Mahler, Wagner, Bartok, etc.) But, while the 4th movement of the 7th is one of the most uplifting, phenomenally exciting pieces of music ever written, I'm not sure the journey through the first 3 movements builds it up like they do with the 9th.

I don't care how loud you can crank electric guitars through a PA system, nothing has emotional the power of 4, 6 or especially 8 french horns together.

ALL the works are to be taken as a whole (weather you choose to listen to the whole or just the pretty parts).
ALL were constructed , with motifs and key variations that lead somewhere
and feed off each other (follow the bouncing da,da,da,dum throughout the movements of the Fifth).
In the 9th there is a cyclical theme based on arpeggios of B or D flat chords and the Seid umschlunngen Millionen theme of the choral finale is an inversion of the second subject of the Allegro ma non troppo opening movement (as pointed out by Rudolph Reti).
The genius of the work is that he is able to make the last movement seem almost a "repudiation" of the first three - "O friends, not these sounds; rather let us intone pleasanter and more joyful ones...."
And there is no more pleasant sound in all music than THAT oboe.......listen and you will know which one I mean.

What is also cool is that the theme appears in other works and in the sketchbooks as early as the 1790's ;
The finale of the Choral Fantasia opus 80 and the second mov of the piano sonata opus 31 #2 (to name two).

...And don't get me started on the miracles of the Late String Quartets...

My thoughts exactly... I have bought a few bargain classical CD's and most of the time found them to be sub par performances and equally low quality recordings.

YMMV

SmileWavy