Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827 German)

…needs, of course, no presentation.

Still, by way of introduction, let me just recount what a seminal experience  listening to Roger Norrington’s recording of the complete symphonies on EMI Reflexe, somewhere in the early 1990s, was to me. For someone grown on the Beethoven of Furtwängler, Klemperer or even Bruno Walter or Karajan, the experience was, at first, shocking. WTF? A racing funeral march in the Eroica – were the pallbearers so eager to get rid of the body? An equally racing Allegretto in the 7th, shed, it felt, of all its funeral pathos? A first movement of the Eroica that zipped through, with no sense, it seemed, of grandeur and solemnity? And what was this boisterous, even brawling arrival to the Pastorale’s countryside – where had Bruno Walter’s tenderly and lovingly-shaped awakening disappeared ? The first reaction was to throw it all away in a rage. But then… wait a second.

These were (or claimed to be), after all, the metronome tempos (or close, or at least attempting to go in that direction) inscribed by Beethoven on his scores. So if Beethoven meant the music to sound that way… this should be given serious consideration, and not be discarded casually.

Did Beethoven “not know any better”, and need those great interpreters of the 20th century to reveal the grandeur contained in his music that he himself didn’t have a full notion about? Or wasn’t it, rather than Beethoven’s own conception, our expectations (of how the music should sound) that were wrong and distorted by years of listening to Furtwängler and Klemperer?

So I set it upon myself to challenge my own expectations, and try and make sense of what Norrington (Beethoven?) was offering. And it worked! Ultimately I found that the music, as played by Norrington, made complete sense. The first movement of the Pastorale isn’t inscribed “Awakening in the countryside”, but “Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside”, so sure it could be cheerful, bouncy and imbued with a spirit of dance. True to its reputation, the 7th is indeed imbued, in its framing movements, by a spirit of (almost trance-like) dance, and its “slow” movement isn’t a Largo, but an Allegretto, that can convincingly convey a sense of breathless urgency and doesn’t need to be turned into a funeral march. And as for the actual funeral march of the Eroica, it has not only to be funeral: it has to march (later, I came to the conclusion that the late-18th and 19th century conception of “slow”, all the way down to Mahler, was in fact much faster than what it became in the 20th century).

And to mention a metaphor that I’ve used in a number of my reviews of the Eroica: solemnity in the opening movement (even when it goes with power) smacks of royalty. Kings are stately and solemn and surrounded with decorum; but the Eroica is revolution (as is famously known, it was conceived by Beethoven as a tribute to Bonaparte… who crossed out the dedication in a rage when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. But, of course, first and foremost, the Eroica ushers in a musical revolution), and revolutions are not “solemn and stately”: they breathlessly power forward and are devastating.

In this process of successfully challenging my own expectations, I realized that in music listening… and, arguably,  performing, “instincts” (which, more often than not, are only unconscious listening habits) need to be “tamed”, or informed, by reason. The eternal story of Dionysus and Apollo… And I recognize myself in pianist Arthur Schnabel’s pronouncement, when, asked by an interviewer if he considered himself of the school of those who play according to feeling, or of those who play in time, retorted: “can’t one feel in time?”

Of course, I later learned a number of things: for instance, that Norrington’s attempt to get closer to Beethoven’s metronome tempi was nothing new, and that (even if it wasn’t always through voluntary and, so to speak, “academic” attempts to observe Beethoven’s indications) Scherchen, Toscanini and René Leibowitz (in his reputed but little-circulated cycle with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the Reader’s Digest, that got a new lease on life in the early CD era through the reissues by Chesky and the Swiss label Menuet) had been there before; or that there have been raging controversies around the validity of Beethoven’s metronome marks (reading Rudolf Kolisch’s “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music” was enlightening)… Let me not here enter that debate or this “introduction” will never end; but from it I concluded that musicians, when they do NOT want to follow the indications of a composer for whom they otherwise profess the highest reverence and even subservience, can become very imaginative… and if they spent one-tenth of the energy and imagination devoted to NOT doing what the composer indicates, on trying instead to make it work… it would!

And, in the course of decades of comparative listening, I also came to the view that the interpreter doesn’t have to be subservient to all the composer’s indications, especially those that concern tempo; that the composer’s conception is an essential and indispensable view of his works- but not the only possible or legitimate one; that the score contains more music, more possibilities than the composer usually envisions, and great interpreters indeed reveal these other possibilities; Klemperer’s and Furtwängler’s Beethoven may not be (contrary to what they might have claimed) “Beethoven’s Beethoven”, but it is a legitimate and even indispensable view of Beethoven: Scherchen and Toscanini and Leibowitz and Norrington do not exclude Furtwängler and Klemperer, but the latter complement and complete the former. I like to say that one should have, in one’s collection, the Eroica of Scherchen (the fastest), the Eroica of Barbirolli (the slowest, but formidably powerful, out-Klempererizing Klemperer), and any in between; I wouldn’t want to be without the Eroica of Toscanini (which Toscanini version is here of little importance), because it is formidably urgent and powerful, but also because it is, ultimately, very balanced.

Long introduction, then, to say that Beethoven, and Norrington’s Beethoven, were important in my journey as a “serious listener”. And, to this day, Beethoven’s music remains to me so effing formidable. More listening, more familiarity and more knowledge doesn’t bring satiation, but more appreciation, and hunger (not exclusive, of course, of Bach, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartok…).

I’ve reviewed quite a lot of Beethoven in my Amazon years – chiefly orchestral music: symphonies (so far principally 1, 3 and 5 – no statement of preference, just time constraints) and concertos. And that was only starting to scratch the surface. But somehow, it is only in September 2024 that I begin re-posting some of those decade-old reviews on Discophage.com.

Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 5 “Spring”:

Joseph Szigeti, Mieczyslaw Horszowski 1 December 1953. Sony Masterworks Portrait MPK 52536 (1992) (with Violin Concerto, cond. Bruno Walter 1947)

Piano Concerto No. 3:

Arthur Rubinstein, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini 29 October 1944. RCA Red Seal 5756-2-RC  / RD 85756 (1987)  (American / European editions), “Arturo Toscanini Collection vol. 41” RCA Victor Gold Seal 60261-2-RG (1990) / GD 60261 (1990) (with Violin Concerto with Heifetz)

Violin Romances No. 1 op. 40 & 2 op. 50:

Yehudi Menuhin, Philharmonia Orchestra, Furtwängler 9 April 1953. Testament SBT 1109 (1997) (with Violin Concerto, Lucerne 1947)

Yehudi Menuhin, Philharmonia Orchestra, John Pritchard Nov. & Dec. 1960. EMI “Studio Plus” CDM 7 64324 2 (1992) (with Violin Concerto with Klemperer, 1966), EMI “Encore” 5 74972 2, 5 74973 2, 5 75695 2 and EMI “Nipper Collection” 5 75027 2 (2002) (with Violin Concerto with Silvestri, 1960)

Josef Suk, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Vaclav Smetacek, 5 January 1970. Supraphon “Crystal Collection” 11 0628-2 011 (1988), Supraphon SU 3164-2 011 (1999) (with Violin Concerto, cond. Konwitschny 1962)

Violin Concerto (by chronology of recording):

Jascha Heifetz, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini 11 March 1940. RCA Red Seal 5756-2-RC  / RD 85756 (1987)  (American / European editions), “Arturo Toscanini Collection vol. 41” RCA Victor Gold Seal 60261-2-RG (1990) / GD 60261 (1990) (with Piano Concerto No. 3 with Rubinstein)

Erich Röhn, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler live 12 January 1944. Deutsche Grammophon “Dokumente” 427 780-2 (1989) (with Coriolan Overture)

Joseph Szigeti, Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Bruno Walter 5 April 1947. Sony Masterworks Portrait MPK 52536 (1992) (with Spring Sonata with Mieczyslaw Horszowski). Dante Lys 397 (1998) (with Symphony No. 1)

Yehudi Menuhin, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Furtwängler 26 & 29 August 1947. Testament SBT 1109 (1997) (with Two Romances, Menuhin-Furtwängler 9 April 1953)

Menuhin, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler, live 30 September 1947. Tahra FURT 1020 (1997) (with Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture)

Heifetz, Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky live 2 September 1950. AS Disc Sergei Koussevitzky Edition AS 568 (1990) (with Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 from 1 April 1949)

Menuhin, Philharmonia Orchestra, Furtwängler 7-8 April 1953. First CD reissue EMI CDC 7 47119 2 (1984) (with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Berlin Philharmonic 25-26 May 1952) and reissues with same pairing

Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler 18 May 1953. DG 474 728-2 (2003?), DG 477 5030 (2004?) (with Symphony No. 5 from 27 May 1947)

Menuhin, Vienna Philharmonic, Constantin Silvestri 5 & 7 February 1960. First CD reissue on 2 CDs EMI “Rouge & Noir” CMS 7 62536 2 (1988) and subsequent reissues

Josef Suk, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Franz Konswitschny 28 April 1962. Supraphon “Crystal Collection” 11 0628-2 011 (1988), Supraphon SU 3164-2 011 (1999) (with Violin Romances cond. Smetacek 1970)

Menuhin, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Klemperer, 21-22 & 24-25 January 1966. EMI Studio / Angel Studio CDM 7 69001 2 (1987) and subsequent reissues

Coriolan Overture:

Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler  30 June 1943. Deutsche Grammophon “Dokumente” 427 780-2 (1989) (with Violin Concerto with Erich Röhn, 12 January 1944)

Symphony No. 1:

Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Bruno Walter 29 November 1947. Dante Lys 397 (1998) (with Violin Concerto with Szigeti, 1947)

Symphony No. 5:

Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler 27 May 1947. DG 474 728-2 (2003?), DG 477 5030 (2004?) (with Violin Concerto, Wolfgang Schneiderhan 18 May 1953)