4 posts tagged “beethoven”

I've written previously about my mild fixation with the piccolo, which started with a demonstration of the instrument in the third grade.

Last weekend at the symphony, we heard Beethoven's Ninth. Last night, we heard the Fifth. What really struck me hearing these back-to-back is how much Beethoven uses the piccolo in the last movement of each. The piccolo player really gets a workout!

My all-time favorite Beethoven piccolo is at the end of the Egmont Overture. Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting:

When I got home last night I did a web search on Beethoven and the piccolo. It turns out there is a popular misconception that Beethoven's Fifth is the first time the piccolo was used in a symphonic work. It's not true, but it's an interesting misconception, I'm sure born out of how prominent the piccolo is in the orchestration of the last movement.

Not surprisingly, a big crowd came for the symphony's performance of the Fifth. It was even a little fuller in the third tier.

John Lill

For me, one of the highlights of this year's symphony season is John Lill performing all five Beethoven piano concertos in a two-day series.

Last night was the first night, which kicked it off with concertos #4 and #5 (1-3 are tonight); I'm not quite sure why they aren't being played in order. No matter. I love the idea of a "total immersion" in a composer over a series of concerts -- in years past the symphony has done more of this as special festivals (including Beethoven and Shostakovitch).

I've not seen John Lill perform previously. He's got a magnificent, delicate touch. The second movement of the 5th (the Emperor) was sublime.

Oddly, the third movement of the 5th contained the most obvious musical gaff I've heard in all my symphony-going years. A short, but critical horn solo just didn't come out of the horn. There were a few muffled notes emitted and that was it. Very strange -- I'm not sure whether there was a technical problem with the horn or what. Chalk it up to a bad horn day? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

The concert was relatively well-attended but by no means sold out. I expected a bigger crowd for this. It's part of the Symphony Specials series (which tends toward lighter-weight repertoire) rather than the main Masterpiece series, so that might be part of it.

I got an interesting comment on my post about my serendipitous hearing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on my car radio. It was from the director of a documentary film called Following the Ninth. Based on the clip, it looks likes it could be interesting.

The Seattle Symphony performs the Ninth every year at the end of December, right before the New Year. For us, this performance is a year-end ritual. This year, I was sick, running a fever of a 101. Drake had no problem selling my ticket outside the hall as the Ninth is always a sell-out for the symphony. So we missed our ritual of hearing it together live.

Sometimes, when listening to it, I try to image what it must of been like to hear it at its premiere.

From Wikipedia:

When the audience applauded, testimonies differ over whether at the end of the scherzo or the whole symphony, Beethoven was several measures off and still conducting. Because of that, the contralto Caroline Unger walked over and forcibly turned Beethoven around to accept the audience's cheers and applause. According to one witness, "the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them." The whole audience acclaimed him through standing ovations five times; there were handkerchiefs in the air, hats, raised hands, so that Beethoven, who could not hear the applause, could at least see the ovation gestures. The theatre house had never seen such enthusiasm in applause.

At that time, it was customary that the imperial couple be greeted with three ovations at their entrance in the hall. The fact that a private person, who wasn’t even employed by the state, and all the more, was a musician (class of people who had been perceived as lackeys at court), received five ovations, was in itself inadmissible, almost indecent. Police agents present at the concert had to break off this spontaneous explosion of ovations. Beethoven left the concert deeply moved.

A couple of Christmases ago, Drake gave me this book, which gave me a much greater appreciation for Beethoven the man (warts - big warts - and all) and the artist.

Beethoven (Revised Edition)

Maynard Solomon

Yesterday, I was feeling slightly down -- worried about my Dad, flare-up of some on-going anxieties about living away from family, some frustrations at work -- and then I had a professional event to attend last night (more networking). As I got into my car after the event, I flipped on my car radio precisely for the first notes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I listened to it all the way home and then once I got home. It was a bit of serendipity that greatly lifted my mood - as if the radio station knew I needed some cheering up.