Annals of serendipity, Beethoven edition: Wouldja just listen to these horns go?

And that's some spiffy clarinet-playing too!
[With assorted UPDATEs]

No, not these particular horns, I mean the ones on the recording --

I wish I knew who our horn players -- and clarinetist -- were so I could credit them. (The regular recording credits are coming up momentarily.)

by Ken

What we just heard -- and I'll sort-of-explain in a moment how we got here -- is the Trio section of the minuet, or I should probably say the Tempo di Menuetto (not quite the same thing; what we have is a tempo marking, not necessarily a simple declaration that what follows is a minuet), of the Beethoven Eighth Symphony. It's nestled inside this performance:

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93:
iii. Tempo di Menuetto

London Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded November 1972

What's happened is that, in the course of our pursuit of the "lesson" of Fidelio, following our pursuit of the "lesson" of Don Giovanni, we are finding outselves knocking around Beethoven's workshop. As readers of recent installments may recall, our path to Fidelio is also leading us beyond, to Beethoven's seeming repository of all musical and perhaps human knowledge, his Ninth Symphony. Which has naturally had me scouting assorted musicscapes for the musical signposts we'll want to pass by.

One of which is a recording of the Beethoven Ninth that Carlo Maria Giulini made for DG, with the Berlin Philharmonic, in 1989, which is lodged in my memory as an especially powerful and personal statement. (For some reason I feel a compulsion to mention that I reviewed it in the New York Times, even though this really isn't here or there, except as it underlines the powerful effect the performance had on me.) It occurred to me that I have an earlier Giulini Beethoven Ninth, done with the London Symphony for EMI, and I was pretty sure I even had it on CD, and mightn't it be interesting to rehear both performances?


IT TURNED OUT THAT IT WAS INTERESTING,
AND NOT IN QUITE THE WAYS I EXPECTED

Which I generally find even more interesting. I think at some point we'll want to talk about the two Giulini Ninths, and probably sample them. For now the point now has to do, not with them, but with the way EMI bundled their Giulini Ninth on CD. On LP it had been spread across three sides, as was frequently done with recordings of the Ninth; for the fourth side the Eighth Symphony had been recorded -- the most common fourth-side fillers for the Ninth having been either the First or the Eighth, the shortest Beethoven Symphonies, and the two that could be counted on to fit comfortably on a single LP side.

We're getting closer to our point, but we're still not quite there. The point is the nice little package EMI made of the CD issue, with the Giulini-LSO Ninth contained on CD 2 and the companion Eighth filling out CD 1, which begins withhad done for the CD issue was to make a lovely little two-disc package, with Giulini's Ninth on one disc and the Eighth filling out CD 1, which begins with a Beethoven Sixth (Pastoral) that Giulini had recorded for EMI, though with a different orchestra (the New Philharmonia) in a different venue with a different recording team. No matter, this put that Pastoral happily back in circulation, while neatly coupling Beethoven's two F major symphonies on a disc.

So, after listening to the two Ninths, and with no clear recollection of that Giulini Pastoral, a work you would expect to be tailor-made for his deep human sympathies, I figured what the heck and slapped on CD 1, and quite enjoyed the Giulini Pastoral.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 (Pastoral):
ii. Andante molto mosso: Scene by the brook

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Jan. and Apr. 1968

I mean, what's not to like?

And after the Pastoral, I certainly had no hesitation in allowing CD 1 to play out. I don't have quite the same relationship with the Eighth that I do with the other Beethoven symphonies, but that doesn't mean I don't like it a lot. Clearly Beethoven was scaling down his symphonic ambitions after that amazing sequence of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies -- not only astonishing works in their own right(s) but works that could hardly be more different. Considering how he hated repeating himself, and almost always had contrasting creative impulses awaiting release when he'd done the creative heavy lifting on one piece, maybe a little piece as, well, peculiar as the Eighth Symphony was the logical follow-up.

Still, as limited in scale and scope as all of its four movements are, they all seem to me a little weird and kind of weirdly mated: a rousingly perky Allegro vivace opening movment that however is set in triple time and consequently sounds kind like its vivacious movement is moving in circles; the kind of lumbering Tempo di Menuetto; and for a finale another Allegro vivace that seems to be scampering but I can't quite get where to.and I'm still a little shaky as to how they fit together.

Oh, I get that Beethoven was conjuring a format that, while having a more consciously traditional "classical" feel than maybe any symphony he'd written (including the Haydnesque First, would build in all sorts of trick subversions. The mere presence of that Tempo di Menuetto seems a provocative anachronisml after the Menuetto of the First Symphony, he'd made the minuet-to-scherzo switch in all his symphonies except possibly the Fourth, which is often listed as a Menuetto, and I suppose behaves kind of like a minuet, but has the hardly minuet-like tempo marking Allegro vivace; ironically, for our purposes, the Trio has a noticeably more minuet-like feel

Here, just to condition our ears, are the Scherzo Beethoven had just written, for the Seventh Symphony, and the presumed Menuetto of the Fourth -- in performances chosen for convenience, coming from a CD that happens to contain live performances of this very pair of symphonies -- though not, I'm sorry to say, from the same concert. (Wouldn't that have been neat?)

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92:
iii. Scherzo: Presto

Orchestre National de France, Charles Munch, cond. Disques Montaigne, recorded live, Dec. 20, 1963
Added very early Monday:

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Mar. 29, 1971
VERY EARLY MONDAY UPDATE: It occurred to me, considering that we're hearing and/or talking about Giulini recordings of Beethoven 6, 8, and 9, that we can add "7" to the list with this souvenir of the maestro's long, happy relationship with the Chicago Symphony. The Beethoven 7 was recorded during his 1969-72 stint as principal guest conductor.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 4 in B-flat, Op. 60:
iii. Allegro vivace

Orchestre National de France, Charles Munch, cond. Disques Montaigne, recorded live in Stockholm, Aug. 25, 1964
Also added very early Monday:

Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky, cond. Melodiya, recorded live, Apr. 29, 1873
VERY EARLY MONDAY UPDATE: As long as we were going to have a second performance of the Scherzo of the Seventh, I thought we should have a backup for the Fourth too. Then I thought, why not go Russian?

BONUS: It's the Consecration of the House Overture!

The Munch-Orchestre Natinal performance of the Fourth Symphony may not come from the same concert as the Seventh, but the Seventh was part of a concert marking the opening of French Radio's Maison de la Radio (House of Radio) and so included -- what else? -- Beethoven's Consecration of the House Overture. This is a piece that, here at Sunday Classics, we never willingly pass up, so here it is!

BEETHOVEN: Overture, The Consecration of the
House, Op. 116

Orchestre National de France, Charles Munch, cond. Disques Montaigne, recorded live, Dec. 20, 1963


MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE EIGHTH SYMPHONY --

At some point during that play-through of the Giulini-EMI Beethoven Eighth, with my primary attention no doubt elsewhere, the New Philharmonia horn duo launched the Trio of the Tempo di Menuetto, and was promptly trio-fied with an equally irresistible clarinet soloist. Maybe it was just a thing of the moment, but the performance still sounds like liftoff to me, with the horns and lone clarinet (unlike all the rest of the symphony, including the outer sections of the Tempo di Menuetto, where the scoring is for a pair of clarinets), propelling us confidently yet easefully forward on a cushion of smiles! I couldn't begin to guess how many times I've heard this movement, and it's never hit me this way.

I suppose at this point we might want to hear the whole symphony.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93:
i. Allegro vivace e con brio
ii. Allegretto scherzando
iii. Tempo di Menuetto
iv. Allegro vivace

[ii. at 7:13, iii. at 10:48, iv. at 14:04] Vienna Philharmonic, Felix Weingartner, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 25-26, 1936 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)

[ii. at 7:21, iii. at 11:22, iv. at 16:31] New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. American Columbia, recorded in Liederkranz Hall, New York, Apr. 18, 1942 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)

[ii. at 9:01, iii. at 12:56, iv. at 18:44] Problematic CD identification -- possibly but not definitely: Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded May 1955

[ii. at 9:39, iii. at 13:29, iv. at 18:32] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. Live performance from the Tanglewood Festival, July 27, 1975

Maybe I should have searched harder for complete performances of Beethoven 8 we could slip in here. I wonder whether the group I came up with doesn't illustrate rather than solve the problems with the piece I talked about. For example, exuberant as I think we want the normal-movement-size opening movement to be, plunging us right into the fray, I'm not sure it's done much good by being attacked with sheer raw energy; isn't there maybe something else going on at the same time?

TUESDAY UPDATES: As you see, I left this not very happy with the recordings I'd assembled, and wondered if I could find something sharable that would leave me less grumbly. I lit on this performance by the fine Hungarian conductor János Ferencsik, which keeps the piece on a modest scale -- I still think there's a lot more going on here -- but for me makes actual musically pleasurable sense of everything in it.

Just for fun, let's listen first to Ferencsik's rendering of the Trio of the Tempo di Menuetto. As you may have noticed, in the score for the Trio that I posted at the top of this post, Beethoven marks the solo parts for the horns and clarinet "dolce," "sweet."



Sweet, wouldn't you say? Now here's the whole symphony.


[ii. at 8:04, iii. at 12:13, iv. at 16:10] Hungarian State Orchestra, János Ferencsik, cond. Hungaroton, recorded 1976

Do you hear how different this is? So much that in "normal" performances seems gangly or outright clumsy is made to make sense here and even sound kind of clever. This reminds me of our recent visit to the Mahler Fourth Symphony, which the rest of the world seems to regard as of childlike obviousness but to me seems inscrutably convoluted and secretive to the point of near-impenetrability.

While I was thumbing through my trusty old Bonanza Books Nine Symphonies of Beethoven in Score, edited by Albert E. Weir (all nine symphonies in 351 oversize pages, four miniature-score pages per page), I glanced for maybe the first time ever at the introductory page for the Eighth Symphony, presumably the handiwork of the editor, which concludes with this note:

Critics of this symphony, upon its first presentations, were not favorably impressed. Berlioz speaks of itin patronizing tones; Lenz regards it as a work in which the composer has retrograded; English critics sneered at it for years.

Since those days the world seems to have come around, but I wonder whether the world has really figured it out. I think Beethoven was attempting to create a small-scale symphony that would work on two levels: that of its simple, "neo-Classical" surface, and on a hidden level where the real challenges and the real fun lie. Only I'm not sure it really works so well on the simple surface level, which is why I'm happy to have the Tennstedt-Boston performance here: If a conductor as good as Tennstedt, working with an orchestra as resourceful and accommodating as the BSO, couldn't keep the piece from sounding by turns peremptory and galumphing, there's a problem here. At some point we should perhaps investigate this more. For now, having the lively and playful Ferencsik performance at hand makes me feel a little better.


A QUESTION TO ASK AS WE RETURN TO FIDELIO

I don't know that we've accomplished anything today, but one of the things that was on the docket now has been pushed back as we take a look at the enigmatic Fidelio overture situation. One question I'd hoped to tackle today is:

Does it matter if the Leonore Overture No. 1 came after rather than before Nos. 2 and 3?

The way we were going to start, and I guess instead will finish today, is by listening to two performances of it by the same conductor some nine years apart -- recognizably the same, or very similar, performances, I think, despite the obvious difference that in the later one everything is underlined, heightened, intensified a bit

BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 1, Op. 138

Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Nov. 17-24, 1954

Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Nov. 6-7, 1963

My question here is: How much do the obvious differences alter the effect the piece makes? And perhaps we might ask: Just what effect does the piece make? For what it's worth, and I really don't know how much that is, we now know something about the piece that Maestro Klemperer didn't, and neither did the platoon of other conductors we've got standing by to have their say about it when we get to it.

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