Re: Beethoven

[jerry and judy <jerbidoc@zianet.com>]

> I've enjoyed the Gould series of Beethoven concertos for at least 20 years, and find them delightful.  Still, though, I'm not entirely happy with that #1.  To me it sounds tense and nervous, and the orchestral playing lacks subtlety and blend.  (Like a mixture of sight-reading and just trying to keep up.)  And in the way GG launches into the final movement, the meter is too ambiguous: the first note sounds like a downbeat rather than an upbeat.  Those two completely wacky anachronistic cadenzas are fun, though!
>  
> Right now I particularly enjoy the new recording by Robert Levin with John Eliot Gardiner.  It's energetic but also relaxed enough, not driven like a race.  The cadenzas are fresh...they're improvised!  The phrasing makes perfect sense, with a natural differentiation of strong and weak notes.  All very well done.
>  
> Bradley Lehman, <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
> Dayton VA
>
> > One last query/rhetorical qustion: is there a better interpretation to be found anywhere of Beeth. PC 1 than Gould's with Golshman?  (Answer: NO, no one has ever recorded a more compelling version of that concerto; and Gould also gives us a 2nd and a 4th that is at the top of the heap!)
> >  



I'm not readily able to accept Beethoven as quite-such a great! artist/creator, probably because I 'know' so much about him and his outlook, but he has obviously somehow, squeaked by!  His ideas and his developmental course tend to be the one that's in 'harmony' with experienced, studied, music 'types'!  Did he naturally know how to do this? or is his fundamental approach to logical musical development so irresistable??  I tend to think that it's his 'pure' naïveté!

Jerry