Re: Beethoven's Fourth Concerto?

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Baldwin, Daniel wrote:

> GG recorded all five of the concertos, which area available as a set from
> SONY, but not separately. The set is definitely worth having. There are also
> one or two live recordings of #2, I believe from the early '50s.

And a live 1957 performance of #3 (Berlin/Karajan) was available both on
Memories HR 4415/16 and Virtuoso 2697062...pirate labels from Italy.
This early in GG's career his interpretation was more conventional than in
his commercial recording: not as recognizably GG, other than the
remarkable clarity of his fingerwork.

The opening tutti of the first movement gives an "uh-oh" moment: the
orchestra in its exuberance finishes pretty far sharp of the piano's
tuning, and our hero therefore makes a flat entrance.  But the orchestra
adjusts to it.

This is the concert that GG had played just before meeting Stokowski for
the first time.  Viz:

'Music per se was discussed only once.  By way of opening pleasantries, we
checked out itineraries (we were both taking part in the Vienna Festival
the following week), and I mentioned that I was en route from Berlin.
"What did you play there?" Stokowski inquired politely.  "The Beethoven
Third," I responded, then added, rather proudly, "with Karajan."  "The
Beethoven Third," Stokowski mused, as though attempting to recollect a web
of motives that, on one or two occasions, he might possibly have
encountered under lesser hands than his own.  "The Beethoven Third," he
said again.  "Is that not the lovely concerto in G major?"  It was a
superb gambit, and my first experience of the harmless games Stokowski
liked to play while putting the world, as he would have it, in perspective
for his interlocutors.  Lovely or otherwise, the Beethoven Third is in the
key of C minor, as Stokowski knew all too well; but in one seemingly
innocuous, skillfully indirect sentence, he had let me know that he was
not in awe of the "Generalmusikdirector of Europe," that soloists, as a
breed, were to be shunned on principle, and that concertos, as a symphonic
subspecies, were quite beneath his notice.' [Stokowski in Six Scenes]


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot