Haitink's Beethoven 6 with the LSO

[Bonn1827]

The 2006 recording of LSO/Haitink's version of LvB's 6th Symphony has greeted me upon my return from holiday. I am hugely disappointed in it. A live recording, but it simply just doesn't soar where it should. The playing is ho-hum. Anyone else who might have this recording may care to comment and, possibly, recommend a good version of this wonderful symphony please.

[Peter]

I'd recommend either Gunter Wand/North German Radio Symphony Orchestra or
Karl Bohm/Vienna Philharmonic.

[Michael]

I'd recommend either Gunter Wand/North German Radio Symphony Orchestra or
Karl Bohm/Vienna Philharmonic.

Exactly my choices! It's amazing how difficult it is to find a satisfactory "Pastoral". Leonard Bernstein gives a fine account with the NYSO (an old recording - 1962 or so - but it sounds great.) Karajan should never have been left within a mile of it - especially in his 1962 set where he leaves out the repeat in the scherzo.
I was reading a review of a recent concert where Roger Norrington gave a really fresh and brisk account of the symphony. This conductor actively encourages applause between movements and does his best to take the "stuffiness" out of this music. At the start of the "Storm" movement, he gave a nervous glance up at the ceiling, causing the audience to dissolve into laughter.

[Joy]

Exactly my choices! It's amazing how difficult it is to find a satisfactory "Pastoral". Leonard Bernstein gives a fine account with the NYSO (an old recording - 1962 or so - but it sounds great.) Karajan should never have been left within a mile of it - especially in his 1962 set where he leaves out the repeat in the scherzo.
I was reading a review of a recent concert where Roger Norrington gave a really fresh and brisk account of the symphony. This conductor actively encourages applause between movements and does his best to take the "stuffiness" out of this music. At the start of the "Storm" movement, he gave a nervous glance up at the ceiling, causing the audience to dissolve into laughter.

That's very funny about the conductor nervously glancing at the ceiling during that part, I love that! The last two weeks has been a Beethoven festival here at the Phoenix Symphony and they performed the 6th very good too I thought and, of course, it is different when you hear it at a live performance, the excitement and all.

[Roehre]

I'd recommend either Gunter Wand/North German Radio Symphony Orchestra or
Karl Bohm/Vienna Philharmonic.

The latter is my absolute favourite, and i'd like to illustrate this choice of mine with just one example:

Listen to the 5th mvt, starting 4'11 (bar 117) where after the "schepherd's singing" has been heard twice (one + an alternative of that one), the music goes quiet.

Here you hear beneath the whirling first violins a little four note motiv pizzicato played piano by the 2nd violins, supported by pizzicato chords piano in the 'celli.

It goes on and then (bar 125) it is heard crescendo played staccato but with the bow by the first violins "accompanied" by the violas pizzicato repeating this motive.

This again goes on, slightly crescendo, and then suddenly (bar 133) the orchestra "answers" with a full chord, and that little motive from the beginning is heard fortissimo in the horns, supported by trumpets.

This passage ends at 5'04 (bar 140).

Böhm is one of the very few to illustrate this passage as brilliantly as he does here.

[Quijote]

The latter is my absolute favourite, and i'd like to illustrate this choice of mine with just one example:

Listen to the 5th mvt, starting 4'11 (bar 117) where after the "schepherd's singing" has been heard twice (one + an alternative of that one), the music goes quiet.

Here you hear beneath the whirling first violins a little four note motiv pizzicato played piano by the 2nd violins, supported by pizzicato chords piano in the 'celli.

It goes on and then (bar 125) it is heard crescendo played staccato but with the bow by the first violins "accompanied" by the violas pizzicato repeating this motive.

This again goes on, slightly crescendo, and then suddenly (bar 133) the orchestra "answers" with a full chord, and that little motive from the beginning is heard fortissimo in the horns, supported by trumpets.

This passage ends at 5'04 (bar 140).

Böhm is one of the very few to illustrate this passage as brilliantly as he does here.

Very perceptive comments, Roehre, well done. But as Boulez would say, it's all in the score. Isn't it?

[Michael]

The latter is my absolute favourite, and i'd like to illustrate this choice of mine with just one example:

Listen to the 5th mvt, starting 4'11 (bar 117) where after the "schepherd's singing" has been heard twice (one + an alternative of that one), the music goes quiet.

Here you hear beneath the whirling first violins a little four note motiv pizzicato played piano by the 2nd violins, supported by pizzicato chords piano in the 'celli.

It goes on and then (bar 125) it is heard crescendo played staccato but with the bow by the first violins "accompanied" by the violas pizzicato repeating this motive.

This again goes on, slightly crescendo, and then suddenly (bar 133) the orchestra "answers" with a full chord, and that little motive from the beginning is heard fortissimo in the horns, supported by trumpets.

This passage ends at 5'04 (bar 140).

Böhm is one of the very few to illustrate this passage as brilliantly as he does here.

I remember buying that recording when it came out in the seventies. I actually bought two copies because one of them had a loud click somewhere. Ah, the joys of vinyl!

[Quijote]

[...]Ah, the joys of vinyl!

Good Lord, I always thought you were into latex! How easy it is to misjudge people.
A quick question : which was composed first, the sixth or the fifth?

[Michael]

Good Lord, I always thought you were into latex! How easy it is to misjudge people.
A quick question : which was composed first, the sixth or the fifth?

This is a hard question to answer as Beethoven often worked on several compositions at the same time.
If you mean which was "completed" first, I would guess the Fifth. I believe it was started soon after the Eroica but he ran into difficulties and took a break from it. The result was the Fourth Symphony. There is a theory that the slow introduction to that work gave him the idea of connecting the third movement of the C minor to the blazing finale. (The third Razumovsky was composed around the same period and has a similar dark opening to the B flat symphony.)
But then again, some sketches for the slow movement of the Pastoral were floating around even before all this.
Damn it, I don't know! All this is off the top of my head and subject to correction. It doesn't help either to know that at the famous concert of 1808 where these works had their premiere, the Pastoral was described as his "Fifth" symphony and the C minor as his "Sixth".
Can I phone a friend?

[Quijote]

No. You can 'phone a fiend. Me. Have you heard of Skype?

[Michael]

No. You can 'phone a fiend. Me. Have you heard of Skype?

Nope. What kind of stuff does he write?

[Quijote]

I'll send you a private message to discuss, Michael. We have to keep focused on Beethoven and so on, and I don't want to incur Peter's wrath.
Back to Beethoven's 5th and 6th, I don't know either, really.

[Michael]

Back to Beethoven's 5th and 6th, I don't know either, really.

Sorry! Could you repeat that .....?

[Quijote]

Erm, I mean, .. er ,... what?

[Quijote]

Oh, I see. I don't really know either which was completed first, or which was "conceived" first. Oh dear, this is well past my bed time.