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Beethoven’s 3rd, the symphony that changed everything…

Beethoven’s 3rd, the symphony that changed everything...

Beethoven’s 3rd, the symphony that changed everything…

 

 

 

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

that changed the history of music

it took the world

from what we called The Classical period

into a new one which we now call the

Romantic Period

I’m talking about of course Beethoven’s

Third Symphony Opus 55 the oroica in E

flat

and this Symphony

just was so massive in every respect

but before I play you some excerpts of

it and and talk about the music itself

maybe a little bit of context is

interesting here

It Was Written between 1803 and 1804 in

Vienna

and we have to imagine the world at this

period

the Industrial Revolution was really

underway

there was a new group of people who

could begin to afford products which

previously they couldn’t possibly buy

because the manufacturing processes were

too labor-intensive

and these factories were being built all

around Europe across the world in

America

and these factories obviously gave off a

lot of smoke made a lot of noise they

changed the the landscape people were

moving from the countryside into the

cities into the places where these

factories were

and they were noisy and smelly and dirty

and now the rivers and streams were

being polluted not just with biomass but

with all sorts of weird and wonderful

and strange concoctions in large

quantities and the artists of this time

the painters The Poets were reacting to

this and they were trying to reconnect

with nature

we had had two revolutions kings and

queens have been thrown out beheaded

families wiped out there was a new era

and in this massive change and time they

wanted to connect the romanticists as we

call now or Romanticism as we call it

now they were really connecting with the

Wonder of the universe The Wonder of the

nature not everything had to be about

Christianity and about God and Beethoven

found himself at this period of his life

which is sometimes called the beginning

of the middle period of his career

this period of his life

um

contemplating these big things and if

you had heard Beethoven’s first and

second Symphony but not heard any of his

other music and then compared it to the

great symphonist Joseph Haydn who was

born in 1732 and who wrote 104

Symphonies the last one being written

more or less 10 years earlier in 1795

the number 104 in D Major

he must have thought Joseph Haydn that

is that he had taken the symphonic form

just about as far as it could possibly

go of course we mustn’t forget Mozart

with his 41 Symphonies where he uses the

forms and structures that hide in the

sort of created

um and embellished and did his genius

work around them

but

Symphony Number Three Beethoven changes

it all

for a start it’s nearly twice as long as

Haydn’s last Symphony

it’s

almost the same length as Beethoven’s

First Symphony and second Symphony

combined

it uses powerful Fortes and pianissimos

Loud sections and quiet sections

and

because of all of these things

it’s scale it’s Grandeur it’s set the

way forward

and what’s more because of this new

money that’s floating around and a new

audience it allowed Beethoven to build

this audience and consequently there

were concert Halls being built all over

Europe

so these were kind of rivaling the Opera

Houses which were the popular thing

and it was indeed these concert Halls it

would be filled now with big orchestras

massive orchestras with choirs and the

need of conductors to hold it all

together but let’s get started

unlike my video on sibelius’s third

Symphony

where I compared the performance from

one conductor to another

for Simplicity

I have just Chosen One conductor for

this talk

I will put in the description below

many links to other Great Performances

and modern new and old

but I’ve chosen Herbert von carrion

vonkarian the great Austrian conductor

who conducted the Berlin Philharmonic

for 34 years

and was a very brilliant man but very

very ambitious and a perfectionist and

he wanted to get

the perfect sound out of his orchestra

he had this idea of how it should be

he even used to conduct with his eyes

closed so that he could hear and pick up

the sounds of the orchestra

and he recorded it the complete set of

Symphonies four times and some of the

Symphonies more than that

and I’m going to pick up not the very

first

recording but the second one in 1943

now what’s inspired this video is the

fact that I was invited by a very kind

man to visit him

um and to go through a record collection

that he had recently inherited and he

said I could take whatever I liked and I

found the first 53 version of Beethoven

three and the 63 10 years later and the

77. so with those three

I had nearly everything except he

recorded it again just before a few

years before he died in 1985 using

digital technology so I think

he wasn’t so much as

redoing them all because he wanted

something else to say to take it much

faster or slower no it was because the

technology every 10 years was evolving

so much that he knew that the wonderful

sounds he could get from the orchestra

could be captured so much better and

indeed the first one from 43s with the

philharmonia orchestra recorded for

Colombia philharmonia from London and

then the next ones were all with the

Berlin Philharmonic

so

let’s go let’s just take this record out

of it I find this really exciting this

is where LPS for me are fabulous because

this is a piece of history I mean it

really is incredible I mean this is not

in the most perfect condition it’s been

played very heavily it’s on the Columbia

label as I say

Symphony will open with two chords two

big Forte chords bomb boom and then

it’ll go straight in to the First theme

piano and this is typical of the

Romantic Period it didn’t mean

lovey-dovey it meant passion and energy

it meant about composers

expressing how they feel how how they

really are and it wasn’t

that’s what it means and Beethoven did

it

and he started it he was the very first

and it was personified obviously in the

Fifth Symphony later on but let’s first

of all go to the this one now the two

chords

coming soon

[Music]

excuse the crackles and the pops

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now I was discussing

with the conductor Michelle tilcan a

little while ago what is it about

Beethoven and Michelle said well I love

conducting Beethoven because there’s a

tune around every corner there’s just so

many great tunes and it’s absolutely

right you know and he was the master of

the melody but it’s it’s it’s the

Creations that he did and the passion

and the energy I want you to listen to

this opening one more time

because there’s going to be something

very significant about it

I want you to hear the the two bars

again the two chords

and listen to how that Melody comes in

and let’s just

do it one more time

here we go

[Music]

notice that Melody comes straight in

it’s on the cellos they’re playing an E

flat and they’re leading it whilst the

other strings are going

right

now let’s compare that

with the 63 recording

and C

if you can hear

the point I want to make because it’s an

important point

let’s make sure I put the right side on

all right

here we go the two chords first

[Music]

now

did you hear a difference

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firstly the two opening bars the two

opening chords are recorded wider I

don’t know if my microphones here will

pick that up but if you listen to it

you’ll see it’s a bigger sound

and you’ll also hear that that very

first note on the cellos is slightly

understated in the 53 version it’s

[Music]

here is that bar is not so quite so hard

and slightly feels like it’s slightly

delayed but it’s still there

but the most important thing is not that

it’s something else and to illustrate

that

I’m going to flip over

to my wonderful streaming device and

this is where they come into play Not

only because of their quality although I

have to say that some of the quality of

the streaming is really bad I don’t know

why it is um it’s really best if you can

get the CDs made from them it will give

a much better sound

let’s just first of all play again

the 63 version ready let’s just zoom it

in

okay now listen to the 53 version

do you hear the pitch difference the 53

version is lower I’ll play it again

here’s the 63.

right

and here’s the 53.

[Music]

and then if I listen to the 85 version

here we go

he infer that with this

now I’ve seen on the internet people

saying oh it might be about the

technology and the records and actually

I think it is

the fact that the symphony orchestra was

tuned at a lower pitch

please correct me if you have proof to

know and otherwise but I honestly think

that the

the concert Master the first violinist

in those days used and still today

chooses the pitch of which the orchestra

will be tuned and in although there was

a kind of a universal agreement in 1929

that a440 would be the pitch

orchestras up to a quite late were

deciding for themselves and even today

they are often it’s four four one four

four two

uh sorry yeah four four one four four

two sorry

um

but in those days a lot of times

orchestras played even at 4-3-2 and

there’s a guy in Belgium I can’t

remember the name of the company we’ll

Flip It Up

who makes a DAC where you can play all

the music from 440 that you have as 432

and it just lowers the pitch he believes

it sounds better he believes that

psychologically there’s a better thing

because the algorithms or whatever work

better at that point personally I don’t

quite see it but I’m told it’s an

extremely good deck and and you can just

choose what pitch you want to play so

that doesn’t matter but I just put in as

an aside so you can hear the pitch is

different but also did you notice that

the first note as I say of that Melody

isn’t quite as pronounced as it is in

the 53 version one more time the 53

version

um one second

right here we go

let’s go back

it’s really clear isn’t it the cellos

are right in the front of the mix

and if we now move

to the 77 version on my record and this

is a nice version when

we talk about albums don’t we don’t

really talk about LPS now I know now we

talk about vinyl but we talk about

albums and but someone’s brought out a

new album well this is the reason why we

call them albums because in the old days

it took so many records to actually have

one Symphony on it that actually they

put them into an album

um and that is that kind of word stuck

but of course this is just the box set

it’s not really an album as such but I

just thought I’d put it in as an aside

here is the 77 version whoops

you see you wouldn’t want me in your

kitchen cooking away I I’d have

everything so confused

here we go the 77 77 version

and I want you to listen to that very

first note

uh we’ll just pop this back

one two three

all right

do you hear

it’s almost disappeared or it’s delayed

the first thing you hear

actually are the violins aren’t they

or let’s just listen again so well

certainly the violas

listen again

you see it’s almost like there’s a note

missing

it’s interesting and that’s how most

composers conductors conduct this work

they conduct it

with that kind of opening Simon Rattle

Bernard heitink

um it’s it’s it’s interesting

but not all

but let’s let it play through a bit more

[Music]

Beethoven’s such a genius for letting

things grow

[Music]

and now we have this wonderful Melody

and phrase and this pressing is really

good there’s no noise

[Music]

the dynamic range on the vinyl is

incredible

[Music]

well I mean you can listen to this at

home in a much better quality than just

through a YouTube video from my

Listening Room

but

I think it’s an interesting exercise now

Beethoven’s Third Symphony

is probably I don’t know if it’s

probably more famous for its second

movement

than it is for the first because the

second movement is indeed the movement

of the funeral March and this movement

is so beautiful it it it transforms into

so many different moods and passions and

all sorts of feelings of loss of sadness

and then this moments of euphoria in it

where your joy in that sadness like you

find often in in Flamenco or Portuguese

Pardo but let’s just um pop on the 77

version of beginning of the slow

movement here we come

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

with a better recording techniques of 77

he could get a lot of bigger dynamic

range you can get more Purity in the

sound but that really comes to a head in

the 85 Edition which you recorded just a

couple of years before he died

foreign

[Music]

now

I don’t know why

[Music]

but this version

the 85 version wasn’t very critically

acclaimed the the 63 version

won the Grand Prix the disc in Paris and

was highly acclaimed and to this day

it’s considered to be the version

in many by many Beethoven lovers

but I don’t know I think this is worth a

second visit

in fact I’ve ordered the CD because I

want to get the best quality I can

and he’s taking this pace

so nicely

it’s a funeral

isn’t that subtle isn’t that beautiful

and of course there’s so many great

conductors

now

let’s see what happens when we come to

the third movement

now typical third movement of a symphony

starting out of the sort of Allegro Pace

lifting out from the second movement

[Music]

nicely building the orchestra is just so

perfectly on control in control

now

the compo the composition of this piece

is when you’re listening to it because

it’s so long

by the time you get to the end of the

third movement you could be forgiven for

thinking that it’s actually the end of

the symphony itself

because let me just pop it onto the

vinyl in fact this is a bit easier on

the vinyl

because I can pop in here

[Music]

typical Beethoven and 70 70 carry On’s

going crazy here

he’s building typical Beethoven phrase a

building

[Music]

really

[Music]

here we go

[Music]

now any reasonable person may think

that’s the end of the symphony but it

isn’t

Beethoven decides to record to a good

Society to composer sorry

um a finale it is a Fourth Movement it’s

often now it was referred to as a finale

and it’s actually

I can’t say it’s a way of showing off

but it’s a way of the variation on the

theme and some

um

experts say that he probably wrote this

finale first and then work back to the

first movement and went through because

there are certain themes that go through

all the way through have a listen here

to the beginning of the finale

[Music]

here we go

[Music]

think of the Ninth Symphony you can see

elements of where it comes from

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in the finale

[Music]

you have no idea where it’s

gonna go you know it’s gonna go

somewhere

[Music]

and here we are really back in a sort of

classical phrase

and this is the genius of Beethoven he’s

always taking you somewhere unexpected

please

but of course there has to be an end

and the end for Beethoven of the finale

is stupendous

and we’re just going to bring that one

back up

and I’ll just

and here we come

thank you

foreign

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foreign

I mean that’s Beethoven that is the

beginning of the Romantic Period

there was nothing quite like it ever

before and you can see where he builds

on

well I’m going to close this little talk

with a little video of

Herbert vankarian conducting this

Symphony just a little clip for you to

show you he was a bit of a showman he

loved the media and he loved you know

these beautiful films

um but he created this Aura which I

think we have to thank him for even if

he’s not our first choice as interpreter

of Beethoven’s music well

if you have been thank you for watching

I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you

in the next video but until then

enjoy the music

[Music]

I love you

[Music]

thank you

[Music]

foreign

[Applause]

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foreign

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