Beethoven’s 3rd, the symphony that changed everything…
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Beethoven’s such a genius for letting
things grow
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and now we have this wonderful Melody
and phrase and this pressing is really
good there’s no noise
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the dynamic range on the vinyl is
incredible
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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
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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
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now
I don’t know why
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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
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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
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typical Beethoven and 70 70 carry On’s
going crazy here
he’s building typical Beethoven phrase a
building
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really
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here we go
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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
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here we go
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think of the Ninth Symphony you can see
elements of where it comes from
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in the finale
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you have no idea where it’s
gonna go you know it’s gonna go
somewhere
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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
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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
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I love you
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thank you
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[Applause]
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