the audio analyst© Episode 2 Guilty Treasure: Beethoven Symphony No. 9

[Damon Von Schweikert]

I'm excited to have another voice on YouTube sharing their experiences and hopefully introducing new music lovers to this hobby we all love. Enjoy!

 

[astrotoy]

Thanks for posting this. Glad you also play it at audio shows. Harry Pearson loved this album and chose it as one of his vinyl TAS Superdiscs (in the Decca pressing). The chief engineer for the recording was the great Kenneth Wilkerson, assisted by Gordon Parry (who was the engineer for the great Solti Ring cycle in Vienna). I am fortunate to have a copy of the master tape on a 15ips 2 track dub. BTW, the beginning of the famous fourth movement plays segments of each of the first three movements, orchestrally rejecting each of them before starting the vocal section. When the baritone starts singing, he says (in German) "Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us instead strike up more pleasing and more joyful ones!" And then starts Schiller's Ode to Joy.

People who are old enough may remember the second movement scherzo as the ending theme music for the NBC Nightly News with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley from the mid '50's to 1970.

https://www.networknewsmusic.com/huntley-brinkley-report-theme/

Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth at the Berlin Wall at Christmas, 1989 to celebrate its fall. He died a few months later. The apocryphal story is that Sony decided on the maximum length of the CD based on the desire to have the complete symphony (74 minutes long) on one CD.

Larry

 

[Damon Von Schweikert]

Thanks for sharing Larry, much appreciated! I find the stories surrounding these recordings we love to be as enjoyable to discover as the actual music.

 

[Al M.]

Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth at the Berlin Wall at Christmas, 1989 to celebrate its fall. He died a few months later.

He replaced in "Freude, schöner Götterfunken" ("Joy, beautiful spark of the Gods") the word "Freude" (Joy) with "Freiheit" (Freedom).

It was controversial, but perhaps fitting for the occasion.