Exhilarating Beethoven - and others
I was listening to Beethoven's Violin Concerto recently. It is of course a magnificent work, one of Beethoven's best, and, in my humble opinion, probably the greatest Violin Concerto ever written - Brahms being the main "rival".
The final movement is truly exhilarating. There is a passage when the orchestra just seems to be seized with unconfined joy. It's the passage where Scott Goddard (in "The Concerto" ed. Ralph Hill") says the orchestra "adds its own special robust and gay ending" to the first theme (he was writing in 1949, when the word "gay" only had one sort of meaning).
My knowledge of the "classical" repertoire (in the broad sense of the term) will be much less than many on this forum. Here is a list of pieces of music I find especially exhilarating. They are not necessarily particularly beautiful or moving - those sorts of passages are usually in slow movements, or slow parts of movements. But these exhilarating passages usually seem to cheer me up. They also can, I am slightly ashamed to say, sometimes get me out of my chair, and waving and pumping my arms, pretending I am conducting.
Beethoven. Violin Concerto, 3rd. movement.
Mozart. Symphony #35 "Haffner", 4th. movement.
Mozart. Symphony #39 in Eb, 4th. movement.
Mozart. Overture to "The Marriage of Figaro".
Wagner. Overture to "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg".
Any suggestions of other pieces of music I, or someone else, could react to in a similar way?
Regards to all,
Frank
The final movement is truly exhilarating. There is a passage when the orchestra just seems to be seized with unconfined joy. It's the passage where Scott Goddard (in "The Concerto" ed. Ralph Hill") says the orchestra "adds its own special robust and gay ending" to the first theme (he was writing in 1949, when the word "gay" only had one sort of meaning).
My knowledge of the "classical" repertoire (in the broad sense of the term) will be much less than many on this forum. Here is a list of pieces of music I find especially exhilarating. They are not necessarily particularly beautiful or moving - those sorts of passages are usually in slow movements, or slow parts of movements. But these exhilarating passages usually seem to cheer me up. They also can, I am slightly ashamed to say, sometimes get me out of my chair, and waving and pumping my arms, pretending I am conducting.
Beethoven. Violin Concerto, 3rd. movement.
Mozart. Symphony #35 "Haffner", 4th. movement.
Mozart. Symphony #39 in Eb, 4th. movement.
Mozart. Overture to "The Marriage of Figaro".
Wagner. Overture to "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg".
Any suggestions of other pieces of music I, or someone else, could react to in a similar way?
Regards to all,
Frank
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