What are you listening to now?

[Peter]

Shostakovich Festive overture

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gDZTah8J2A[/YOUTUBE]

[Peter]

Stunning performance by György Cziffra of Schumann's fiendishly difficult Toccata

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NncHj0BKCps[/YOUTUBE]

[hal9000]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuA08MsNT_g[/YOUTUBE]

[Chris]

Good one, hal9000!

I love the Grosse Fuge, and I wish I had someone with whom to play the piano four hands version.

[Peter]

Schubert Quartettsatz played by the Amadeus quartet.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l06wDJIjQ2M[/YOUTUBE]

[Peter]

Brahms's beautiful 'Schicksalslied' in a great performance by Phillip Herreweghe

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8CNpFu_7Q[/YOUTUBE]

[Michael]

Schumann: Fourth Symphony.

[Zevy]

String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

Budapest String Quartet — Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 — Live Recording
I'm trying to get into the "Heiliger Dankgesang"

[Sorrano]

Mahler: Symphony No. 6

[Michael]

Schubert's Ninth. (This guy could have passed them all out if he lived even twenty years longer.)

[Zevy]

Amadeus String Quartet — Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132

[Michael]

Budapest String Quartet — Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 — Live Recording
I'm trying to get into the "Heiliger Dankgesang"

I found this video very interesting and enlightening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c-R544gF8s

[hal9000]

I watched that recently Michael, which is odd since the video was posted in 2008 and I'm surprised I hadn't seen it sooner. I agree with the top comment in that very few times in these piece analysis lectures do you hear anew something you've listened to hundreds of times.

[Zevy]

That's where I was coming from, Michael & Hal. At least I understand better the form and the theory of the Lydian mode.
These late quartets emphasize the inner battle I have. 95% of me says that Beethoven wrote such great music. Then there's this 5% saying, wait - this is mad stuff!

[hal9000]

Schubert's Ninth. (This guy could have passed them all out if he lived even twenty years longer.)

I remember watching an interview with Horowitz on youtube and he said the same thing. He didn't even reach the age in which Beethoven composed the turning point in his musical development in the Eroica. It's a depressing thought what the world has lost with Schubert and Mozart passing so early. Hell, I wish Beethoven had lived 10 more years and given us a couple more symphonies - with his late string quartets as inspiration for a new path, any new symphony would have surely been pretty radical at the time, or maybe he would have scaled back completely but with more life experience and spiritual insight. Op 135 has airings of acceptance and affirmation of life's transience (the last movement especially), and the last piece he ever wrote was one of his most upbeat pieces of music, the coda of which is so perky and full of step that maybe a happier Beethoven would have emerged. But who knows? All three gave us so much great music that takes a lifetime to explore that I can't lament the loss too much.