Beethoven and the New Year

[Andrea]

What a wonderful way to bring in the New Year here in Vienna, Austria - fireworks and Beethoven's Sym.#9.

After toasting the New Year the traditional Viennese way, for my husband and I, we drank Sekt and watched the skies over Heiligenstadt light up with fireworks while on the TV the music from Beethoven's 9th played. This was the 1980 concert where Leonard Bernstein conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at our Vienna State Opera House. Heaven...

[Chris]

Sounds good. I did nothing, as usual.

[Joy]

Andrea, that sounds like a wonderful way to bring in the New Year. Chris (I'm sorry).
As for me, my family and I rung in the New Year toasting with some wine and listening to a lot of firecrackers going off. They did play Beethoven's 9th during the day as well.

Joy

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by Andrea:
What a wonderful way to bring in the New Year here in Vienna, Austria - fireworks and Beethoven's Sym.#9.

After toasting the New Year the traditional Viennese way, for my husband and I, we drank Sekt and watched the skies over Heiligenstadt light up with fireworks while on the TV the music from Beethoven's 9th played. This was the 1980 concert where Leonard Bernstein conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at our Vienna State Opera House. Heaven...

Andrea,
Happy New Year to you and all. How nice for you to be able to see that concert. I have a CD of VPO/Bernstein doing the 9th, it's one of my favorite versions. 1987 I think, but in any case, I listened to it yet again, and enjoyed it as much as ever, even with the overly long adagio!! ;-))
Regards to one and all,
Gurn

[ann hathaway]

Andrea, such a wonderful experience, Beethovens 9th, with fireworks!
I was listening to mine at home.
I thought you might be interested read this vivid impression of how the music struck, Kanne, you may have heard of him;

"Like a volcano, Beethovens power of imagination tears the earth asunder when it tries to check his fiery progress, with marvellous persistence, it develops figures which at first sight seem almost bizarre but which the master, through skill, transforms into a stream of graceful elaborations that refuse to end, swinging upward, step by step, to ever more brilliant heights. With inexhaustible creative power, the master places new obstacles in the path of his upward-rushing stream of fire. He impedes it with tied figures that cut across one other....He inverts his phrases, forcing them down into terrifying depths, and then uniting them in a ray that stands out against the clouds and disappears high up in an entirely unexpected unison....He gives the eye no rest! He transforms the intire mass of his figures into a transfigured, blue fire, like a scene painter".


Kanne dramatizes the quality of antagonism that subsequent commentators develop into fully-fledged scenarios: the earth tries to impede the rage of Beethovens fire.


For me, the 9th is like a divine revalation
and i cannot be weaned off it.

Bravo Beethoven! Bravo!