Sunday, October 30, 2011

Hardest Symphony to Start?

For the first time in some time, I put the Carlos Kleiber recording of Beethoven's 5th on the turntable thing morning; while listening, I was reminded of a Georg Solti comment about how difficult it is to start the symphony (I tried finding a direct quote, but to no avail).

If one looks at the score, one can see why:


Three problems.  The piece is very fast (Allegro con brio); the piece starts off the beat; and it is easy to turn those straight eighth-notes (or quavers, as they say in England) into triplets.  It would help to beat a silent measure before beginning, but I am sure that is not a cool thing for a professional conductor to do.


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