Guardian Guide to Symphonies

[james]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/s ... s

A list of the top 50 symphonies according to the Guardian. I could argue about who is left out (Honnegger ?) but of those included having Shostakovich represented by No 15 (rather than No 5 or No 10) just seems strange.

But -- its a good list if it encourages you to listen to old stuff (again) or even better to new stuff.

Also they include Beethoven No.8 but not No.7 .. Strange.

[Diapason]

I've a soft spot for the 8th because I studied it for v Leaving Cert music, but I don't think of it as being up there with the big boys.

In other news I heard the Saint Saens 3rd this evening in St Patrick's and the effect was magical. It's really something to hear the Symphony Orchestra in a bigger acoustic, and I really do love that piece. Warhorse or not, I think it's great music.

[mcq]

I love the brevity of the Eighth.  The master at his most succinct and most pared down and, I believe, one of his personal favourites.  The polar opposite of the mammoth Ninth in that the emotional expressivity that was the hallmark of Romanticism in general and Beethoven's symphonies in particular (and which reached its zenith in the Ninth) is reined in and you hear something more compressed and personal.  Certainly one symphony I have listened to a lot more in recent years and which I would reach for in preference to the Fifth, Sixth and Ninth (unless those works are subjected to the rinsing critical gaze of a Harnoncourt or a Gielen).

[james]

The conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky has just died .. RIP

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20 ... bituary

He had this to say about the Shostakovich fourth ..

"....
Shostakovich had been a central component in his repertoire throughout his years with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra (1961-74), and later with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra (1983-92), with whom he recorded a cycle of the symphonies that has never been surpassed in its raw intensity and unflinching harshness. Western orchestras, he felt, never understood Shostakovich in the same way.

He demonstrated the difference by recounting a rehearsal of the Fourth Symphony in Cleveland, Ohio, when the players were amused at the clicking of wood block, castanets and side-drum. “I asked them, ‘Why are you laughing?’ They replied, ‘Maestro, it sounds like horses’ hooves,’ and I said, ‘I do not agree with you one hundred per cent it’s horses.’ ‘But what is it? Explain.’ So I did: ‘One explanation is that it happens in prison, when the prisoners contact each other by …’ and I tapped the radiator to demonstrate this point. One of the musicians commented, ‘I cannot believe it, because it’s much easier for prisoners to phone each other.’” This anecdote was served up to demonstrate the difference in schooling between American and Russian musicians.
...."