Word: beethoven
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Liszt's Fifth by Beethoven. In his concert days, when he was not singing along, Gould liked to conduct himself with whichever hand he could free at any moment. So it is not surprising that he has finally got around to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The piano transcription was written by Keyboard Demon Franz Liszt, meaning that both hands are too busy for shenanigans. Gould plays it in respectful dedication to both Liszt and Beethoven. The Fifth is largely free of Liszt's frequent pianistic bombastics and remarkably faithful to the original-save for an occasional missing...
...program Adams chose for the group demanded a far higher level of musical competence than one can reasonably expect of any undergraduate organization--even one as fine as BSO. The works, Mozart's overture to "The abduction from the Seraglio", Beethoven's Symphony No. 2, the Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 5, and Debussy's "L'Apres Midi d'une Faune", would trip up even the most agile professionals...
...this pass: set aside the slurred inner voices in the Mozart, the gaping holes in the Beethoven where one fully expects to hear second violins and violas, the cracking and blasting brass, the consistently out of tune winds. These are the agonized sounds (or silences) of musicians stretched beyond their capabilities...
There was an even more fundamental disparity between the orchestra and its program. The Bach Society simply does not have enough string players to cope with the grandness of Beethoven or the expansiveness of Debussy...
...winds were always successful in outblasting the strings and often completely obliterated the fiddlers who seemed in particular to be their mortal enemies. The leather-lunged trumpets vandalized the two outer movements of the Beethoven, while percussionists ran roughshod over the Mozart overture...