Word: beethovens
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...outside, and it is underneath its cloth top that he appears to feel truly at home. He has a piece of bread and a glass of camel's milk for breakfast, a regimen he has kept since he was a boy. He says he likes Western classical music, especially Beethoven, and that his favorite book is Uncle Tom's Cabin. With a kind of adolescent romanticism, he thinks of himself as a Bedouin Byron. "I am a poet," he told a German interviewer. "From time to time, I weep, but only when I am alone...
Scandalous! Miss Honeychurch likes to play Beethoven on the pianoforte. This is not a composer with whom respectable young Edwardian women are supposed to become emotionally involved. And indeed, playing him makes her feel "peevish," or perhaps guilty at allowing this expression of her passionate inner nature to burst...
MENDELSSOHN: Five Symphonies; Three Overtures. Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon; 4 LPs or CDs). Imagine the history of 19th century music if Felix Mendelssohn had been the great romantic icon instead of Beethoven. In place of egocentric storms there would be grace and lucidity; instead of anguish there would be serenity and inner peace. The masterpieces produced by such disparate composers as Brahms, Wagner and Mahler % under Beethoven's spell are justly prized, of course, but the romantics could have used a little less irascibility and more agreeability...
...offering crisp, incisive performances. The "Italian" Symphony explodes in a burst of melody, its irresistible opening theme a shout of joy, its finale a whirling saltarello. But Abbado is just as persuasive in the Symphony No. 2, a religious choral work subtitled Hymn of Praise. Although structurally similar to Beethoven's Ninth, Mendelssohn's symphony is its emotional antithesis: calm where Beethoven is uneasy, confident where Beethoven is questioning, sacred where Beethoven is secular. Mendelssohn's is the other face of romanticism, and this set argues his case eloquently...
BENNY GOODMAN: Private Collection. Chamber music of Brahms, Beethoven and Weber. Benny Goodman, clarinet, with Leon Pommers, piano, and the Berkshire String Quartet (Musicmasters; 2 LPs). The King of Swing's classical recording career dates back to 1938, when he recorded the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the Budapest String Quartet. These performances of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Trio in A Minor, Beethoven's Op. 11 Trio for piano, clarinet and cello, and Weber's Clarinet Quintet, which date from about 25 years ago, are | distinguished by Goodman's bright, bracing tone and fleet fingerwork. Although the clarinet naturally predominates...