Word: beethovens
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What did they play? Mostly what they always have. The overture to Wagner's Die Meistersinger was done 127 times, making it the most played single item-possibly because it is in C major, the easiest key to play in. Brahms' First Symphony ranks second (114 performances). Beethoven's Fifth, whose dit-dit-dit-dah victory opening can be whistled by more nonmusical people than any other classical theme, is way down to 39th place on the list, as against tenth last year. Mozart is the most popular composer (1,627 performances overall), with Beethoven and Brahms...
...hearing grows worse and worse," Beethoven wrote in 1801. "A medical ass prescribed tea for my ear." Ever since his death in 1827, scholars have speculated that poor circulation, syphilis or typhoid fever might have been the cause. Not so, say Drs. Kenneth M. Stevens and William G. Hemenway of the University of Colorado Medical Center in the A.M.A. Journal. Beethoven's deafness was probably caused by cochlear otosclerosis, which today might be corrected by surgery. In this disorder, bony overgrowths within the inner ear cavity interfere with the transformation of vibrations into nerve impulses, and thus prevent their...
...Beethoven was 27 when he first noticed loss of hearing for high tones. This is too young either for circulatory disease or for late syphilitic damage. Typhoid is more plausible. Without examining the composer's temporal bones, no one can be certain. When his skull was exhumed in 1863 and 1888, those bones were missing. Evidently they were saved at the time of the original autopsy. Stevens and Hemenway conclude that "perhaps in a forgotten cellar in Vienna, a small formalin-filled jar holds the answer...
Szell's loss to the world of music, like Toscanini's before him, is incalculable. The two conductors resembled each other in many ways, though they had arrived at the resemblance by opposite paths. The Italian had brought Verdian passion to the Viennese world of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, restraining his fire with a rigorous intellectualism. Szell, born in Hungary and schooled in Vienna, brought a Viennese richness and Teutonic thoroughness to the mainstream of Central European music, touching it with a fierce temperament unheard of in most Germanic conductors. He had enough dramatic depth to disdain mere...
...opening piece, Mozart's Symphony No. 34 in C. Major, K 388, went well. It is in three movements, not a major work by any means, but an interesting idea. This work was accompanied by some silly program notes apologizing for it because, the writer says, compared to Beethoven "Mozart emerges as a trivial blank," when judged emotionally. I suppose program note writers have to make a living, just like everyone else...