Word: beethovens
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...emphasis is on the heavy, special (and higher-priced) gift books (TIME, Dec. 8). The newly translated French food classic, Larousse Gastronomique ($20), has proved the bestselling sleeper of the season. As for records, the rule is, when in doubt, buy a collection (selected opera arias, the nine Beethoven symphonies, etc.) rather than single issues...
When Karl's father died. Beethoven took the boy away from his mother, whose casual amours he denounced like a wrathful prophet-a recriminating compensation, some biographers say, for the syphilis Beethoven picked up in his own youth. He prescribed music for Karl, then philosophy. But Karl was no genius and joined the army instead. Beethoven was full of advice. In letter after letter, he upbraided the boy: "What distresses me most of all is the thought of the consequences which you will suffer as a result of your behaviour. No one will believe or trust...
...faithfully translated and copiously annotated as they are, these letters explain everything about Beethoven except his music. "Beethoven's letters are full of sham rhetoric, so obviously sincere," writes Biographer Alan Pryce-Jones. "He never learned to use words, let alone spell them, and scarcely troubled to attach more than an oblique meaning to them . . . He ran no risk of disseminating his feelings in the ordinary intercourse of humanity." Even while Beethoven was composing his finest works-the last quartets-his letters were concerned only with servants, publishers and nephew. Whence came the soaring grandeur and philosophic calm that...
...Beethoven's grand "Tempest" sonata (Op. 31, No. 2) dominated the program. Mr. Boyk's interpretation could be challenged here more than anywhere else. For example, he began at a Killing tempo, and it ended up wounding him; the first movement was too fast. While he had never swelled beyond a forte in the first two numbers of the program, here he used his six-foot build to advantage: the Steinway really stomped. Again in the third movement, an "Allegretto," Boyk travelled presto. As a result, he had to stretch rhythms at the crucial transitions. But the music's momentum...
...like a new orchestra. The sound is still heavier than that of U.S. orchestras but the heaviness no longer gets in the way of the music making. The Philharmonic contributed some performances nobody could forget-a shimmering Ravel Daphnis and Chloe, a surgingly powerful Bruckner Seventh Symphony, a glowing Beethoven Third, all of them conveyed with darkly colored intensity...