Word: eroica
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Early one morning Chile's National Symphony Orchestra played the great funeral march from Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony. The black, copper coffin was placed upon a gun carriage and draped with the single-starred banner of the Republic. Then the cortege moved to Santiago Cathedral, where Archbishop Jose Maria Caro celebrated a two-hour Solemn High Mass for the soul of the man who had fixed low prices for the bread upon which millions of Chileans chiefly depend...
...common report on the two new recordings of the "Eroica" is unfortunately true. Toscanini's performance on Victor, exciting as it is, suffers dreadfully from the poor acoustics of the NBC studio, where it was recorded during the Beethoven cycle last year. The studio is probably more satisfactory for radio broadcasting than a concert-hall, as it is arranged so that every note comes over with perfect clarity. But for a permanent recording, one wants resonance as well as clarity, and the tone in this album is so flat and dead as to make the set very unpleasant...
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") in E Flat Major (New York Philharmonic-Symphony conducted by Bruno Walter; Columbia; 12 sides; $6.50; and NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini; Victor; 13 sides; $7). Two versions of Beethoven's heroic symphony whose original dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte was canceled because the Bonaparte pretensions displeased the composer, present the customers with a tough choice. The Walter version is warm, well-recorded the best of recent Philharmonic discs. The Toscanini job is full of Beethoven's energy, but the recording-taken from a radio performance-sounds boxy...
...great intellect, great poetry if you like, it is not great drama in the sense that the first movement is. It tends to stagnate instead of sweeping impetuously ahead. Brahms fails, in this movement, to master the theme and variations form as Beethoven does in the finale of the Eroica. His variations fall apart; they never quite coalesce into dramatic inevitability...
MUSIC : HEROIC AND MAJESTIC . . . SUCH AS CODA OR FINALE OF BEETHOVEN'S EROICA...