Word: eroica
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...energy, and ever more confident of his powers. As one would expect from this conductor, there is no arbitrary tampering with tempos, or other excesses marching under the banner of personal insight. Karajan accepts the boundary lines and then plays the game for all he is worth. His Eroica, for example, is a shade faster than before, his Fourth broader, darker, more ruminative. But what really sets this album, apart-from its ancestors and competitors alike-is its distinctive blend of youthful pizazz and seasoned know...
Beethoven: Sonata No. 21 in C (Waldstein), Eroica Variations (Pianist Emanuel Ax, RCA). Since winning the Artur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Israel in 1974, Emanuel Ax has devoted himself on records primarily to Chopin, and expertly so. Here he turns to Beethoven with a dream technique that more than meets the virtuoso demands of both works. But unlike many a prizewinner, he has much more than dexterity going for him. Ax controls the music completely, not it him. Such ease, logic and warmth suggest that he is a Beethoven pianist to keep...
...long ago Abravanel received a call from some citizens of Dillon, Mont., inviting him to perform there. "We're just a bunch of cowboys," he was told. "Play anything you want." Replied Abravanel: "I think you deserve the best." Dillon was treated to Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony. After the first movement there was an ovation. Abravanel explained that the symphony had four movements, so would the audience please save the applause until the end. The audience obediently counted; unfortunately, there was only a slight pause between the third and fourth movements, so that when the symphony crescendoed...
...unsentimental romanticist, Solti works easily within the huge design of the Eroica. He treats the long first movement almost as an extended phrase. If he lacks something of the rhythmic intensity of Toscanini, Solti nevertheless fuses the conflicting elements of the symphony into a coherent whole with no sacrifice of tonal beauty. The sad serenity of the adagio of the Ninth Symphony surges to the famed choral movement with stunning emotional impact. Partisans will want to stick with some of the classic interpretations: Toscanini's Seventh, for instance, or the Erich Kleiber/Amsterdam Concertgebouw Fifth. But for consistent clarity, warmth...
...case, she declares that Beethoven's art is more important than Napoleon's military skill-"an art," she unkindly notes, "highly wasteful of its materials." Napoleon, whose mind or spirit at this point is soaring like the last movement of "The Eroica, "appears to get the message: musical forms may reveal divine essences, while his own kinetic life has been shaped by a gargantuan but finite will, whose only form was eventually a form of selfdelusion. Napoleon Symphony is, in some sense, an entertaining and elaborate joke. What the punch line comes down to is the simple fact...