{"id":164,"date":"2007-01-09T23:22:03","date_gmt":"2007-01-10T07:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/?p=164"},"modified":"2013-02-07T17:58:07","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T01:58:07","slug":"beethoven-in-lake-wobegone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/09\/beethoven-in-lake-wobegone\/","title":{"rendered":"beethoven in lake wobegone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beethoven<\/a><\/p>\n

This week we’re doing a program which includes Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (along with Ives’ Unanswered Question<\/em>, a percussion concerto by Christopher Rouse (with soloist Colin Currie), and Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger<\/em>).<\/p>\n

It’s been a while since I’d listened to a recording of any of the Beethoven symphonies (the last time was after buying the awe-inspiring DVD set of Claudio Abbado<\/a> and the Berlin Philharmonic<\/a> performing the cycle live), so I thought that I’d go to iTunes and download<\/a> the Minnesota Orchestra<\/a>‘s recording under the direction of their music director, Osmo V\u00c3\u00a4nks\u00c3\u00a4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What grabbed me first were the sonics of the recording. In a word, stunning clarity (ok, two words). Ask for more words and you’d get depth and warmth in addition to the clarity. There seems to have been relatively little in the way of tinkering with the sound stage other than that the woodwinds seem to be artificially present on the aural stage. I don’t know the sonics of the hall or the stage at all, so that might just be something that they’ve accurately captured in the recording process. After the initial reaction to the acoustics, what is clear is that the Minnesota Orchestra has clearly risen to the top rank of US orchestras, and by extension, to the top rank of orchestras in the world. There is unanimity of phrasing that goes beyond mere “playing together” – it’s not just a matter of ensemble anymore. Tempos are fairly middle of the road, tending neither backward to the excesses of the middle of the last century (i.e. Klemperer, Karajan), nor adopting the aggressive, hyper-tempi of the historically-informed conductors (Zinman, Norrington) of this century. Flexibility, ease, and virtuosity go hand-in-hand in these accounts of the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, and I’m now eager to listen to the other volumes already released (thus far the Ninth, Third, and Eighth have been released). V\u00c3\u00a4nsk\u00c3\u00a4 has clearly inheirited a world-class orchestra and is transforming it into a front-rank world-class orchestra. Kudos to all of the fine musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra – represent<\/em>!<\/p>\n

On a side note, the orchestral formation is much as Beethoven might have used, with the first and second violins divided between left and right sides of the stage, and with the cellos on the left and violas on the right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week we’re doing a program which includes Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (along with Ives’ Unanswered Question, a percussion concerto by Christopher Rouse (with soloist Colin Currie), and Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger). It’s been a while since I’d listened to a recording of any of the Beethoven symphonies (the last time was after buying the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[86,55,62,3656,3660,3659],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-conductor","tag-orchestra","tag-symphony","tag-the-orchestra-world","tag-viola","tag-violin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-2E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6124,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/06\/opening-statements\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":0},"title":"opening statements","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 The concert the Oregon Symphony is presenting this weekend has been given the title \"A Pair of Sixth Symphonies\". The first of the pair is by a Czech composer who many have heard of, Bohuslav Martinu, but whose works most likely have remained unknown to the vast majority of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/kunsthandel_stephan_andreewitch_ansicht_von_wien_von_ptzleinsdorf_aus_gesehen_12573345815208-e1302140214362.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":989,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/23\/a-look-back-pt-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":1},"title":"a look back, pt. 1","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I thought I'd start off next Monday by taking a retrospective at the 2007-2008 OSO season, both on stage and off. But for now, a list of the works we performed this season on the Classical Subscription and Inside the Score series. I'm always somewhat dumbfounded when I look through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":105,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2006\/11\/15\/great-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":2},"title":"great criticism","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Alex Ross has an article in the week's New Yorker concerning recent Beethoven and Shostakovich symphony cycles, and it's a model for what I think music criticism should be: informative, contextual and insightful. Find the review here.","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":530,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/12\/classical-6-imix\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":3},"title":"Classical 6 iMix","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the iMix for this coming week's classical series concerts with conductor Hannu Lintu and cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. The recommended Sibelius recording is from a set recorded in the 60's by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. I'd' long heard that it was a landmark recording of the complete\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/spacer1.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7033,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/11\/01\/what-a-strange-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":4},"title":"what a strange week…","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This past week brought a concert that was one of my favorites of this season. The two major pieces on the program were the Beethoven Violin Concerto with soloist Karen Gomyo, and Carl Nielsen's Fourth Symphony \"The Inextinguishable\". Throw in the delightful, nostalgic little Copland \"Letter from Home\" and you've\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/KG_016a1-300x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/30\/rolled-over-by-beethoven\/","url_meta":{"origin":164,"position":5},"title":"rolled over by beethoven","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm convinced that there is no harder test of one's orchestral mettle than playing a Beethoven symphony - especially the Symphony No. 2. What a pain (literally - there are next to no rests for the violas, and we're busy all the time, scrubbing away or doing something that requires\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}