The Symphonist

#NewReleases2024: a 🧵 of every new classical release I listen to in 2024. Want to listen too? Then follow my playlist. Maybe you'll discover your new favourite record. open.spotify.com/playlist/6Rvz0…

Keir Starmer's new private healthcare deal will NOT help patients see their doctor quicker. The Conservatives tried it for the last 4 years. It failed. Ask your MP to demand the government invest in the solutions that are working. @We_ownit weownit.org.uk/nhs

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7/ Critics, however, were quick to put the boot into the "atrocious potboiler" (Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock). Beethoven, who made a packet from the piece, defended it in no uncertain terms: “Was ich scheisse ist besser als du je gedacht!” youtu.be/_NsQsveoFx8

#TheCompleteBeethoven #462 Wellington's Victory ("Battle Symphony"), Op. 91 (1813) 1/ There's no accounting for taste: this monstrosity (originally for mechanical orchestra) was a bigger hit with Beethoven's public than the Eroica or the Pastoral. youtu.be/9fK0_bAW1FQ

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108/ I could go on extolling Beethoven's greatest public triumph and its legacy, but #Beethoven2020 is behind us. I'll leave the last words to my constant companion over the last 12 months. Thank you Ludwig. Here's to a joyful future for us all. youtu.be/q0EjVVjJraA

#TheCompleteBeethoven #693 Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral" (1822-4) 1/ "Be embraced, oh you millions! Here's a kiss to all the world!" - Schiller, 'Ode to Joy' "This is my church This is where I heal my hurts" - Faithless, 'God is a DJ' youtu.be/bM2X7mZmd7E

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60/ Those works had caused a sensation in Vienna but, according to early reviewers ,the audience were baffled by No. 8: "in short - as the Italians say - it did not create a furor." When his pupil Carl Czerny asked why, Beethoven replied: "because the Eighth is so much better."

#TheCompleteBeethoven #443 Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1812) 1/ The first surprise about a symphony full of surprises is that it wasn't supposed to be a symphony at all. youtu.be/9-f3iKeUJm4

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81/ “Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.” - Fred Astaire The apotheosis of both the spirit and the letter of Beethoven's ecstatic score. This live performance is part of a luxurious new bumper box of recordings by this much-discussed musical partnerhip. The end.

#TheCompleteBeethoven #441 Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 (1811-12) 1/ “To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?” - Michael Jackson youtu.be/bYlYLc1-ya0

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68/ That last call, the first to stress the tonic F, sends us home with a final benediction: "the peace of nature and the peace of the soul that the work had promised from the beginning, the feeling for which the composer had been longing all his life." (Lewis Lockwood) The end.

#TheCompleteBeethoven #344 Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 "Pastoral" (1807-8) 1/ "No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks give back the echo which man desires to hear." - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1810 youtu.be/iQGm0H9l9I4

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100/ Not at all. Its familiarity is a testament to its inexhaustibility. Today Beethoven's 5th is played, heard and argued over as much as ever. Is it pure music, personal confession or revolutionary protest? Triumphantly, it's all this and more. The End. youtu.be/ZlaQtwVjQc4

#TheCompleteBeethoven #343 Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1804-8) 1/ "Well, so be it; for you, poor Beethoven, there is no outward happiness; you must create it within you." - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1808. youtu.be/lNtb-ly1I_k

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42/ I could go on, but hopefully my rambling is sufficient to show that, like Doctor Who's TARDIS, Beethoven's symphony is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. It goes back to the past and forward to the future, and bends musical time and space into one. THE END.

#TheCompleteBeethoven #331 Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806) 1/ With the first great Romantic symphony under his belt, and the next two on the drawing board, Beethoven takes a break to compose the first neo-classical symphony. youtu.be/RMzLZsoPDU4

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60/ A review of the 1807 Leipzig concerts hailed the Eroica as "the greatest, most original, most artistic and, at the same time, most interesting of all symphonies." Two centuries later nothing has changed. Ask the conductors surveyed by @MusicMagazine. They'll tell you. FIN

#TheCompleteBeethoven #313 Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 "Eroica" (1803-4) 1/ "In his own opinion it is the greatest work that he has yet written ... I believe that heaven and earth will tremble when it is performed." - Ferdinand Ries youtu.be/cziRynzmWaA

Tell the PM - No New Lords! Don't add more peers to our bloated second chamber. Add your name to @electoralreform's #NoNewLords call action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/20144/pet…

@Snial Quite right too.

@deeplyclassical Sadly yes! But using Bluesky increasingly!

Still here?

@JumpUp1991 And to fill any gaps between Paris and London, there's this.

@JumpUp1991 Minkowski's live set of London symphonies has a few foibles (the Surprise's slow movement is ... surprising) but is generally very good.

dear @deeplyclassical what set of Haydn symphonies (82-104, or only parts of them) would you recommend: Recorded within the last 20-25 years? the "newest" one I appreciate is Colin Davis (Concertgebauw)

All this and more on my playlist of symphony and orchestral #NewReleases, updated every Friday. open.spotify.com/playlist/2dIQt…

Also this week: a visionary new symphony, Mozart among the mountains, and more historic Bruckner in his anniversary year.

Happy #NewReleaseFriday! The Orchestre National de Lyon and Szeps-Znaider get bonus points for imaginative programming, pairing Strauss's symphonic poem with less familiar quixotic fayre by a composer who's always fun. Set out on your quest here ▶️ spoti.fi/400asdn

I would rather have been wrong.