Day 9: Make sure you don't spell Eroica with an extra "t". You won't like the search results if you do.

Hey everyone, welcome to Day 9! The All Eroica All Day Special.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 - October 28th, 1939

Overly reverent conductors of the work of Beethoven would do well to remember that one of the reviewers of the first performance of the Eroica in 1805 felt that in this "tremendously expanded, daring, and wild fantasia" there was no lack of "startling and beautiful passages in which the energetic and talented composer must be recognized." Ultimately he felt that the Eroica "lost itself in lawlessness" and that "there is too much that is glaring and bizarre." Another critic said that "genius proclaims itself not in the unusual and fantastic, but in the beautiful and sublime" and complained that the Eroica's "inordinate length" was "unendurable to the mere music-lover." Ouch. It seems audiences were no more attuned to the complicated and unfamiliar in 1805 than they are now.

The truest words ever spoken about the interpretation of Beethoven were written Michael Steinberg in his fabulous The Symphony: A Listener's Guide:

"We would do well at this point to remember that we are not likely to find it 'unusual and fantastic' either - which, if so, is very much our loss. When it comes to maintaining a sense of the 'unusual and fantastic' or just of freshness, we are not much helped by conductors, particularly the ones whose attitude of reverence and awe before A Great Classic leads them into 'monumental' tempi at which the length of the work easily becomes 'inordinate', if not 'unendurable'. Of course the rare conductor of genius like Furtwängler or Klemperer can make a convincing case for a 'monumental' Eroica. More valuable by far is the fiery performance - at Beethoven's tempi or something close to them - that can give us an experience like the one the audience in the Theater an der Wien in 1805 must have had, that of an electrifying, frightening encounter with revolution, with a force sufficient to blast doors and windows out of the room. Once in a while that happens, but it is rare. Too rare."

(I have been trying to paraphrase that statement for years now, but I just can't put it like Steinberg.)

I have little to add to this, for Toscanini's unimaginably powerful recording of this symphony is played with a force sufficient to blast doors and windows out of the room. The NBC Symphony plays like an orchestra possessed, and for once one can really hear those things that were "glaring and bizarre" to the first listeners of the symphony. As much as I respect the work of conductors such as Furtwängler and Klemperer, their reverently "monumental" take on the Eroica does Beethoven a tremendous disservice. This was radical new music in 1805, and deserves to be played like radical new music in 2011 or in any other year.  Toscanini understood this like no other interpreter I have heard for this work, and that is why I believe this is the greatest recording ever made of the Eroica.

That's really all I have to say about this. I would urge you to find this recording and listen to its ceaseless glories for yourself.

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That's it for Day 9. Tomorrow will feature three Beethoven overtures. Enjoy your Friday night, and I will see you tomorrow!