4/21 Piano-Reduced ScoreVideos (Symphonies, Missa)

(blog.modernmechanix.com)

Reading and following along with an orchestral score can be a pretty confusing experience, especially if the work has lots of twists and turns and if the orchestration changes shape all the time. Of course, that's the very thing that Beethoven does in all his symphonies. So when looking at a full orchestral score with up to 1500 notes on a single page - well it's almost too much of a good thing!

So before posting "The Nine" in full score, here are "piano-reduced" ScoreVideos.  These are made from piano transcriptions of B.'s symphonies (the most famous one being Franz Liszt's) and are perfectly fine for following a symphonic work on a kind of "theme and accompaniment" level.  In many of these 2-stave versions there are also additional markings indicating that this melody is from the flute, or that one is from the cellos. 

So far YT-ers fyrexia2 and bartje11 have made a bunch of ScoreVideos using piano reductions...well done gentlemen.  Click on the links below to be taken to playlists for the piano-reduced ScoreVideos. It may help in some cases to click the lower right "full-screen" button to see the score better...

Symphony 1 & 2
Christoph Von Dohnanyi, Cleveland Orchestra
Piano Solo Transcription by Otto Singer

Symphony 1, 2 w score

Symphony 3 (mvmt 3 & 4 only) & 4
Giulini, Los Angeles PO

Symphony 3, 4 w score
  
Symphony 5 Kubelik, Bavarian RSO
Symphony 6 Bohm, VPO

Symphony 5, 6 w score


Symphony 7, 8 w Score

Symphony 9, Movement 4:
SOPRANO: Melanie Diener
MEZZO SOPRANO: Petra Lang
TENOR: Endrik Wottrich
BASSE: Dietrich Henschel
Direction: Philippe Herreweghe
05:42 Bariton Solo - Recitativo
06:50 SATB Choir
07:10 Soloists
09:30 Tenor Solo
10:00 Tenor + TTB Choir
11:50 SATB Choir: "Freude, schoner gotterfunken"
12:40 SATB Choir: "Seid umschlungen Millionen"
16:02 SATB Choir: Allegro energico, sempre ben marcato
18:53 Soloists: "Freude, Tochter aus Elysium"
19:27 Soloists + SATB Choir
21:20 Prestissimo
Link

Missa Solemnis
This score has the vocal parts in the upper staves and the piano reduction in the bottom 2.
The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner

Missa Solemnis w score Linklist

1/30 Beethoven's Piano Concertos 3 & 5 with Gulda & Pollini

George Szell, Baton-naire.

Today I'm featuring a couple of Beethoven's piano concertos: The 5th, his final and possibly grandest concerto, and the 3rd, in his C minor "heroic/tragic" mode.

From the very first tutti of the 5th Piano Concerto it feels like the heavens are opening up....  This was the only piano concerto that Beethoven didn't premiere himself - sadly his hearing had deteriorated too much by this time... Fortunately piano-genius Friedrich Gulda is here to help us muddle through instead with his friend George Szell (no slouch in the musical muscles department either):

Wiener Festwochen 1966 -
Friedrich Gulda, Piano
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
George Szell, Conductor
Musikvereinssaal Wien, 5. Juni 1966
Beethoven, Piano Concerto 5 "Emperor" Op.73
41 minutes

Sadly the video is not embeddable in the blog page, but click HERE and you should be able to watch the full concert.

OR you can watch Gulda perform AND conduct it HERE at "Classical TV":
"Austrian Piano virtuoso Friedrich Gulda, plays Beethoven's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in E flat Op. 73 (Emperor) with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, which he also conducts."
I don't like to embed their videos because everytime the page loads the "logo" theme comes up - Ack!  Another great concert tho with a somewhat more "unbuttoned" Gulda.

(HERE's a previous post on the 5th Piano Concerto with Annie Fischer on the ivories.)

An earlier work is the 3rd Piano Concerto.  This one seems to get less exposure than the others for some reason.  However some say that it heralds Beethoven's break from the more classical stylings of Mozart and Haydn and signals the beginning of his mature "heroic" period.  Karl Böhm conducts and I featured some rehearsal footage of Maestro Böhm here in the past.
I couldn't figure out how to embed this one on the blog either - so I might as include it in today's "no-hitter"...

Karl Böhm, Baton-sensei

Piano Concerto 3 in C minor, Op. 37 (1800)
Karl Böhm, 1978, probably Vienna Philharmonic
Piano: Maurizio Pollini

Karl Böhm Conducts Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto

9/19 Rehearsing Beethoven

A lot of detail goes into preparing a Beethoven symphony which a casual listener might not be aware of.  Watching a good rehearsal by a good conductor can give the listener an intimate and revealing look at how dynamics, phrasing and many other elements are shaped by the conductor's own vision of what the music should sound like (watching 2 conductors rehearse the same piece is even more revealing but unfortunately I haven't found any videos of that yet).  A musician who worked with Toscanini said that the Maestro's rehearsals were more exciting than the actual performance, since by the time of the show most of the hardest work was already done.   It's worth mentioning that the New York Philharmonic has open rehearsals throughout the season, some for free and the rest for less than $20.  It's a great deal and you can sit anywhere you want!

Here's an excerpt of Dr. Karl Böhm rehearsing Beethoven's 7th Symphony.  The flutist at the beginning of the exposition really gets it!


Here's an interesting rehearsal/documentary with Alicia de Larrocha, Michael Tilson Thomas and Dudley Moore.....this one's a bit "lighter"....(Piano Concerto 1)


Leonard Bernstein is probably the greatest music educator of the 20th century, at least on TV.  I wish I could offer a video of him rehearsing a Beethoven work, but Brahms will "have to do"...

Bernstein on Conducting Pt 5 (Omnibus)

(the starts the rehearsal at about 5:30)

Here's the whole program if you're interested. It's excellent of course.
Wow, they just don't make 'em like this anymore.