Don Satz wrote:

>Although there are some awkward moments in the fourth movement, I consider
>it the glorious wrap-up of Beethoven's symphonic efforts.  I can just
>imagine Beethoven thumbing his nose at everyone as he was writing it.
>Further, the movement is loaded with some thrilling music which never
>fails to impact me intensely.  Can't you hear it?

I hear what he was trying to do, but to my ears he doesn't quite succeed.
Without rehashing the whole discussion we had some time ago, I think a
large part of the problem was that the text he chose, while it obviously
had a lot of meaning to him, seems rather ridiculous to me, and to
accompany it he brought in the Turkish march stuff and snatches of
this and that which (to me, at least) don't add up to the overwhelming
experience that should have followed from the earlier movements.

Another problem for listeners today, I guess, is that later composers such
as Mahler and Schoenberg, with much more resources at their disposal, did
this massive voices + orchestra stuff more impressively, but it's not
really fair to compare the pioneer in this field with his successors a
century later.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]