... Beethoven loses.

Has anyone heard of this phenomenon? He is music director of the Europa Philharmonia Budapest, who despite his sickening antics seem to be a fine group of musicians with a nice sound, good intonation and most imporatantly disciplined or hungry enough to manage to keep a straight face while playing.

Cobra is the author and inventor of the TEMPUS theory, which after much rambling and philosophical nonsense comes down to the idea that everything is played too slowly.

If you have the courage, listen for yourself here, this is the Scherzo from Beethoven's 9th:

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He is dead serious about this, as you will notice on that site and others, there are mounds of performances like this one available for download, all of them this bad or worse.

For the sake of (dis)interest, his timings for the 9th Symphony are as follows, give or take an hour:

I - 26
II - 23
III - 21
IV - 41

Anyone who manages to watch the whole thing top to bottom without soiling themselves deserves a medal of honour for courage and a good stiff drink.

Why do I post this here?

If Cobra ever touches Sibelius, we here at the forum must be able to mobilize quickly and do everything we can to discredit him and stop any further attempts at this kind of abuse.

One would hope that his ridiculous results would work against him, but that is unfortunately not the case, as the media machine and the craving for "something new" is driving this guy's career further and further.

God help us.

Ludwig must be turning over in his grave. Anyone for a 40 minute Sibelius 7. Come back Georg Tintner, all is forgiven.--kullervopete.

Wow, that is, er, something else!
I passed on the link to some colleagues. After a while one of them came back to me with the opinion that the soloists sang rather well. I guess that means that he is claiming Kurki's medal (or perhaps just the stiff drink).

Half-speed Sibelian equivalents? The 'best' I can come up with are:
Glenn Gould playing the Three Sonatinas, Op. 67; and
Karajan conducting 'At the Castle Gate' from Pelléas et Mélisande.

And at the other extreme we have at least one double-speed contender:
Boris Belkin (with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Ashkenazy) in Devotion, Op. 77 No. 2.

I find this interesting. Because in the Bärenreiter urtext edition of Beethoven's 5th, the first movement is written in 2/4, but most conductors conduct it in 1/2, making it sometimes 2x faster than Beethoven intended. So the concept of slowing down Beethoven is in some cases justifiable, but this guy takes it way too far.

Wait a minute, *cough*... what the heck is this??? What kind of person would make a Beethoven symphony into Mahler wanna-be??? I'm so utterly confused, I think I'll just stop typing now, before I just make things worse...

40-minute seventh... just the thought makes me sick... I can't imagine how the fourth would sound; might be the best (i.e. worst performance of the piece in history) of his Sibelius (which we must still revolt against, of course ).

Uggh...

Just out of interest, I wonder how this guy would conduct something that demands a certain, er, velocity - a Strauss waltz for instance (or indeed some of Sibelius's).

Valse chevaleresque = Valse du chevalier gériatrique, perhaps...

I am revisiting this topic because I have linked to it in another thread

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... in re-reading it, I came upon Saturnus' comment that I would like to comment on:

Saturnus wrote:

... in the Bärenreiter urtext edition of Beethoven's 5th, the first movement is written in 2/4, but most conductors conduct it in 1/2, making it sometimes 2x faster than Beethoven intended.

When choosing the basic unit of pulse in music of the classical era, there are 2 things to consider. One being the meter, and as Saturnus alludes to, the basic unit of pulse in the 1st movement of Beethoven's 5th would seem to be the quarter note. But the second thing to consider is the italian tempo indication and any modifiers that may be present. So when Beethoven writes 2/4 and simply "Allegro", he indeed means a fast tempo "in 2", with quarter notes as the basic unit of pulse. But in the 5th Symphony, Beethoven writes "Allegro con brio", the "con brio" being the aforementioned tempo modifier. In the classical tradition, these modifiers indicate that the unit of pulse should be double the value that the meter indicates. So an "Allegro con brio" in a 2/4 meter is indeed "in 1", with the half note as the basic unit of pulse.

Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven are remarkably consistent with this practice and some Romantic composers like Schubert and Brahms chose to carry on this tradition, helping clarify their basic tempi and tempo relations between movements.

That's interesting, I always thought that the con brio only meant "with rage/restlessness", didn't know it was a direct tempo indicator. It definately makes sense, since I always thought con fuoco and con brio meant the same thing, and didn't see the point in having them both around.
That said, I still like the 5th symphony in a more slower tempo and with more espressivo from the orchestra. I'm not saying I like it as slow as Cobra does it, but I've heard too many trying-too-hard recordings that just sound hysterical. I really think conducturs should try to bring out the feelings E. T. A. Hoffmann descripes in his critique of the "second premiere" *:
Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing—a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits
Hoffmann himself is maybe a bit over the top but what he is descriping is not some hysterical drama but pure musical depth.


*The first one was very unsuccessful one, with too small and badly rehearsed orchestra to be called premiere (IMO)

Another thing in Beethoven, beyond the "units of pulse" that I talk about, are his metronome markings. They are often thought of as "too fast", but one must take them as a "goal" or at least as an "ideal" towards which to strive.

The first movement of the 5th Symphony is indicated at half-note = 108. Few performances reach this level, but I have heard thrilling recordings at 104 and even my orchestra can play it at 100. When performances sink to 92 or even 88, it's just too slow. There is a fundamental difference in character between 104-108 and 88-92, and that is simply going against Beethoven's wishes.

The task of the conductor is to find a tempo that fits the ensemble, accoustic and his inner conviction all the while not distorting the basic character of the piece which is goverened by the composers' tempo markings.