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26 Apr 2012

Beethoven's Seventh, II movement: Kleiber and Karajan

Two quite different performances of this well-known demonic music.

I'd just listened to these two amazing performances. The one by Karajan is already familiar to me. The opinions about the videos of the Karajan’s performances can be opposite sometimes. Some people say that he made his career with help of his back. (Well the back is really impressive, isn’t it? :) But it is hardly to deny the power of perfectionism and dramaturgic qualities of his performances. I enjoyed his performance of the second Piano Concerto by Rachmaninov with solo part by Weissenberg. Though yes, on his videos the conductor is at least 80 percent of the time in the spotlight.

While the tempo of the 2 part in the Karajan’s version is quite slow, the tempo by Carlos Kleiber is one of the fastest I ever heard. And the tempo can do incredible things sometimes! For the first time I can hear in this music not only darkness, not only “marcia funebre”. In this performance I can hear the light, the power of life, the triumphal dance. The gestures of the conductor are really interesting sometimes. See for example the third minute of the performance. Once I can say for sure: in my opinion, the II movement from Beethoven’s 7th symphony performed by Carlos Kleiber is the most optimistic one. Enjoy it!


 

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