Books, Arts & Manners: Scattered Jewels

Watching The Immortal Beethoven, a two-hour TV documentary, I marveled at how Public Broadcasting, pianist/scriptwriter Israela Margalit, and Peter Ustinov succeeded in making Ludwig van and his music seem puerile and boring. As an antidote, I listened again to reissues on CD of three representatively great works of Beethoven, reflecting his genius and the élan that motivated it: Piano Concertos No. 4 (Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra) and No. 5 (Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic), both with Rudolf Serkin as soloist, and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Opus 61) played by Isaac Stern, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Philharmonic.

These are recordings many of us have had on LP, but CD gives them a new dimension in sound. And as always, in listening to Serkin, we forget Beethoven’s acid dicta that “the great pianists have nothing but technique and affectation” and that in their playing “all reason and feeling are generally lost to the nimbleness of their fingers.” The self-effacing Serkin, as sound and developed a pianist as America has known, was at his best in the concerto form, establishing rapport with conductor and orchestra, yet asserting his own role. This is especially necessary in No. 4, a score in which the piano moves with and counter to the orchestra far more than in any other Beethoven concerto. Isaac Stern’s prodigious technique and artistry make the lovely violin concerto doubly satisfying. On CD, we can hear the three concertos without the maddening clicks and surface noise that even the best LP surfaces developed after a few playings.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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Watching The Immortal Beethoven, a two-hour TV documentary, I marveled at how Public Broadcasting, pianist/scriptwriter Israela Margalit, and Peter Ustinov succeeded in making Ludwig van and his music seem puerile and boring. As an antidote, I listened again to reissues on CD of three representatively great works of Beethoven, reflecting his genius and the élan that motivated it: Piano Concertos No. 4 (Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra) and No. 5 (Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic), both with Rudolf Serkin as soloist, and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Opus 61) played by Isaac Stern, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Philharmonic.

These are recordings many of us have had on LP, but CD gives them a new dimension in sound. And as always, in listening to Serkin, we forget Beethoven’s acid dicta that “the great pianists have nothing but technique and affectation” and that in their playing “all reason and feeling are generally lost to the nimbleness of their fingers.” The self-effacing Serkin, as sound and developed a pianist as America has known, was at his best in the concerto form, establishing rapport with conductor and orchestra, yet asserting his own role. This is especially necessary in No. 4, a score in which the piano moves with and counter to the orchestra far more than in any other Beethoven concerto. Isaac Stern’s prodigious technique and artistry make the lovely violin concerto doubly satisfying. On CD, we can hear the three concertos without the maddening clicks and surface noise that even the best LP surfaces developed after a few playings.