Yet again, Youtube had to lock up one of my top three for German listeners, for reasons I'm not going to elaborate here (it's not Youtube's fault), which is Les Préludes from Franz Liszt (see post #1), so here's another link:
The famous passage comes in two versions, grand and epic, but the rest of the piece is pretty much awesome as well.
Grand: 2:11
Epic: 15:24
THIS IS GLORY! Only Beethoven's finales of the 3rd and 9th symphony can compare to this!
Unfortunately, the nazis used it in the Wochenschau during the war, as an opening motif about operation Barbarossa, their terrible Russian campaign.
Beethoven could win by waiting for 10, 50 or 200 years, but as one of the greatest musical improvisers of all time who actually won a lot of tough improvisation battles, he could as well blow him off the stage in a real contest. JB is just a handsome boy with a smooth voice, a figurehead of the music industry. He's probably completely helpless if he had to make up his words or music on his own .
The premiere of Beethoven's 9th symphony, excerpts of the second and, of course, the GLORIOUS fourth movement, conducted by... well, Beethoven himself, sort of:
Remember, Beethoven was completely deaf when he finished this... which is widely considered as the greatest masterpiece of orchestral music which has ever been composed! EPIC
"Beethoven directed the piece himself; that is, he stood before the lectern and gesticulated furiously. At times he rose, at other times he shrank to the ground, he moved as if he wanted to play all the instruments himself and sing for the whole chorus. All the musicians minded his rhythm alone while playing".
When the audience applauded—testimonies differ over whether at the end of the scherzo or the whole symphony—Beethoven was several measures off and still conducting. Because of that, the contralto Caroline Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to accept the audience's cheers and applause. According to one witness, "the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them." The whole audience acclaimed him through standing ovations five times; there were handkerchiefs in the air, hats, raised hands, so that Beethoven, who could not hear the applause, could at least see the ovation gestures.
At that time, it was customary that the Imperial couple be greeted with three ovations when they entered the hall. The fact that five ovations were received by a private person who was not even employed by the state, and moreover, was a musician (a class of people who had been perceived as lackeys at court), was in itself considered almost indecent. Police agents present at the concert had to break off this spontaneous explosion of ovations. Beethoven left the concert deeply moved.
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