Beethoven For Newbies: Your Bucket List

In honor of Beethoven’s birthday, here are some pieces I think everyone should hear and get to know. This list is highly subjective! It is music I personally love, big and small. And I am designing this list with newbies in mind. This is all music I cannot imagine anybody not loving.

So, classical music newbies out there, allow me to introduce you to your new obsession. For seasoned Beethoven fans, I would love your input. What pieces would you put on this list?

Also, what’s your favorite Beethoven portrait? The one at the top of the post is one of a collection of vintage Beethoven portraits I have been saving over the years. I will have to look up who painted it, I am ashamed to say. I did not realize I had been building up this giant collection. It has gotten kind of out of hand. We will have to explore my Beethoven portrait gallery another day.

For now, let’s get started with the music. On my Substack publication -- it's free to read -- I include videos with the selections. The videos are short and easy to love! Take a peek!

Here is what I would recommend.

The Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony. This the piece heard in the movie “The King’s Speech” which came out some years ago, about King George VI and how he lost his stutter. He makes his speech while this plays in the background. Give yourself the treat of listening to this without having to hear the speech over it. Incredible music, just so beautiful.

The third and fourth movements of the famous Fifth Symphony. You know the first movement, now listen to the last one, and then you can soar like an eagle and get to know the whole thing. The thrilling point in this music comes when the third movement bursts into the fourth movement, the finale. You have to hear both together to get the effect. My video features the conductor Herbert von Karajan who always delivered a lot of drama.

The Andante Cantabile from the “Archduke” Trio. That beautiful theme! Beethoven sometimes does not get enough credit for the sheer loveliness of his music. You do not have to be angry all the time and he was not.

The slow movement of the “Appassionata” sonata. I love playing the “Appassionata” myself. I studied it with Stephen Manes and we really worked it over and now I have this close relationship with it. I will have to play it myself at some point, make a video or something. However for now Daniel Barenboim will have to do.

Let’s lighten things up! Beethoven’s song “The Flea” shows his sense of humor. This song and I go way back. I loved it when I was a kid. The video I post on Substack, I never saw it before and I was delighted to find it. This is my favorite singer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. We corresponded briefly when I was a kid because I wrote him a letter and he was nice enough to write me back. He looks very young here, and on piano is the legendary British pianist Gerald Moore. Best of all, there are subtitles, so you can follow along with this hilarious song.

“Then all his siblings also / Became big shots at court.” The translation is good. The song ends up with us rejoicing that we are allowed to swat and kill fleas when they sting us. There is at least one recording where they bring in a chorus for that last line. I will have to look for it.

We could easily do a whole list of performers, vintage and contemporary, performing “The Flea.” I think one of these days I will do that.

Finally I suggest a song titled simply, in German, “I love you.” Cole Porter wrote a song simply called “I Love You” because it was such a challenge to take such a simple hackneyed phrase and write a song around it. Here is what Beethoven did with it. I could not find a video with an English translation but it’s a pretty straightforward love song. Just enjoy.

For whatever reason all these videos are turning up with Korean subtitles. This song must be big in Korea!

Haha… I tried just now to link to a video featuring a young Japanese soprano but my hand was slapped and I was told, “Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.” Fine, take it to your grave. That is a phrase I got from my brother George.

There are other Beethoven pieces I want to include however they cannot be so easily edited into small portions. So let’s leave it here, at seven, and consider this a start, should anyone want a Part 2.

That last song, “I Love You,” is a good one to finish up with.

Beethoven, we love you!

 

 

Opera's Weepiest Endings: No. 10, "Madame Butterfly"

 

Recently I wrote up a list of Opera Endings Guaranteed To Make You Weep. I wrote it because I was thinking of sending it to this list site called Listverse.

Listverse pays you $100 or something for lists. Not a lot of money however I like to do what I can to help people appreciate opera. It really bothers me, the idea of someone going through life never knowing Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” I also like writing about opera because I do not make fun of it. Opera is such a big slow target if you want to make fun of it, and you shouldn’t. I mean, you can laugh about it. There are lots of funny operas — as a matter of fact, a few on my list of operas with the weepiest endings are comedies. But I think it is important to treat opera with respect.

Hence I got busy, writing my list.

I kept each writeup short and entertaining, as Listverse asked you to. Ultimately however I never sent it in. What stopped me was that I read in the fine print that if your list is accepted, you surrender all your rights to it. I am a professional writer and I am past the stage in my life when I would accept terms like that, especially for just $100.

So … seeing that I own my list, let’s start going through it! Here is Opera No. 10: Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiw12ZnpjBo

Listverse asked that I name a source for info on the story: https://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synopses/Madama-Butterfly/

The music of “Madame Butterfly” is full of glorious Japanese flair. However the story, which takes place around the year 1900, is a shocker. Butterfly is a young Japanese girl who forsakes her family and culture to marry an American officer, Lieutenant Pinkerton. She doesn’t realize that Pinkerton sees her as a toy.

After the wedding, he leaves her, promising he will return. A few years pass and she never gives up hope, waiting with their young son, and scanning the horizon every day. In the last act, Pinkerton does finally return – with an American wife, Kate. Butterfly caresses and then blindfolds their son and commits suicide, bringing this tragedy to a heartbreaking close. As one commenter wrote on YouTube: “Who’s cutting the onions?”

Continuing in my non-Listverse voice: Puccini is a great “starter composer” if you are new to opera. I worked at The Buffalo News with a reporter named Agnes Palazetti who loved opera. And she said to me, “What opera do you give to people who have never heard opera before? There is only one answer. Puccini.”

“There is only one answer. Puccini.” I always remember that.

So there we are, my No. 10, “Madame Butterfly.” I will follow it shortly with No. 9. If you are an opera fan maybe you should secretly make your own list and see how it lines up with mine. That is one reason to present the operas one by one.

Another reason is, when I had the list of all of them together, it’s just overkill. We need a little while to watch the video of the ending — I tried to find videos with translations — and maybe study up on the opera a little. Maybe track down a few more videos, listen to some records if you are a vinyl fan the way I am. Maybe just to think about things. Too many operas all at one time is overkill, it’s not right.

Operas need time and space. That is one reason it is an acquired taste. I have acquired it. I hope other people do, too!

See you soon with No. 9!

 

 

 

 

Thomas Hampson and Schubert Week

 

Today is Mozart's birthday however just this once, the day is about Schubert. Schubert Week is going on in Heidelberg, Germany! I am guessing it is timed with Schubert's birthday, Jan. 31. It takes place over the next few days at 3 p.m. Heidelberg time, 9 a.m. Buffalo time. You can find it on YouTube.

I became aware of Schubert Week over the last year. It appears to be run by Thomas Hampson. Hampson is a singer I love! Twice when he has visited Buffalo he sang one of our Erie Canal songs, the great song that goes "Oh, the E-R-ie was a-rising, and the whiskey's gettin' low, and I scarcely think we'll get a drink till we get to Buffalo!" That is a great song and he rocks it!

The one problem with watching Schubert week is that it is mostly in German with no subtitles. I can understand a lot of Hampson's German, perhaps because he is American and does not talk too fast. And he throws in a lot of English, which I get a kick out of. However there is a lot that I miss. Including jokes! The audience cracks up and applauds and I am just sitting there, fie. They should add subtitles. That is the only suggestion I have.

Otherwise Schubert Week is pretty much perfect. Up at the top of this post is the first episode of this year's Schubert Week, the one I saw yesterday. You know how YouTube videos always start with "Stay to the end, because...." I will say it in this case! Stay to the end because the fourth and last singer, a very good baritone, sings the Schubert song "Alinde." I love "Alinde"! It has this beautiful accompaniment that makes me think of a barcarole. And you do not hear it very often. I was thrilled when I saw it on the program.

I keep a notebook around when I watch Schubert Week and I jot down hacks I can use. I sing in the choir for the Latin Mass at St. Anthony's and I just joined the great choir at St. Louis Church. It is kind of a hobby gone out of control.

So I love collecting pointers. However here is one hack Hampson shared with us yesterday that we can all use in our lives. If you feel you are forgetting something -- lyrics, or maybe someone's name, or the last line to a poem you have memorized and are reciting to your friends -- look to the right.

It activates the right side of your brain, and you are more likely to remember! That is what Thomas Hampson said yesterday.

Last night at Lounge Academy at the Hyatt downtown this wisdom was passed around and discussed. Howard is going to start using it at the piano on account of you never know. We were all testing it, looking to the right, trying to do it gracefully. It can just be your eyes. You do not have to swing your entire head.

Useful information, from Schubert Week.

Only 45 minutes until the next episode...