Sunday Classics: Rambling through the countryside with Beethoven and Berlioz

Pianist-as-conductor Zoltán Kocsis zips his way through the "Scene by the Brook" from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, with an orchestra identified as the Hungarian National Philharmonic. At 9:53 we get to see as well as hear the answering birdcalls from the flute and clarinet.

by Ken

We've spent a lot of time with the music of Hector Berlioz here at Sunday Classics -- not surprisingly, since he's one of the composers whose music is most personal to me. And not surprisingly that includes a fairly intensive session with the Symphonie fantastique. I think I mentioned back then that, while the Fantastique is a lot of things, one thing it clearly is is a deliciously twisted remapping of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The most direct correspondence, of course, is between their slow movements, Beethoven's "Scene by the brook" morphing into Berioz's "Scene in the fields," which comes complete with the distant rumble of thunder that might have come in handy for Beethoven's third-movement dancing peasants who get caught in his fourth-movement thunderstorm.

So for tonight I thought we'd just listen to these two movements, conducted by the same pair of conductors. (And where but Sunday Classics would one of those conductors be Eugene Ormandy? Or, for that matter would the other be André Cluytens?) With, of course, the bonus of our video performances of both.


FOR OUR MUSICAL RAMBLES IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
WITH BEETHOVEN AND BERLIOZ, CLICK HERE.

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