Monday, May 7, 2018

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

Months ago I bought tickets to see the National Philharmonic perform Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony at the Strathmore. I love that piece, and I had never seen it live before!

I couldn't find a video for Marjorie Merryman's Windhover Fantasy, which was the opening piece of this performance. But the second part was Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63. Listen below:

That was all well and good, but the main reason we were all there was to see Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (formally called Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68):


This piece always makes me think of the unicorn/centaur part of the Disney movie Fantasia. After the performance I went home to watch the movie on Netflix, but they had gotten rid of it! But YouTube has a few clips:







The program notes included this quote from Beethoven: "How delighted I will be to ramble for a while through the bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear." I love that! And the program said that the German word for "composer" is "Tondichter," which literally means "a poet of sounds." How cool is that?

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