Violins - Natalia Prishepenko and Heime Müller Viola - Volker Jacobsen Cello - Eckart Runge Recorded live at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, France on April 8th 2001.
This is the most utterly amazing interpretation: the calm is so utterly calm and then the curl of Prishepenko's lip as she launches into the "violent" theme......I have listened to this for many years, but burst into tears when I saw and heard that moment, because it so completely represents the schizophrenia that is the Grosse Fugue for me, the struggle for calm, disturbed by violent outbursts, which also, to me, represents the struggle of life itself. Every member of this quartet seems completely invested in the music, they seem to embody the music--no detached "perfect" playing here--every moment is infused with emotion, and what feels to me like the emotion that Beethoven must have intended. Just an amazing performance.
This is musical madness, even the quiet bits seem like a passive-agressive slow-burn provocation before yelling and waving arms manically around the listener. "Does my suffering seem amusing to you hahahhaha?" I absolutely love this shait-hit-the-fan masterpiece!
I love this band! What a great performance. And thank God the camera people know the score well enough to spotlight the player who dominates the dramatic moments.
Very much this. It's infuriating when you know a good bit in the viola is coming up and the camera operator decides it's the perfect time to focus on the hairs of the left nostril of the first violin.
I agree wholeheartedly. The intellectual and emotional content of this piece is, in my opinion, unmatched in Western Music. Add to that the fact that it came from the mind of a man who was most likely completely deaf at this point in his life and you have one of the most remarkable artistic achievements of mankind.
Danke, Beethoven. das ist ja fast hochmodern. - wenn man sich vorstellt, was er noch alles hätte schreiben können. aber es war allemal genug, was uns hinterlassen wurde.
Dat is de muziek van de toekomst, van de 23ste eeuw. Niemand kan Beethoven overtreffen, alleen God als hij bestaat. En wat een fantastische uitvoering, bravo!
Tony He is not trapped! That is a wrong term for Beethoven, in fact he is even more free then if he were not to be deaf, it is what God made him to become. The sounds you’re hearing is not of a trapped animal, but instead a inner victory for being able to make two viscous insane animals try to wrestler each other down, but neither are successful! This is Beethoven ferocious sort of comedy! As if he is spitting on your faces because he is such full of self glory, too much! Those who had doubted him in the past think that he has gone insane with the music, that they don’t even understand him anymore! But now the world finally understands him after centuries past.
@@ProdigyImprovisation Beethoven was not totally deaf, he could still hear, very low, but he could , that's why he banged the piano so hard and got himself kicked out of hotels in viena for neighbours complains
Ignacio Lago In the past he could hear a bit, but eventually he turned stone deaf in his most later years, he was completely deaf by then already. He didn’t become stone deaf suddenly, but Gradually as he got older & older.
My first exposure to the Grosse Fugue was in 1959 at the International Congress of Strings where we performed it with Roy Harris conducting. Then, as today I am completely blown away by this masterpiece which is rivaled by very few compositions and which I have performed several times many years ago! This piece validifies the goodness of having existed for 81 years.
Bravisimo Maestro! Las fluctuaciones de la fuerza hechas música; dolor, caos, angustia, pero al final la victoria. Cuánto espero conocer a Beethoven en la eternidad en donde existe la paz de Dios.
Braeden J Of course, everyone’s opinion is different. But what I mean by his music remaining timeless is relating to as something ethereal that nobody cannot repeat once again. The more you experience Beethoven, there is always room to go deeper, once someone can reach the deepest levels of understanding his art, then they can agree that his music goes to places where nobody can. No matter how far the future goes, robots cant create a divine creation, they only copy, adapt, & apply. They can only connect points a to b, but cannot create the actual letters of the alphabet, figuratively speaking.
Lovely interpretation of one of the greatest pieces of music of all time, Beethoven's last composition before his death, written while he was completely deaf, yet still entirely in touch with the celestial spheres of Music. Perhaps more so than ever. My favorite version of this, perhaps because I grew up with it in my youth, is the now defunct and unavailable Italiano Quartet, a wild and woolly passionate explosion of a performance from the late 60s or early 70s, at a time of superb acoustic record production. This version is almost as passionate, in its way, but more classical in its execution.
This rendition makes the piece a lot more interesting to listen to. I actually love it, but when you let others listen to it don’t expect the same level of interest. “The composer was completely deaf when he wrote this!” “Yeah I can hear that!”
I totally agree. It is amazing what a time span musically his oeuvre covers: starting with solid classicism through romanticism all the way to pure modernism. Also you might find it interesting that Robert Greenberg calls Beethoven the first modern composer.
Der Sieg des menschlichen Geistes über die Materie. Etwas, das ich grundsätzlich ausschliesse und selbstverständlich nicht für möglich halte. Und doch... :-)
El cerebro debe adaptarse para capturar la grandeza, belleza, de esta magna obra. Al escucharla en reiteradas ocaciones he logrado algún avance. Espero comprender, un poco más
It does sound like jazz, strongly in parts and it also sounds like a direct influence on Gershwin. In no way saying, Gershwin nicked the music...but inspiration has to come from somewhere and and I'd say this is an influential piece. By the way... though some string pieces by Beethoven are in the words of the late George Martin, for some people. "dry as dust," this fuge is one just about anyone will love. Though apparently it was INTENSELY disliked in its own time.
Intensity does NOT matter, if the interpretation is not correct. They have no choice but to play like robots who try to obey their leader. Just like Hitler and his army, when they took crystal meth to perform like machines. This is not how Beethoven wants it, Beethoven is a machine, but he has compassion, instead of a machine, the more appropriate word to say what Beethoven was, a monster! But also the most humble person in the universe, not everything has to be ferocious just to be entertaining. This side of Beethoven is only required when necessary, of certain life expectancies & conditions where he fights a war in his head! Not everything is about violence, but everybody does goes through it in certain times of your life! So it is part of human nature! But with Beethoven’s humanity, he can be the ends of both worlds, the most humble yet the most aggressive!!
Honestly I cannot understand this piece. No question it is composed ahead of it's time with the strongly atonal motifs, but I think it is far too musically complex for normal people
Yes, very complex, but I love it. You're right, is is ahead of its time, has an early 20th century feel to it. I'm not a fan of 20th century, but this wins my heart and tapping foot!
I also had to listen to it a few times. The motif is absolutely beautiful, the way he throws it around and changes the environment of the motif into futuristic directions is magnificent and the way he manages to make it atonal without losing the control over the composition is something just a genius like Beethoven could do. And the rhythm is absolutely fantastic. I'm not very sophisticated when it comes to music and it may be that I've just written down a load of nonsense, but this is one of my favorite pieces. It's the pure essence of the special feeling Beethovens pieces have sometimes. Lile for example during the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonate when the part starts in which the piano takes comes further into the foreground and the violinist starts to pizzicato. Or in the whole first movement of the Appassionata. Or the third movement of Pathetique. Or the second movement of the fifth Symphony. Sorry, due to my lack in English skills and sophistication, I cannot describe this any further.
I don't know much about music, to be honest, but this piece kicks ass. Probably speaks to my fractured brain, or possibly my latent musical genius, idk. hahaha.
I heard somewhere that this is the worst Beethoven composition... Is that true? I mean, I actually can't really understand what's happening. It sounds strange for me, like, it looks like the music is completely random. Tell me anyone what's up with this composition, please. :]
Layout Games You heard that from the movie Copying Beethoven. Yes there actually been rumors in Beethoven’s time that this is not just the worst music ever written but a music for a deaf man who’s gone literally crazy! Since the world hasn’t listen to such music, they never understood it in Beethoven’s own time.. But in fact, rather than this being the worst music ever written, it is the most greatest music ever written of all time! Nothing comes close to this as this is where art itself comes to an end.
