Beethoven’s choral symphony

all too often only the last movement gets an airing - the Ode To Joy in which the choir belts out the Schiller poem which Beethoven gloriously set to music. You know how it goes: Freud. Eur. Sher. Ner. Got. Her. Fun. Ken. Tock. Ter. House. Hell. Eels. See. Um!

The Eu uses it for their national anthem. The shame is, the rest of the symphony really deserves a listen, especially the second movement. It starts pretty boisterously, but with hints of real, delicate beauty to come, and when about 7 minutes in Ludwig lets the woodwind sing and mutes the strings, you hit one of those sublime passages of music that just makes life even more worthwhile. One of those things of beauty you’d die happy if you had the talent to compose a bar of it, but Beethoven keeps it going for three and a half minutes. My recording’s Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players: they use replica period instruments and timing taken from scores used during Beethoven’s life, so the orchestral tones are thinner, the performance more up-tempo than symphony orchestras using fuller-toned modern instruments. I like. The whole Norrington Beethoven cycle is going for around £10 in shops, and for £1.10 a symphony, that’s a barg.