About Beethoven's 5th?

Question

I had an old recording that I really enjoyed, that was lost. My problem is that every new CD I buy the tempo is faster than my old friend. I am confused about this, is the faster tempo correct and my old one the oddball? It seems to me that so much of the soul of the music is lost when it is played so fast.

Answer 1

It all depends on the conductor. Do you remember who the conductor was on your old recording? If so look him up and beethoven's 5th. If not continue looking, it's out there somewhere.

Likely the faster recordings are H. von Karajan, or possibly James Levine, they are known for pretty quick tempos.

Keep looking and good luck.

Answer 2

Tempos for Classical and Baroque music seemed to be generally gradually grinding to a halt during the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Conductors seemed to think that a composer was only joking when he marked a movement 'Allegro con brio' (fast, with brilliance) like the first movement of Beethoven's 5th.

Love it or hate it, with the advent of period-instrument performance came a re-examination of tempo. Beethoven was actually one of the first people to own the new-fangled metronome and used it to indicate his preferred speed for his music. Many conductors in the past have ignored these markings, saying Beethoven's metronome was faulty or that the composer made a mistake. How arrogant is that? Poor old Beethoven - not knowing what he wanted, eh?

It soon became clear that for a lot of music (especially Baroque) speeds had been far too slow for a long time. Compare a 1950s performance of, say, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3 with a very recent one. You will find that it can be almost twice the speed from 50-60 years ago. When I was a student in the 1970s, I could never understand why Baroque movements marked 'Allegro' were played so slowly and turgidly. Hearing that music at a faster, more appropriate speed was a revelation.

It has similarly been shown that Beethoven's symphonies were often being played too slowly by people such as Klemperer and Knappertsbusch - although my colleagues quoted example of Weingartner at under 28 minutes for the Fifth Symphony proves an exception to this rule. Beethoven's fast movements should be fast. In a good performance one should not lose anything with a faster speed. Some 'fast' performances can sound scrambled if ill-prepared and badly thought through.

I hope you will find a performance of the Beethoven which fulfills your needs. Malcolm's recommendation of the classic Carlos Kleiber performance is a strong one - and that performance is no slouch.

Answer 3

depending who starts analyzing this question you could have opened a new can of worms .... tempos markings are guidelines the conductor has a range of metronomic times in which to play with and the differences in how a piece feels can be enormous (have many recordings of the same piece) and the tempos generally are closeish within each era .... but what you notice the most that every generation tend to play close to the same tempo ... say older recordings from the 30s will use the same tempo .. the 40s will use a different maybe markedly faster or slower but it is the style and tendency of that era but all within the marking of say an allegro .... yours specifically sounds like its probably from the 20s or early 30s when tempos were taken slower you will need to check for historic recordings ... glad you didn't ask about pitch

Answer 4

The slowest recording listed in the standard database is 41:42 -
Composer: BEETHOVEN
Title: Symphony No. 5
Conductor: Asahina
Orchestra: Osaka Philharmonic
Date: 1992
Live/Studio: S
LP or CD: CD
Timing: 41:42
Label and Number: Canyon Classics PCCL 00171

The fastest time is 27:03 -
Composer: BEETHOVEN
Title: Symphony No. 5
Conductor: Weingartner
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Date: 1927
Live/Studio: S
LP or CD: CD
Timing: 27:03
Label and Number: Japanese EMI SGR 8525

Now that's a big difference! The Book time when figuring out the average length of the work in a concert in 31 minutes.

Answer 5

IMHO the definitive recording is Carlos Kleiber's electrifying 5th with the Vienna Philharmonic which is just a little faster than Von Karajan's. It was recorded in 1975. Kleiber had a way with Beethoven that few others can match. I have a live version of his 4th which is also great. Until his version, you have to pick between Furtwangler and Von Karajan.

Answer 6

I hate it when I find a recording of something and find that it's too fast (or too slow). It seems to be a very common thing with a great number of Beethoven and Brahms recordings I find.