Tag: Beethoven

Beethoven’s Seventh slaughtered (and it’s NOT a funeral march)

I’ve just returned from seeing the movie Knowing, staring Nicolas Cage, which I felt was a fairly good (although depressing) film. I’m writing now, however, because I have never, and I mean never heard the Second Movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony slaughtered as it was by the Sydney Studio Orchestra when it was played during at least two scenes in the movie. Without question, this movement is one of the all-time greatest pieces in the entire classical music repertoire and should be very familiar to anyone who is even remotely knowledgeable about music: its sublime, solemn, and absolute pure beauty. As I just walked in the door, I’ve got to admit that I have to listen to REAL recordings of it as the performance in the movie was ghastly (and that’s an understatement).

The performance was so horrible that I thought I’d see if anyone else had yet commented on it and, to my chagrin, I couldn’t find any reviews by real musicians, or even by genuine music aficionados. About all I could discover were assinine comments about the “famous funeral march” from Beethoven’s Seventh (sorry folks, but the 2nd movement ain’t no “funeral march”) – just how ignorant has the world become? One of the all-time great pieces of music is slaughtered, folks then refer to it as “funeral march,” and no one notices? Oh well, these are the same type of people who might think that the Mona Lisa on velvet would look great. 🙂

Some really nice kids

I’ve been fortunate in having many really fine young people as bassoon students. As a rule they have all been exceptionally polite, well-mannered, and hardworking kids. One of the favorite parts of my week include the times when I’m giving private lessons: it’s always a joy to pass on the love of playing bassoon to others. Of all the things I do, nothing gives me as much pleasure than playing – whether it be one on one with a student, playing chamber music, or performing a symphony. Late yesterday afternoon, one of my students called because he had a sudden conflict with his work schedule (he’s a high school kid and just obtained his first job) that prevented him from playing Beethoven’s First Symphony last night. He called me in order to fill in for him (it’s almost hard to believe that there are kids like him that are responsible enough to do such a thing) and I agreed as I really wasn’t doing much else. Besides the fact that I basically sat through the concert cold (in other-words, I hadn’t rehearsed with the group first), it was an enjoyable experience. What was so impressive; however, is that I had other students (it was an orchestra made up of high school kids) come up to me afterwards and thanked me for playing with them. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to find such a fine group of well-mannered young musicians. In this day and age of kids into punk rock, gross disrespect for others, and other narcissistic behaviors, having a kid come up to me just to say “thank you” was a breath of fresh air!