You guessed it.
I’m back in my happy place this morning.
Yay!
I’m drinking high-alkaline water (Evamor rocks!), nibbling on dried paypaya slices (discreetly, since the library frowns on “outside food”), watching four wild turkeys cross the field, and listening to Simon Rattle (1955- ), a renowned conductor from England, the Wiener Philharmoniker, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B flat Major.
I have encountered Sir Rattle thrice before in my Beethoven project, on…
Day 15. Rathing: “Meh!”
Day 33. Rating: “Meh!”
Day 51. Rating: “Meh!”
I detect a pattern here.
Will today’s performance follow suit?
I’ll soon find out.
Beethoven wrote his symphonies in four parts (except for the Sixth, which is in five). The time breakdown of this particular one (Symphony No. 4 in B flat Major), from this particular conductor (Rattle, at 47) and this particular orchestra (Weiner Philharmonker), at this particular time in history (April 29-May 14, 2002) on this particular record label (Warner Classics) is as follows:
I. Adagio – Allegro vivace……………………………………………………………….11:47
II. Adagio………………………………………………………………………………………..9:53
III. Allegro molto e vivace – Trio. Un poco meno allegro………………..5:28
IV. Allegro ma non troppo………………………………………………………………..6:43
Total running time: 33:11
My Rating:
Recording quality: 3 (seemed to lack a clearly defined top end; also, seemed a bit fuzzy and mid-rangy – like all of the instruments were crammed into a few tracks on the original source tape)
Overall musicianship: 4 (seems predictable and plodding; no major surprises or high points)
CD liner notes: 3 (one essay about Beethoven in English, German, and French; nothing about Rattle)
How does this make me feel: 3
So far, Simon Rattle is batting 0-4 with me.
There’s something that seems just slightly off-kilter about Maestro Rattle’s leadership. The music seems too fast in some spots, and too slow in others, and (nearly always) it’s like a half-step behind the major beats I expect to hear.
You know when you watch movies and to show the POV (point of view) of a character who has been drugged, the things the character sees seem to waver and have those motion lines that connect where another character was to where he just moved?
The new Nicholas Cage horror ovie Mandy (isn’t every movie starring Nicholas Cage a horror movie – at least for the audience?) features one of those scenes.
Mandy, his girlfriend, has been kidnapped by an insane group of devil worshipers. They drug her. When the group’s leader talks to her what we see on screen are visions just slightly off kilter, and voices just slightly out of sync.
That’s what listening to Sir Simon Rattle’s performances are like for me. They’re something just slightly off kilter with them, like the dynamics are missing – no, not missing. Just in another place.
I realize this doesn’t make sense, especially when that analogy is applied to music rather than a movie.
But when I hear a Rattle performance I’m always waiting for it to feel right to me. And it never does. Something is just…off about it.
So, even though I’d love to break what was an 0-3 record with an “Huzzah!” I can’t do it.
Rattle is now at 0-4, with “Meh!” being the only rating that seems fitting to me.
Keep in mind, I’m no musicologist. I don’t know a oboe from an elbow. And the closest I ever got to tempo is when I owned a blue Ford Tempo back in the 1990s.
So I’m only basing these highly subjective ratings on what the music feels like to me. I could be dead wrong, and Sir Simon’s performances are the epitome of Beethoven’s symphonies.
That’s okay. I’m just one guy with one opinion. Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean it’s not a good performance, recorded well, and played to perfection.