你好 It was during a weekend in the country with a bohemian family of a friend that I really heard Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. I’d listened to it many times before, but never paid attention to it, but suddenly when this music came on, everything else seemed to stop dead. For the first time, I heard the amazing dissonance, the way Beethoven seems to fight, to pound against the walls of polite symphonic music.

Beethoven had finally begun to face up to his growing deafness and the end of his career as a piano virtuoso. He had considered suicide, but rejected it. Working his way past his own despair, Beethoven embarked on this break-away symphony, one of the most powerful and original things he ever wrote. It wasn’t rational and polite the way symphonies had been before. It was Beethoven thrusting his fist at the world. And it changed music forever.

Beethoven caught the new spirit of freedom and liberation that was in the air – a passion for doing away with the old ways, allowing renewal and rebirth. Originally, the symphony was to be dedicated to Napoleon, who was conquering and uniting all of Europe, which at that time, except for France and England, was a maze of city states and duchies and small kingdoms ruled by petty monarchs.

The story goes that on the day Beethoven learned that Napoleon crowned himself emperor, thus becoming just another despot, Beethoven tore up the dedication in disgust and renamed the symphony “Eroica”, the heroic. And I’ll bet added the funeral-like last movement with its deep feelings of bitter disappointment and regret ending with a cry from the horn section for what could have been.

But what must have been even more stunning for Beethoven's audience is the addition of autobiographical material, Beethoven's feelings. There had been small examples of composers doing this before, an inkling here and there, but nothing on this scale.

What’s in our player now: Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 :”Eroica”, Otto Klemperer/Philharmonia Orchestra EMI S67741 2 4

This is the very performance that made me hear this symphony for the first time that weekend many years ago. And my ears didn’t deceive me, it’s a truly great performance; the kind that only comes by only once in a great while. It’s fortunate that EMI has reissued it on their Great Recordings of the Century series, because no version I’ve heard can hold a candle to it.

There’s a leanness and an absolute honesty about it; nothing is allowed to come between you and the spirit of the music, nothing feels added on, there’s no fuss, no pulling back, just lots of warmth and strong feeling. Klemperer’s virile conducting lets all of the defiance and sheer will power as well as the sadness of the last movement shine through. Even if the recording is old (1954) and in mono, this is a jewel of a Beethoven performance. Like a pearl that must be worn next to the skin to show its luster, this recording only grows richer and more satisfying the more you listen to it.

How are we doing? Any suggestions or comments? Let us hear from you. Email me at jeffrey.mark.goldman@gmail.com