Saturday, May 20, 2006

Beethoven's Seventh - Vitality con brio

I've been listening to Beethoven's Seventh (Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic). The fourth movement is the piece of music that has always made me (in my mind) dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free. It is the music of exhilaration, of (almost) uncontainable vitality without a shadow of disquietitude. Beethoven could depict two or even three emotions at the same time, but he could also blast you with the primary colours of a single intense feeling. Here it is a vitality that never loses its poise; that grows to a fullness and shapes the silence that follows.

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