Joined March 2018
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5 Jan 2024
#NewReleases2024: a 🧵 of every new classical release I listen to in 2024.
Want to listen too? Then follow my playlist. Maybe you'll discover your new favourite record.
open.spotify.com/playlist/6R…
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9 Jan 2025
Keir Starmer's new private healthcare deal will NOT help patients see their doctor quicker. The Conservatives tried it for the last 4 years. It failed. Ask your MP to demand the government invest in the solutions that are working. @We_ownit weownit.org.uk/nhs
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18 Oct 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #462
Wellington's Victory ("Battle Symphony"), Op. 91 (1813)
1/ There's no accounting for taste: this monstrosity (originally for mechanical orchestra) was a bigger hit with Beethoven's public than the Eroica or the Pastoral.
youtu.be/9fK0_bAW1FQ
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18 Oct 2020
7/ Critics, however, were quick to put the boot into the "atrocious potboiler" (Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock). Beethoven, who made a packet from the piece, defended it in no uncertain terms:
“Was ich scheisse ist besser als du je gedacht!”
youtu.be/_NsQsveoFx8
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9 Dec 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #693
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral" (1822-4)
1/ "Be embraced, oh you millions!
Here's a kiss to all the world!"
- Schiller, 'Ode to Joy'
"This is my church
This is where I heal my hurts"
- Faithless, 'God is a DJ'
youtu.be/bM2X7mZmd7E
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1 Jan 2021
108/ I could go on extolling Beethoven's greatest public triumph and its legacy, but #Beethoven2020 is behind us. I'll leave the last words to my constant companion over the last 12 months. Thank you Ludwig. Here's to a joyful future for us all.
youtu.be/q0EjVVjJraA
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11 Oct 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #443
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1812)
1/ The first surprise about a symphony full of surprises is that it wasn't supposed to be a symphony at all.
youtu.be/9-f3iKeUJm4
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22 Oct 2020
60/ Those works had caused a sensation in Vienna but, according to early reviewers ,the audience were baffled by No. 8: "in short - as the Italians say - it did not create a furor."
When his pupil Carl Czerny asked why, Beethoven replied: "because the Eighth is so much better."
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27 Sep 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #441
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 (1811-12)
1/ “To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?” - Michael Jackson
youtu.be/bYlYLc1-ya0
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10 Oct 2020
81/ “Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.” - Fred Astaire
The apotheosis of both the spirit and the letter of Beethoven's ecstatic score. This live performance is part of a luxurious new bumper box of recordings by this much-discussed musical partnerhip.
The end.
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21 Aug 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #344
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 "Pastoral" (1807-8)
1/ "No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks give back the echo which man desires to hear." - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1810
youtu.be/iQGm0H9l9I4
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3 Sep 2020
68/ That last call, the first to stress the tonic F, sends us home with a final benediction: "the peace of nature and the peace of the soul that the work had promised from the beginning, the feeling for which the composer had been longing all his life." (Lewis Lockwood)
The end.
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3 Aug 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #343
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1804-8)
1/ "Well, so be it; for you, poor Beethoven, there is no outward happiness; you must create it within you." - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1808.
youtu.be/lNtb-ly1I_k
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20 Aug 2020
100/ Not at all. Its familiarity is a testament to its inexhaustibility. Today Beethoven's 5th is played, heard and argued over as much as ever. Is it pure music, personal confession or revolutionary protest? Triumphantly, it's all this and more. The End.
youtu.be/ZlaQtwVjQc4
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13 Jul 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #331
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806)
1/ With the first great Romantic symphony under his belt, and the next two on the drawing board, Beethoven takes a break to compose the first neo-classical symphony.
youtu.be/RMzLZsoPDU4
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20 Jul 2020
42/ I could go on, but hopefully my rambling is sufficient to show that, like Doctor Who's TARDIS, Beethoven's symphony is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. It goes back to the past and forward to the future, and bends musical time and space into one.
THE END.
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3 Jun 2020
#TheCompleteBeethoven #313
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 "Eroica" (1803-4)
1/ "In his own opinion it is the greatest work that he has yet written ... I believe that heaven and earth will tremble when it is performed." - Ferdinand Ries
youtu.be/cziRynzmWaA
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23 Jun 2020
60/ A review of the 1807 Leipzig concerts hailed the Eroica as "the greatest, most original, most artistic and, at the same time, most interesting of all symphonies."
Two centuries later nothing has changed. Ask the conductors surveyed by @MusicMagazine. They'll tell you.
FIN
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28 Dec 2024
Tell the PM - No New Lords! Don't add more peers to our bloated second chamber. Add your name to @electoralreform's #NoNewLords call action.electoral-reform.org.…
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15 Nov 2024
Happy #NewReleaseFriday! The Orchestre National de Lyon and Szeps-Znaider get bonus points for imaginative programming, pairing Strauss's symphonic poem with less familiar quixotic fayre by a composer who's always fun. Set out on your quest here ▶️ spoti.fi/400asdn
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15 Nov 2024
Also this week: a visionary new symphony, Mozart among the mountains, and more historic Bruckner in his anniversary year.
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15 Nov 2024
All this and more on my playlist of symphony and orchestral #NewReleases, updated every Friday. open.spotify.com/playlist/2d…
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The Symphonist retweeted
11 Nov 2024
I would rather have been wrong.
11 Nov 2024
Am I the only one who now sort of wishes not having read The Handmaid's Tale? I love your work, @MargaretAtwood, but I seriously worry that you might be a visionary.
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The Symphonist retweeted
7 Nov 2024
As with Brexit, it’s already clear that the only thing Trump supporters in the UK have to celebrate is the discomfort of people who know what’s coming. Give it a year or two & they’ll be demanding that we stop talking about him altogether. It’s like Groundtwat Day.
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The Symphonist retweeted
7 Nov 2024
Arnold Bax was born on 8 November 1883. He created haunting tapestries of lush harmonies and purveyed evocative, magical landscapes, capturing the soul of nature and the spirit of myth in a deeply poetic voice. What are your favourite Bax works and recordings?
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8 Nov 2024
In need of cheer this #NewReleaseFriday? You're in luck: the Czech Philharmonic are here with colourful and vivacious Dvořák to lift your spirits. If you love his famous Slavonic Dances, then these lesser-known works will be right up your street. ▶️ spoti.fi/400asdn
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The Symphonist retweeted
7 Nov 2024
The @WelshNatOpera orchestra needs your help! Keep the WNO as a full-time company, protect jobs and secure the company’s future.
Write to your MP or MS and ask them to help protect one of the jewels in the Welsh culture crown.
themu.org/WNOBalch
7 Nov 2024
Diogelu Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru! Anfonwch neges e-bost at eich cynrychiolwyr gwleidyddol i ofyn am eu cefnogaeth ✊
Protect Welsh National Opera! Email your political representatives for support ✊
đź”— bit.ly/4fiLYUE
#WNOProud #WNOBalch
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The Symphonist retweeted
7 Nov 2024
#NowSpinning sure one of the #GreatRecordings of Scheherazade. I fell in love with this performance when my brother bought me the disc for Christmas. What a hero! Mackerras always wonderful; here particularly so!
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