Word: missa
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...piano, was the last great achievement of his middle period. It is almost symphonic in concept, and at times bursts the limits of the medium, as Beethoven was to do still more in his last period with such works as the Hammerklavier Sonata, the Grosse Fuge and the Missa Solemnis. The Trio posed for the composer a problem of balance between piano and strings. Beethoven's keyboard part is full of massive chords and rich arpeggios; to help compensate for this the string parts contain many double notes. The result is a work of far richer texture and sonority than...
...Boston Symphony, Charles Munch, the Glee Club and choral society will never again perform pieces in the same grandiose manner to which they became accustomed under Koussevitzky. The change came in 1950, shortly before they were to assist the BSO in a Pension Fund performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis...
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (Robert Shaw Chorale, NBC Symphony and soloists conducted by Arturo Toscanini; Victor, 2 LPs). Beethoven's most massive vocal work. Cruelly demanding on both singers and listeners, it was performed only once during his lifetime. It is no less demanding today, and some of the strain shows in this version. The Maestro gives it a feeling of magnificent urgency despite the fact that the soloists sound faint and distant...
...most boring "acknowledged masterpieces" on records. Readers responded with "enthusiasm and unconcealed joy," reported Editor Herbert Kupferberg. Their "most tedious ten": 1) Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, 2) Franck's Symphony in D Minor, 3) Ravel's Bolero, 4) Wagner's Parsifal, 5) Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, 6) Brahms's Requiem, 7) Dvorak's Symphony No. 5 ("New World"). 8) Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 ("Choral"), 9) Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, 10) Tchaikovsky's Symphony...
...Toscanini had either recorded or broadcast. He would sit on his bed as the music played, eyes blazing as if he were on the podium, conducting energetically and singing the music to himself. When he came to a particularly affecting passage in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or his Missa Solemnis, Toscanini sometimes wept openly. Tears rolling down his cheeks, he would sit back and murmur to himself. "I cannot believe it. I cannot imagine such a man [as Beethoven...