A Beethoven a day: Chips off the old block

A Beethoven a day: Chips off the old block

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norman lebrecht

January 07, 2020

Welcome to the fourth work in the Slipped Disc/Idagio Beethoven Edition

4 Elegiac Song, opus 118

Leif Segerstam (see yesterday’s olives) appends this wonderful obscurity for chorus and orchestra to his version of Christ on the Mount of Olives. It feels like a missing fragment of Fidelio, wondrously executed. Credible alternatives are available on Idagio from the LSO and Michael Tilson Thomas (1975), Richard Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90 (2002), and Jerzy Semkow in St Louis (2017).

I’ve enjoyed them all.

 

Comments

  • fflambeau says:

    I like these comparisons of recordings. Keep them coming. Segerstam is indeed a force of nature and hugely talented.

    His Sibelius is in a league of its own.

  • Nicolas says:

    I noticed you alternate long length works with short (or middle) length works.

    If it is on purpose, keep this habit sir ! Short and middle length works will allow me to finish to long work of the day before, if kids kept me too busy…

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