Yannick’s rock version of Beethoven’s 5th. Your thoughts?
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That’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” by Walter Murphy
It featured in Saturday Night Fever. I have known this piece since then.
More to the point, why was Yannick inflicting Price and Beach on Montreal, where he is beloved?
Still, I think pretty much anything goes at outdoor August concerts.
I don’t agree that one could put Price and Beach in the same box. Yes, Price is at best, to my ears, a talented mediocrity, but Beach’s Gaelic Symphony is masterly (or should it be mistressly?) – as are her Piano Concerto and Piano Quintet.
I’m sure you realize this is called “A Fifth of Beethoven” which was all the rage in 1976 by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. This disco version. is nothing new and has been played by many over the years. For a pops type concert (which this obviously is) I have no problem with it. I remember how it introduced Beethoven to a friend of mine when he heard it nearly 50 years ago and got him more interested in classical music.
Hereafter, youngsters will go home and immediately look-up the piece on youtube, only to find that it is really something quite different from rock. Or any popmusic. And they will feel cheated, instead of being overwhelmed by the wish to get initiated into a high art music form they had never ever heard about, not even from their grandparents. And next time they will avoid events with something like ‘an orchestra’ as the plague.
But maybe I am too gloomy, and I should be more optimistic that great conductors take the trouble to sell their wares with such enthusiasm about being young and completely ignorant.
As if you had any idea of what “youngsters” think or do.
You are as wrong as those ignorant youngsters, while I am an expert, since years of research which led to my tome ‘What Do Youngsters Think?’ OUP, series ‘What Youngsters Think’, 2019. Not to forget my impressive contribution at the 2021 Biannual Cultural-Sociological Conference at Torino University ‘What Do Youngsters Think?’, and my paper ‘Youngsters Think’ in the May 2023 issue of Nature.
My advice: think before you type.
Too gloomy, I think. It’s not only great conductors but great composers who sell their wares, surely. Maybe I am too optimistic but if anyone with a soul who heard this drivel were tempted to go and hear the real thing from the stalls of a great concert hall with a fine orchestra and conductor, it think there would be at least a 50/50 chance of the real thing being the winner.
That seems to be a bizarre assumption.
Why would a distorted version inspire a wish to hear the real thing? People, even if they are young and don’t know classical music at all, and going to this event, have no idea that what they hear is distorted because they don’t have any comparison material. How could they get the idea that there would be an original? The whole thing is one of these misconceived attempts to make classical music accessible to people who are ignorant of the art form. It is education and information that is the only effective medium for making classical music accessible to young people.
Maybe all y’all are just overthinking the hell out of this and it was just a fun bit of nostalgia for boomers on a summer night. Calm down!
Beethoven’s fifth is the nearest thing to rock music, among classical symphonies, that I can think of. Driving rhythms, simple harmonies, catchy tunes. Perhaps Mr Borstlap should broaden his horizons and listen to some classic rock.
Perhaps this GuestX should broaden his horizon and listen to Beethoven ‘s fifth, or to classical music in general.
This seems like an adaptation of Walter Murphy’s 1976 disco arrangement. Sounds like the crowd loves it! Wish it had more of that funky synth from the original
It’s a fun, unserious moment.
Yes the neighbour of one of my aunts was there and she loved it so much that she bought 5 rock albums next day.
Sally
Walter Murphy’s clever thing was a hit before Yannick and most of the crowd were born.
Herd mentality and nother original. Years before Walter Murphy’s a Fifth of Beethoven (1976) there was the Dutch band Ekseption with their take. (1969) They were the original third stream rock band…..taking from Gunther Schuller’s third stream jazz, which actually was Gil Evans long before it was Gunthers’. Anyhow, for your aural pleasure, Ekseption performing their take on Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j0umpUFCE0
And then there’s the danceable version of a bit of it in Kalman’s The Duchess of Chicago…
I remember this one quite well. Back in early 70s when I was a student I took a Summer job at road construction. We had only 3 tapes, a weird random choice: Macca’s Red Rose Speedway; the self-titled by The Gun (Race with The Devil); and the self-titled by Ekseption, with The 5th. We played these tapes endlessly during the evenings. Today, I can still play every track inside my head.
The Fifth with excerpts from two of his piano sonatas thrown in for good measure. I still have this album. Happy memories of my youth.
Looks like a bit of fun which is hardly anything to worry about. The original isn’t going away and there are plenty of opportunities to hear it.
Just wanted to add, by the 1970’s, the band Ekseption looked like creepy muppets, but were still doing the 3rd stream rock thing with other classical works and they are worth your time. Their Hammond organ infused Bach came out around the same time as Wendy Carlos’s Moog infused Bach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-CNTqwDc9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgWyk2H_yVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSJ7jvq3e08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbE0Z2rSGKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl_1333xEUY
Little by little everyone gets the Beethoven they deserve.
You neglect to mention that this was the encore to a massive free outdoor concert (crowds estimated at over 50 000 people), where they played Florence Price, Claude Champagne, and a complete symphony by Amy Beach (the Gaelic Symphony).
Not exactly ‘dumbing down for the masses’, is it?
But oh so frightfully woke.
Generally these sorts of concerts are devoted to music people know and love. I wonder why this wasn’t?
Because he and the Orchestra have built up a loyal audience who trust him and is keen to discover music they don’t know, and because he introduces the music with both seriousness and approachability.
The Orchestre Métropolitain consistently gets 50 000+ people to their free outdoors concert. And they’ll get it again next year – no need to play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to beg the audience to come back.
But then next season also has a Beethoven symphonic cycle – it’s about balance.
Full review and program here: https://www.ledevoir.com/culture/musique/817755/agreable-soiree-mont-royal
The approach to announcing his contract extension has been typical of the Yannick PR machine.
First they publish insincere, forced endorsements from various departments of the Met, although in reality the orchestra is fed up with his lack of musical depth, wardrobe antics and lack of presence in the house, especially when he cancels performances to attend red carpet events with Bradley Cooper. His music staff complains he has insulated himself with an entourage of lackeys, no longer willing to take any balance notes. And the level of guest conductors has dipped dramatically under his watch (Kensho Watanabe is barely a C-lister, but licks the right boots).
Then this video. It could be debated whether any other serious, supposed world-class conductor would promote Beethoven this way, but how about the fact that his own orchestra of 25 years can’t play the first three notes even remotely together?
The hype machine is alive and well, but there will never be any more substance to this mediocre talent. And he has done nothing to help the MUSIC in any of his institutions! The Met made a grave mistake choosing YNS over Fabio Luisi for the sake of a few donors, and we pay the price.
I doubt there is a day when Fabio Luisi doesn’t thank his lucky stars.
It´s the Walter Murphy arrangement …Murphy was a genius.Check his take on Debussy here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eskjm5esnBk
Classic Walter Murphy arrangement….The year it came out and was featured in the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, it was played all over the world at pops concerts. Arthur Fiedler did it with the Boston Pops, although the recording on his last album”Saturday Night Fiedler” was actually conducted by Boston Pops assistant conductor and BSO violinist Harry Ellis Dickson.
There is a wonderful YouTube of the Boston Pops’ famous bicentennial July 4th 1976 concert with Fiedler conducting. The 5th of Beethoven got the huge audience to dancing and it is all good harmless fun.
Wake up!
This has been going on for YEARS in Pops Concerts! Other Pop Arrangements of Classics too, sometimes in Disco Medleys.
A bit of fun is all.
They were kind of a Hoot to play!
Nobody got hurt…
But such concerts can be physically dangerous. In 2016 a musicologist who visited a pops concert in Alabama where a rap version of the Eroica was performed, drew the attention of the crowd to the big sign he was holding-up with some critical text, and was trampled upon to smithereens.
Yannick has not the best taste, he has made his the french Mc Donald’s commercial slogan “Venez comme vous êtes”. .. like just out of the bed? come anyway…. ”’but this is a groovy and seductive way of having the 5th as an encore… what’s wrong about it?…
Not sure the pianist was actually playing anything, but if so, I could not hear it.
If it’s a pops concert, fair game, I guess.
But, if it is part of a serious concert, then, if this “rendition” is regarded as a way to bring the hoi-pilloi to the classical music table, it is ill-thought out.
Why do serious musicians feel they have to pander to low brows who run away from deep spiritual experiences? To each, his own. But, if the serious musicians want more listeners, then they need to fund public school music programs, free concerts for students of every age, and access to musical instruments free or with small fees to loan.
My father spent 43 years doing just that, and produced several musicians who went on to play first chair in prestigious orchestras, and, some others, local bands, as well as to carry on from his inspiration to teach others.
No pop star has done great classical for half a century. That’s when Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer flourished as ELP, doing Copeland, Bach, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and of course Mussorgsky (with their magnificent adaptation of Pictures).
More cowbell…
Well orchestrated version of Murphy’s 5th of Beethoven. I’ll give Yannick some props insomuch that everyone appears to be having fun and this is in front of a massive outdoor crowd which can be seen in the video. He seems somewhat dressed down in comparison to everyone else on stage.
Judge Judy would be proud that her intro is now known in Montreal!
In a long line of classical ‘quoting” or wholesale stealing. The Shangri La’s brilliant Past Present, Future (Beethoven), the chorus of Barry Manilow’s Could it be Magic (Chopin), A Lover’s Concerto by the Toys, Bumble Boogie by the wonderfully named B Bumble and the Stingers, and many more. John Lennon said his song Because was the Moonlight Sonata backwards, but the jury is out on that.
Reminds me of a pop version of the first movement of Mozart’s symphony no 40 which was popular for about five minutes several decades ago.
Haven’t heard it since.
The nice thing of this site is that it democratically offers space to the many fools to expose their real selves. It explains why music life has so many problems.
This is just a similar arrangement to those on several LPs in the “Hooked on Classics” series produced by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Louis Clark at the start of the 1980s. For a time they were extremely successful and made the pop charts in many countries. To a certain extent they were continued without the disco beat in the LSO’s later “Classic Rock”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IMzzD2PYTA