Customer Reviews

Beethoven: Wellington's Victory/Liszt: Battle of the Huns etc

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love Beethoven's Wellington's Victory; it always offers me an entertaining and enjoyable break from listening to his more serious music like his quartets, sonatas and symphonies. However, I cannot recommend the present recording. The performance is lackluster, lacking conviction or power. The recording was also on the poor side, lacking good balance adn volume. (If you own an iPod, you can crank up "volume adjustment" to 50% or more, to make this more audible.)

Liszt's two battle pieces are not noteworthy, but they're hard to find, so it's nice to have them on this CD.

If you want a good performance of the Battle Symphony, try the one by Marriner on disc 12 of the 85-disc Beethoven Edition: Complete Works set.

Another early Kunzel CD that is marred by sound effects. The Beethoven piece is almost overwhelmed by electronic cannon and rifle fire. It's hard to even hear the music underneath, which is obviously what I bought the CD to hear.

The CD is very short- just a little over 40 minutes.

Otherwise, the CD is very well executed.

...you'll like this collection of so-called battle music. Kunzel brings home the power of all three of these works, but the Wellington's Victory is superb. Until I heard Kunzel's interpretation of this work, I felt that Morton Gould conducting his own orchestra was the definitive Wellington. Kunzel's use of dynamics, tempo and phrasing is much more invigorating in this much under-appreciated Beethoven work.

"Wellington's Victory" must be Beethoven's most unintentionally funny longer work. I can't hear it without cracking up. Understand, I ENJOY the piece, but -- far more than Tchaikovsky's 1812 -- it's movie background music a hundred years before there were talkies. This is a well-rendered, exciting recording, but I still prefer the Marriner (St Martin in the Fields) version, with all the hokey sound effects--guaranteed to cheer you up on a bad day. Unfortunately that performance seems to be out of circulation.

I recall a newspaper typo of a few years ago (maybe in the New Yorker?) that went like this: "The high school orchestra played Beethoven's 'Wellington's Victory' last Friday night, with Taco Bell's cannon." Yup, them there Mexican cannon sure can make a racket.