Customer Reviews

Ode to Freedom - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9; Leonard Bernstein - Official concert of the Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989

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Western Civilization will forever be marked by its unique capacity to free itself from its mistakes of slavery. This performance of this symphony is what all tyrants fear: artists celebrating the greatness of freedom in a triumph of dignity over fear, without violence, without hate, with the promise of freedom for all the world. Freiheit, Freedom, the word in a setting of organized and orchestrated cultural triumph makes Shiller's poetry ring true in ways that the selfish ideal of Fruede, Joy, ever could.

The performance is excellent. Although we might wish for greater video clarity, different camera angle selections, and other fripperies, there will never be as significant a moment as this concert, and this recording is as good as we can hope for. The sound quality is more than good enough for most video systems, but I can see where true audiophiles might well quibble. Bureaucrats will quibble over the word choice, and other people with no sense of history.

The one significant change that I would appreciate in a twenty-year retrospective is a 10-20 minute explanation of the indecency and atrocities of the communist empire that made freedom from tyranny so sweet. Regrettably, serious artists and academics since this performance have largely moved away from acknowledging the problems with tyranny. Fortunately, Leonard Berenstein had more than enough sense and decency to recognize this moment in history. Fortunately also, Beethoven and Schiller could dream of such a day and score the music and write the poetry for a freedom they would never get to live.

For all who lived and died that others might one day be free, this performance is a triumphant justification of all their sacrifice and hope.

I am old enough to remember WWII, the so-called Cold War including the Berlin Wall (which I saw firsthand), and at last the fall of that Wall. I did not see this performance at the time on that old-fashioned appliance, television, and did not know of it. On a Lufthansa flight home to California from Munich (ironic?) yesterday I saw it. And I cried because it reminded me of the events surrounding the fall of the Wall which I do remember, including particularly the joy of Berliners as they hacked away at it and embraced each other. The scope of the performance (the size of the orchestra and chorus) is seldom available for the Ninth and that old ham Bernstein (and I mean that in the best possible sense) makes you feel the emotion he feels. The audience was obviously stunned by the performance, because at the end of the piece there is a period of absolute silence before the applause begins. Admittedly the video quality is not perfect, and the audio is not what we expect today, but taken as a whole it is a worthy reminder of the power of music and of Bernstein's way with it.

Bernstein insisted on substituting "Freiheit" or "freedom" for "Freude" or "Joy" in the Ode. So the last movement became "The Ode to Freedom." Beethoven would have approved, I think.I was in Europe during that incredible Fall of 1989. We were in Budapest when the Romanians abruptly rose up and tried and executed their tyrant and his wife in less than 24 hours. The feeling in the air was indescribable. I watched this broadcast from London on Christmas Day and cried throughout. It is not the greatest performance of the 9th -- the crowd of performers was too large. Perfection was not the point. Passion was the point. It included children's choirs as well - the future. At the end Lenny fell into a dream and basically stopped conducting - and the symphony musicians and the singers continued on, faultlessly, without the conductor. It must be the brightest memory for all of them. The description on this site is inadequate.

Excellent! I watched in 1989 and it was just as gripping today. It is a must buy for any history buff and music lover.

I bought this hoping to let my students and children experience the end of the Cold War but it is not to be. I will keep my purchase for historical reason but it is not worth the money if you have not bought one.

A historical event and a spirited performance led by a deeply moved Bernstein but the audio quality is completely unacceptable.

The sound engineer completely butchered the sound. The engineer compressed the sound so that loud passages become softer, higher frequency are over emphasized, lower frequency are muddled and boomy and mid range is non-existent. Nearly all instruments sound thin and bodiless. The orchestra sounds distant and lightweight and suspended high in midair unlike what an actual concert hall performance should be.

No recording can mirror a live performance but a good recording can preserve much and give viewers an opportunity to hear most of the audio content. Not this recording; it is a near total loss.

The wonderful interplay of the choirs cannot be heard. The bass strings section has its bottom octaves cut out and butchered. Nearly the entire performance is one of disjoint, hard to separate mess of noise. For such a historic event and such a special gathering of musicians and soloist and choirs and with the wonderful Bernstein at the helm, one would expect nothing less than a world class historic masterpiece in recording but it is not to be.

Beethoven's masterpiece would have had immense impact if fully audible, it would have drawn one into the emotion of the soundscape and fully impart the meaning of the end of the Cold War. Without the music, all feelings are lost.

I sincerely hope the content owner would take the original recording and remaster it into HD format and put out a BluRay version. That is if the sound engineer did not butcher the original raw recording to begin with.

What a disappointment.

This particular performance is very, very heart rendering and very vibrant with very great exuberance and jubilation. With every anticipating beat and every note of Music performed. This very careful rendition of the Ninth,with modern Instrumentation and Tuning, still brings a reninisance of Beethoven and what is best represented with Maestro Beethoven's most poinant and firey interpretation, based on the famous poem of Friedrich Schiller.

This concert is of great interest because of its historical context. That context is the falling of the Berlin Wall. However aside from some brief video footage and a change to the words from "Ode to Joy to "Ode to Freedom" the historical consequence soon becomes forgotten when to start to listen and watch the concert.

I'm not familiar with Beethoven's earlier symphonies (apart from the opening to the 5th of course), and my listening is mainly in the Jazz and Rock area, but this is completely mesmerising. When this was composed in the 1820's it must have been way ahead of its time. Truly Beethoven started the romantic era.

Leonard Bernstein is the conductor and his passion for the music is evident throughtout. The Orchestra is made up of some of the finest musicians from around the globe (LSO, NY Phil, Paris etc) who together with fine soloists and a choir, which unusually contains children, give a performance that you are unlikely to forget.

The picture is in 4:3, as it was filmed for TV in 1989, and the sound quality IMO is excellent.