Well, you guys are probably all aware of Ludwig van Beethoven, the very prominent German composer of the Viennese classic and early romantic era. One of his most popular pieces is his symphony no. 5 in c minor op. 67. With his piano sonatas there would be some dozen great piano pieces I could post here, but I want to refer to Liszt once again, who made an attempt to write piano reductions of all of Beethoven's 9 symphonies. Franz Liszt had a great affinity with Beethoven early on. There was a painting of the composer hanging in the house of the Liszt family and whenever someone asked the young pianist what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would say "like him" pointing at the portrait. He later met Beethoven for once as a child of about 11 years of age. His teacher, Carl Czerny, arranged the meeting persuading Beethoven, who was by then totally deaf and reportedly had a dislike for prodigies, to see the young artist play. In the event Beethoven asked if Liszt was able to play something by Bach and he chose the c minor fugue of the well tempered clavier. After the performance Beethoven asked him to transpose the piece at once to another key, which Liszt was also able to do. He also played one of Beethoven's pieces after which Beethoven kissed the boy on his forehead and called him "one of the fortunate ones". Liszt later recalled that event as the palladium of his whole career as an artist.
Anyway, here is the first movement of the symphony no. 5 in the piano rendition of Franz Liszt played by the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who was another fascinating character. He became very famous not only by his ground-breaking interpretations and performances, but also by his "strange" antics and quirks. He played for example only on a chair that his father built for him when he was a child. Needless to say the chair had extremely short legs making the look of the adult Gould sitting on that furniture quite bizarre. But it was also really old and made noises when the pianist moved a little. There are several recordings where you can actually
hear the chair. Another fad of Glenn Gould was to sing over his playing, much to the regret of some listeners and critics. Apparently he tried several times not to sing while he is playing the instrument which always resulted in him playing worse - or so he felt. So he just kept doing it, giving sound engineers a really hard time. You can hear him hum in the background of this recording as well.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjF3-fUfX3E" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjF3-fUfX3E</a>]]>
