Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 Pastoral & Egmont, Op. 84: Overture Noriaki Kitamura & Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

• 1 I. Allegro ma non troppo 14:54
• 2 II. Andante molto mosso 13:52
• 3 III. Allegro - IV. Allegro - V. Allegretto 22:50
• 4 Egmont, Op. 84: Overture 09:59
• Total Runtime 01:01:35

Info for Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 Pastoral & Egmont, Op. 84: Overture

The first point is tempo. I have some doubt about the tempo that is written by Beethoven himself essentially. I have claimed there were problem of graduation of metronome in those days and it is fast about 10%. Therefore the tempo that suits to my thought is standard. But the most important aim of my performance is neat one of neat sound. It's no problem to be influenced by the present situation, I feel. On the whole, the tempo resulted a little slow. Especially the beginning of whole performance that was in the last session was quite slow. It goes together with politeness of performance, not to be denied, so I continued.

The second point is agogic (change of tempo). Sometimes you can hear where the original score has no agogic. These are done spontaneously in the performance. And these are rather the results of good ensemble, so I did not revise.

The third point is trifle. I put off the start of decrescendo in the end of phrase, for example bar 6 of Ⅱ movement, for one eight ♪. This is correct descriptively, but I dared to do. If the players pay attention to this, appoggiatura of the beginning of this beat may lose its effect. That is the result that I made an effort to be faithful to score （composer） as possible as I could.

This time, I thought this land is the best to record “Pastoral”. As Beethoven composed this music in a suburb of Vienna (Heiligenstadt) and noticed to introduce the country scenery. What did he take interest in? I think it was the intonation of language.

He, Beethoven was born in Bonn. That is very near by the sphere of French. Slavic is spoken in Slovak or Czech. The biggest difference is that the accent of intonation is on the first syllable in conversation. In the case of Western Europe, language has articles and then does not have as that except special case. Especially as it seems in the melody of dance in the Ⅲ movement, three time in the first half is melody with auftact and two time in the latter half is without it. Also in the Ⅰ movement melodies are alike just like a carriage running but intonations are different between presentation part and development part etc. I thought this orchestra is of people that can perform that naturally. As was expected, this was good selection. I’m glad.

There are plural reasons why I chose “Egmont” for coupling. First, this year is just the 200th year when it was composed. That does not have a big meaning. Another is expectation for sympathy of people that experienced destruction of communism, as everyone knows. Further, I heard that this revolution was not tragic as was called “velvet revolution”. If I insist that was realization of Egmont’s ideal revolution. I don’t understand how much they know about that. Further, because “Pastoral” is a very serene and peaceful scene I selected as a contrastive one.

I think it was a big virtue of introducing deep sound of strings of this orchestra by this music.

I also think it was a big success of making naive and sincere figure toward the music of this orchestra to the sound by “Pastoral”.

I regret that such orchestra of good quality is not known much in my country. I am very glad to be able to introduce for this chance.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to members of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, manager Ms. Tatiana Schoeferova, Mr. Pavel Hruby, and interpreter Ms. Kinga Valent.

I would like to thank engineer Mr. Hubert Geshwandtner and producer Mr. Emil Niznansky of the Slovak Radio. I deeply thank recording engineer Mr. Teruo Murakami who has been with me from Japan. They made every effort for the recording.

I would like to give my best regards to people that support this project, Mr. Mitsuaki Kukita that is auditor of NKB and handled general office work, Ms. Hiromi Kitagawa that is manager of NKB and treats general financial affairs, puts documents into English, and negotiated with Slovak side, and Mr. Takuhide Mizuhara that is vice-chief manager and supervisor of NKB. (Noriaki Kitamura)

Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
Noriaki Kitamura, conductor

Recorded 8-9 May, 2010 at Bratislava, Concert Hall of the Slovak Radio, Slovak Republic　

No biography found.

Booklet for Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 Pastoral & Egmont, Op. 84: Overture