Beethoven Lives

I can still remember the first time I heard Beethoven's 8th Symphony. I was living in Dallas at the time, and had a car with a cassette deck, which I'd never had before. I had found an inexpensive cassette recording of Beethoven's 5th, which was just about the only piece of classical music I could name. I popped it in and listened to that, and then, of course, I had to either rewind it, or turn it over and play the other side. I don't know how many times I just re-wound the tape, but at some point I just said, "What the hell," and turned it over.

I was driving on Hampton Road, a north-south route that, back then, was pretty much out in the country. When I got close to where I was going, I was only halfway through the 8th Symphony, so I pulled over to the side of the road and sat in my car to listen to the rest of it, rather than stop it in the middle. It was that enjoyable a piece of music. I eventually came to like it as much as the 5th.

In the years since then, I've heard oodles and gobs of symphonic and orchestral music, and if I can't always name the composer, I can at least tell if a work is baroque or romantic or modern; and I have learned to tell which composers' work I like (there aren't really all that many of them). But none of the others, not even Bach or Schubert or Mozart, is as absorbing as Beethoven.

The San Antonio Symphony today completes its first "Beethoven Festival," having performed all nine of the master's symphonies in a series of four concerts over the past month. I and a friend bought tickets to the Saturday night series, and last night heard that wonderful 8th Symphony, and the 9th in the final concert of the series. I won't pretend to be able to critique the series from a technical perspective, though I have learned a thing or two about music and musical technique in my years. And I can think of a lot of things to complain about overall: the uncomfortable seats at the Majestic, which were made for people with very short legs and very numb asses; the mediocre acoustics, which kept the orchestra from filling the space with sound; some wrong notes; one of the Mastersinger soloists who couldn't really hold the long notes steady. But none of that could really detract from the magnificence of the music, or the thrill of hearing it performed live. Especially the 5th, and the 8th.