[webcast-l] Beethoven joins iPod generation

Michelle McGuire michelle at commedia.org.uk
Mon Jun 13 09:27:49 BST 2005


Beethoven joins iPod generation

David Ward
Monday June 13, 2005
The Guardian

Forget the Crazy Frog. The iPod generation is to be given the chance  
to enjoy a more enriching download diet: Beethoven's entire  
collection of nine symphonies. Following Radio 3's Beethoven  
marathon, which ended at midnight on Friday, the BBC is making the  
complete cycle of the composer's symphonies - more than six hours of  
listening - available for free.

Listeners can visit the Radio 3 website and download as mp3 files the  
complete set performed by the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic under  
the direction of its principal conductor, Gianandrea Noseda.

"The download is unprecedented in the music industry," said a  
spokeswoman. "It offers a unique opportunity for householders the  
world over to collect their very own portfolio for free."
There is no charge, with the orchestra's managers describing the  
offer as "a gift of music-making to the world".

Favourable emails are already pouring in from the US, Canada,  
Germany, Australia, Argentina and even Mongolia.

Noseda and the Philharmonic are halfway through a series of four  
concerts in which all the symphonies will be performed in what is  
claimed to be the first complete cycle to have been heard in  
Manchester for 50 years.

The first five have already been recorded at concerts to critical  
acclaim. The Guardian's Tim Ashley described it as "the most radical  
and impactive Beethoven to be heard in the UK for some time".

Writing of the fifth symphony, he said it was "delivered at breakneck  
speeds and played with hair-raising precision, was all muscle and  
sinew, astonishing in its violence, and generating some of the shock  
its first audiences must have experienced on hearing it".
Hilary Finch, writing in the Times, said: "Noseda is deconstructing  
and reconstructing with energy, diligence and a devilishly daring  
imagination music which we seem to know least just when we think we  
know it best."

The orchestra will be back in Manchester's Bridgewater Hall this week  
to play the sixth and seventh symphonies on Thursday, with the eighth  
and ninth on Sunday. Recordings will be broadcast in the week  
beginning June 27.

Source: Media Guardian
http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,7521,1505308,00.html

BBC Beethoven Downloads
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml





-- 
Michelle McGuire
Development Officer

Community Media Association
htpp://www.commedia.org.uk

"Access to the media for people and communities"



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