One maestro’s soft spot for Beethoven’s Seventh
SIR – Norman Lebrecht’s fascinating article on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (Arts, January 26) confirms my own experience of this wonderful work.
The first concert I attended in 1961, when I was 16, concluded with a performance of this symphony by Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and began my life-long love of orchestral music. Nine years later I attended my last Barbirolli concert, in the De Montfort Hall in Leicester, which also ended with the Seventh. Two months later, and a few days before his death, Sir John concluded the King’s Lynn Festival with the symphony, making it the last piece of music he conducted in public.
Records of the maestro’s career, published by the Barbirolli Society, show that he conducted Beethoven’s Seventh 249 times, the Fifth 144 times, and the Eroica 105 times. This would seem to endorse Mr Lebrecht’s conclusion – that what Wagner called “the apotheosis of the dance” is almost certainly Beethoven’s most popular symphony. That said, I regard the Eroica as his greatest and most influential work, but that is the subject of another debate.
David Elliott Falmouth, Cornwall