in her eyes..

I liked this very much, especially the ending where I felt it moved beyond a standard into something more (expanding its universe, say).  You should orchestrate it!

I'm loving piano. I liked this song, a lot. But my impression was more like 'cloudy afternoon, rain falling on the window'.

Beautiful transitions into the various sections. Very nice!

This isn't really my style of music, but I did quite enjoy the middle section around 1:23 or so. Very nice effect with the trills and fast figures there.

I think there is some form of return at the end, with the reappearance of the LH arpeggio figures that resemble the beginning. It does impart some sense of closure this way. I don't think a return (in the sense of a dramatic arc) necessarily has to return to the opening theme in a literal way; indirect allusions of this kind can work very well. (The string opening / closing of Sibelius' 6th symphony also answers each other in this kind of indirect way, particularly in Karajan's interpretation, which I found supremely moving.)

Have you tried the older period-influenced Rattle/Vienna?  I recall someone gave me the box set and it was the best one:

Haha, TBH I don't know. As they say, there is no accounting for taste. Some kinds of music I like, others I just don't. Even I myself have a hard time explaining to myself why sometimes.


I grew up with the Karajan versions of the Beethoven symphonies, and that's how I've always heard them. It wasn't until much later that I discovered, for example, that the Kleiber renditions of the 7th symphony, say, are much clearer than Karajan's version. Karajan seems to rush the finale a little too much, causing many of the parts to get blurred because it's simply too fast for the musicians to keep in sync. Well, the recording quality probably also has something to do with it, but then you can only shorten notes so much before they start turning into an indistinct mush of sonic soup. At least for the finale of the 7th, I found that Kleiber's more restrained approach brought out the lines much more clearly, and arguably showcases Beethoven's meticulous construction much better than the Karajan version.

Nevertheless, some interpretations of Karajan I still find the best, e.g., Sibelius 6th, mainly because of the way he made the starting and ending string passages answer to each other. But for Sibelius' 5th, I find Karajan's interpretation rather lackluster, and e.g., the Blomstedt performance much more effective.


I'll have to listen to this sometime later. Need to get back to work now... but Beethoven's 6th is one of my all-time favorites, so I'll definitely have to check this out.