Sunday, February 10, 2013

Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven

It may surprise you to learn (if you don't know) that the late Leonard Bernstein once said in a documentary--I have seen it--that if he could take only one of his recorded works to heaven with him when he died it would not be a symphony or concerto, by himself or others, or one of his famous theater pieces, but his orchestral version of Beethoven's string quartet opus 131, with the Vienna Philharmonic.  I always wondered if that was just a flip remark, but today in the NYT there's a grief report on a new book that collects one of Lenny's last interviews, with Jonathan Cott, in which he repeats this.  Perhaps this will show why:

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