Beethoven
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'The Fifth Symphony is one of the most important orchestral works of our time. This one-movement Fifth of barely half an hour's duration is the work of a true mystic. It unfolds in ever increasing powerful waves of music, Gregorian phrases are transformed into the local idiom even as they sound. Glittering cascades of trumpets, glorious passages from the woodwinds, one moment massive, the next delicate almost to the point of fragility, powerfully singing melodies and ecstatic rhythms evoke the Easter celebration of the Resurrection. And yet this music, with its highly idiosyncratic tonality which is strongly tritonal, also depicts nature. There is the unmistakable call of seabirds before calm returns and the work opens out into complete tranquility with a characteristically unadorned adagio passage - one of the most intense and moving to have been written this century. Perhaps this is a tone painting of that contemplation of nature, that union
'The Fifth Symphony is one of the most important orchestral works of our time. This one-movement Fifth of barely half an hour's duration is the work of a true mystic. It unfolds in ever increasing powerful waves of music, Gregorian phrases are transformed into the local idiom even as they sound. Glittering cascades of trumpets, glorious passages from the woodwinds, one moment massive, the next delicate almost to the point of fragility, powerfully singing melodies and ecstatic rhythms evoke the Easter celebration of the Resurrection...