To Marc Fountain - Big Thanks!!!

So, I mentioned to Marc my quest to find the ultimate Beethoven 9th recording.
I would scan the internet for the top 10 offerings, and attempt to track down 3 at Marbeck's, specialist classical CD shop.
After a harmonious and intense morning I would make my ultimate decision.

Well, with a single, fell swoop, Mr Fountain has undone any need for such shennanigans (life is after all somewhat foreshortened in certain aspects!), and delivered a complete set of Beethoven Symphnonies into my hot little hands.

And not just any old bunch of musicians - this is the Orchestra of the Revolution and Romantic Period, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner - period instruments, reconstructions, etc. and keeping to the original instructions as close as possible.

But that is not all, oh no that is not all (as Dr Seuss once said)!

These guys'n'gals have the revolution not only on the copies of their sheet music - they have it in the passion of their playing!

So we get life and death tempo changes, hell-for-leather French Horn fanfares (never has the Eroica been so...er...eroic!), and diminuendos that usher us into the truly magical and intimate whispeings of the man himself.

Big thanks, Marc, to you, then, and nice to know that instead of spending the time scanning, I can spend it bathing in Beethoven.

Fa'afetai Lava,

Gerald.