Have you ever been infuriated with a performance? Have you ever witnessed something so horrifically wrong that it went beyond any viable definition of subjectivity and was purely and wholly in the realm of abhorment?

Click HERE, scroll down, click on the videos and listen to the tempos at any given point in any given movement.

WARNING
This is not for the faint of heart or faint of stomach.

I couldn't care less how holy Mr. (Father?) Cobra is, he should be tied up and shot.

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Listened to as much of the first movement as i could handle. This is pretty laughable stuff! Almost sounds as if the video keeps needing to sync up or something, only way i can understand these spaces in between notes. It is kind of painful actually as you anticipate the next notes and they don't come.

Do you think there would be a riot a la Rite of Spring if this were performed live?

This could never, ever ever ever be performed live. No orchestra would give a complete fool such as this a chance to put this travesty on stage, no matter how much he paid them.

That said, the music world is full of amateur diletantes such as Mr. Cobra, who are able to amass large $um$ of Money to realize their projects. As long as they stay on DVD behind closed doors, no harm done, I suppose. Still riles me, though.

EricPolar, just listen to the beginning of the 3rd movement. Please. For laughs.

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I can't leave this alone.

Mr. Cobra has a website: CLICK

I sent him a rather sharp message and invited him to the discussion here. I hope he joins us, for the sake of integrity and all that is right in the world.

P.S. The reason I am so adamant about this is that I am performing my first Beethoven 9th in March... call it a research project.

Grrr! There go, my heart's abhorrence
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Father Cobra
G_d's blood, would not mine kill you!?

Extra points to the first person who can (without internet searching) identify the poetic reference here.

I'm listening to Mozart's 'Flute and Harp Concerto' now, and right after it ends, I'm going to listen to the awfulness you people seem to talk about. Reading your comments, I think Bohm's last recording can be considered fast.

Okay, to be frank with you, I started with the second movement and heard no more than 8 seconds of it. That was evidence enough!!!(And, of course, I couldn't take it anymore!) You know what's worse? That video starts with a close up of the word 'Vivace' from what I think is Beethoven's autograph. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I think Bohm's version might well be the slowest in recorded history, because this one's a joke!

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Navneeth


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i t h i n k t h i s i s j u s t a b i t

t o o o o o o

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I've been skimming thru a bit more of this guy's stuff-- I mean, look, I love to hear Bach's air played at a good slow tempo, but this is absurd-- the grace notes ending up sounding like bloody passing tones!

It basically sounds like he's cut the tempo in half for everything.

OMG and Mozart's Symphony No. 40...

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"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.” ~ Claude Debussy

d a v e ?
w h a t
a r e
y o u
d o i n g ,
d a v e ?
s t o p ,
d a v e ,
s t o p
m y
m i n d i s g o i n g . . .

opus67, even funnier is the last movement, also beginning with a close up of "Presto", which he does in a moderato "3".

@foolonthehill, good reference to 2001... i like that film. I even like the part where he's jogging through the spaceship, slowly... slowly... it's great.

@chitown, that poetry rings a bell... but I can't think of what it is... can you let us know when we're allowed to search?

Yup. I later saw that too. (Was quite curious how that movement would start. ) I assumed that this conductor was this bratty son of a billionaire, who bought him an orchestra to play with (no pun intended), but his biography doesn't seem to suggest anything of that sort.

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Navneeth


Want a piece of classical music identified? Post a link or upload a clip here. Someone might have an answer.

The most painful part for me was the last coda... I think I just died a little inside

Geez, I'm still just incredulous... Reading thru his "Tempo, Space & Music" it turnes out that yeah, besaically he's just cutting the tempo for everything in half, which leads to some truly absurd results.

Its bad enough slowing faster music down, but when it comes to music that is slow, it gets really bizarre. You have to go REALLY slow then.

And not only that but there is no historical justification for this...? And as far as Bach's Orchestra Suites go, while they were not modelled on popular dances, but only derivative, they were still more or less based on those rhythms. It makes no musical sense, no historical sense and any sense of continuity and energy is lost.

Oh god, Beethoven's fifth sounds like a corpse drained of all its blood...

It actually sounds like muzak like this...

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"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.” ~ Claude Debussy

A few more thoughts:

1) It's a good thing that there has been a subtle shift in our membership lately... that way, we can avoid the possible brouhaha about "sullying-the-reputation-of-an-academic." BWAHHAHaha!

2) Just like would-be rockers have their "guitar-heroes," I guess it's possible that wanna-be conductors have their "podium heroes." Maybe his is Celibidache. Well, just like Lloyd Bentson upbraided Dan Quayle ("you're no Jack Kennedy"), this man should be told "you're no Sergiu Celibidache."

3) Mahler once had a quote about "sinning against the holy law of dynamics." I thought about parallel "sinning against the holy law of temporal proportion," and perhaps, based on the evidence, it's not simply a venial sin.

4) @Maestro K: feel free to research the poetry whenever you wish. However, please leave the floor open to someone else's guess, if made in the next 18 hours.

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dear god that's the most terrible thing i've ever heard. im listening and sub consciously counting it at the same time in my head WHY??!!!

lol, and i had stopped the London Symphonies to hear this version (no joke lol)