First Love

From Menletter January 2004

By Tim Baehr

I have at least four versions of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. All are fine performances: Three by Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony (two CDs and one LP) and one by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra on CD remastered from the tapes of the original LP. I may have another version on tape, possibly by von Karajan. I've also read reviews of some of the famous renditions by Bernstein, Furtwangler, and others.

The Solti vinyl and one of the Solti CDs are identical: a recording from 1972. Thirty-two years ago, give or take a few months. Let's see, I was about 28 when it first came out.

I love all of the performances, from the mysterious, almost creepy beginning to the triumphal choral climax. The beginning of the second movement, with its abrupt phrasing and tympani tattoos, is ground into my consciousness from years of listening nightly to the closing theme on NBCs' Huntley-Brinkley Report.

The '87 Solti is crystalline, almost as if each note was played just for me. However, with that clarity comes an analytic dryness and a sense that the whole symphony is being played staccato. For me, this performance sounds like a really, really good rendition by an excellent college orchestra.

The Szell is utterly amazing. The recording of this 1961 (!) performance is crisp, with well-delineated instruments and a performance that seems fresh and emotional. If it weren't for my first love, the '72 Solti, this could be my new favorite.

The '72 Solti digs the deepest into my soul. First on vinyl, now on CD, it is my very first Ninth, the one I loved instantly and forever.

Solti's been criticized for being too Wagnerian, too showy -- just too much -- but many people like this '72 version. I more than like it. Each phrase, each attack, each rosin-clouded scrape of bow on strings is in my pores, in my bones. The overall musical line seems more legato than the more modern Solti; it's fluid without getting mushy. And when the chorus reaches its pianissimo pauses in the final movement, I still hold my breath, feel chills at the back of my neck, and sometimes sob silently.

Years may go by between listenings, but my response is the same. It's like the old lover who, on a chance encounter years later, can make the heart swell, aching, and put the pit of the stomach into free-fall.

But this isn't a music review, or at least it wasn't intended to be. I'm trying to give a sense of return, a sense of what it's like to rediscover a lost love -- a first love, with that combination of deep familiarity and freshness.

Even as a kid I had experiences like that. Maybe you did, too, coming across a once-forgotten toy abandoned at the back of the closet or stored away in the attic. It may have been a mechanical toy (how could I have gotten bored with this?) or a stuffed animal (Teddy! Why did I abandon you, my confidant and best friend?). So the toy went back into circulation for a while, or the teddy bear got introduced to more recent plushy "friends."

Why should we entertain this kind of nostalgia; why should we want to bring a past pleasure, a lost love, a first love, into the present? "Real" men aren't supposed to be that sentimental, are we? I've known men who were focused solely on the future. What do I need to do next? What can I buy next? Where is the next job/house/car/sexual encounter coming from? Yeah, we've heard the business of "stop and smell the roses" and all that, but that's for older men, men who've had health crises, men who've had major losses. Or men on their deathbed, like Charles Foster Kane when he remembers and whispers "Rosebud," his boyhood sled, in "Citizen Kane."

The good stuff in our past isn't meant to be forgotten, but the demands of our hectic life drive out these memories. My guess is this: Our first loves and past pleasures are gifts that we can open again and again. And enjoying them a second, a third, a fourth time can make us more attentive to the large and small pleasures in the present and yet to come. We don't have to remain holed up, isolated like Charles Foster Kane in our real or psychic castles, where even the fondest memories are tinged with regret.

Here's a gift we can give ourselves: Take a Saturday afternoon and dig out that old baseball glove, that book we read all night under the covers, that construction set, that comic book collection, that stamp or coin collection, that LP or CD, whatever.

Bring it to your next men's gathering. Share your memories. And see what happens.