Gripe gripe gripe

[rhu]

Does anyone play the complete 1812 Overture any more? It's bad enough that we celebrate our independence from Great Britian by performing a work written to celebrate the Russians' victory over France, but at least play the whole dang thing! (We just watched the concert from Washington D.C. and they abridged it; Boston's been abridging it since CBS took over and ruined everything.)

Update. I just switched over to channel 4, and it appears that this year Boston is playing the whole thing before the switch to national coverage. Good for them.

Comments

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Back when I was in a saxophone n-tet, our fearless leader put together a 6-sax arrangement of the 1812 Overture-- not only the complete version, but also with a SWEET alternate ending that he found while researching Tchaikovsky, and that IMHO sounds better than the original ending.

Of course, my Russian gf at the time said that our recording sounded like a music box. Darn Russian judge.