I’ve played the Beethoven Eroica with you at least twice, and there’s probably been two or three times since then, either with the Philharmonic or with other groups. I sense that you are convinced as ever about your tempos, but is there something changing as the performances have gone on, and what’s your aspect this last time around?

Yes. First of all, you’ve got to get what the arrival of the Eroica was. It was a seismic event in the history of the world. Let’s not mince words here. This was one of the great turning point events. The arrival of the Eroica caused a revolution. The world has never been the same since the Eroica. Not only music, but our whole sense of what it is to be human, in a sense, has been transformed. And one of the elements that makes it so riveting and so powerful and so irresistible is these headlong tempos that Beethoven clearly indicated. And, according to his own specifications, he clearly wanted.

I’m going to read you something. He says, “I look upon the invention of the metronome as a welcome means of assuring the performance of my compositions everywhere in the tempi conceived by me, which, to my regret, have so often been misunderstood.” Now, in his own time, they were already misunderstood, but he said, “This is what I meant. And I meant for the heroic gesture, which has so often been represented by nobility and by grandeur and by a sense of space and so on.” For him, heroism was a messy affair. It was a driven, ecstatic, anguished state of mind. And the Eroica, (singing), it’s a perfect circle from E flat and back to E flat, but then (singing), that C sharp, that’s where it comes, the cloud comes over the sense of heroism and causes a conflict, a confusion, a sense of trauma, almost, in the life of the hero.

There’s a tremendous amount of C minor in this symphony as well.

Actually, actually. And, of course, syncopation, and violence, and terror, and fear, and even silence, which is so overwhelming that you can’t bear it. So, he put every possible extreme emotion, including the demand that we play this music at the tempi which he wrote, which are, as you say, not impossible, but very difficult. And when people complained to him about how difficult his music was to play, he said, “What do I care for your miserable fiddle? I’m dealing with the struggle. I’m storming at the gates of heaven here.” So he calls on us, not only in the tempi, but also in the dynamics, in those violent changes between soft and loud, where he’ll make a crescendo and then a sudden subito piano, which is almost as if you’re falling off a cliff. And he says do not compromise, do not make a diminuendo just before that subito piano.

So, since he’s calling on us, on our nerve edges all the time, we have to sit on the edge of our spiritual chair in order to play this music and to listen to it. And so to compromise on the tempi and to say, “Well, well, yes, but surely he didn’t mean it.” No, he did. And one very interesting thing is that the third movement, which is traditionally played quite fast, (singing), actually is usually played a little too fast, if you follow his indications. So it’s not as if all the tempi were too fast. Many of them were, because what Beethoven_… The secret, in my view, of Beethoven’s vision was that in Beethoven, the bar is like a beat. So, although it’s in 3/4 time, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, actually it’s in 4; 1, 2, 3, 4. These are four-bar phrases, which are felt in one gesture. And if you feel that, it doesn’t actually feel fast anymore, because you’re feeling each bar as a beat.

And that’s the secret, not only of the fast movements, but also of the slow movement of the Funeral March, because the Funeral March is traditionally, of course, played very slowly. He marks it at an extraordinary speed, 80 to the eighth note. And you think, how could it possibly be a funeral march if you’re marching along at 80? But of course, he didn’t have 40 on his metronome, otherwise he would’ve marked it at 40. If he’d had 20, he would’ve marked it 20, because then it would’ve been really slow. And if you listen, as I did when Churchill was buried, I took out my metronome and the Coldstream Guards were marching at his funeral at exactly 20, to the bar, because that’s (singing).

In fact, even at the highest level, I remember a class I gave at the New England Conservatory, and we were working on that movement and we were playing. And one moment, the fluger, (singing). And I remember one of the bassoon players shouted out, “10!” What he meant was that he was actually experiencing the music as one beat for two bars. Now you’re talking about an adagio. And so once you understand this language of Beethoven, you realize that he was dealing with higher planes of rhythm, then it all makes sense.

Do you think, over the time, you’ve been more successful dealing with these larger and longer spans of time within the bars? Or not over the bars, I should say.

I’ve always wanted to achieve a sense of freedom within that tempo. That it was not, as I always say, tempo-driven. In other words, where you feel that what’s driving the performance is the tempo, because the tempo should be like the water in which the fish swim. The fish don’t notice the water. That’s just the water, you’re swimming around. What you notice is the beautiful fish and how they move. So, tempo should be the same. I would say, as the years have passed and I’ve done this piece, I think I may have conducted more performances of the Eroica than any other piece. I have found, over the years, that it’s been easier to be free, easier to let the music breathe, as it were, like a fish in the water, rather than feeling as though the water was running the whole thing. And so for me, this performance, I did a performance with the Israel Philharmonic that had complete freedom in that way, and I feel this performance does too.