Click here to visit our new site --> CafeDVD 2.0 Sounds Magnificent: Beethoven (Symphony 5 & 7) - Andre Previn (1984) Rating: Starring: Andre Previn, RPO Director: Herbert Chappell Category: Music, Special Interest Studio: Image Ent. Subtitles: [None] Length: 88 mins     In this series of films, Andre Previn conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in some of the most popular works from the concert repertoire -- symphonies by Mozart, Hayden, Beethoven, Brahmas, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.Each program is introduced by Andre Previn, who discusses the piece to be performed and the lives of the composers who created these masterpieces by giving illustrations of aspects of their music with a variety of orchestral excerpts. Excerpts from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (1804-8) and a performance of the composer's Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 (1811-12).Most securely established of all orchestral music, the symphonies of Beethoven were often greeted by his contemporaries with as much amazement as respect.Weber, composer of Der Frieschutz, declared that "on the strength of his Seventh Symphony Beethoven should be locked away in a madhouse."Others declared that Beethoven must clearly have been drunk to compose such absurd and untamed music.This program demonstrates how Beethoven brought an unprecedented power and dynamism to the orchestra and questions how much he was affected by the apparent idealism of the French Revolution and by the personal reality of his incurable deafness.