Beethoven

I used to know a man who had a friend who "collected performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony". That is, he attended every performance of the work he could. I used to feel this way about Beethoven's Third Symphony and once thought: "that's what I'll do, collect performances of The Third." I never did. For one thing there weren't all that many performances in my neck of the woods; especially then, some twenty or thirty years ago when the nearest concert hall was in Bristol - in Cardiff there'd sometimes be a concert in The New Theatre (wholly inadequate) and occasionally they'd use The Sophia Gardens Pavilion (more inadequate); it wasn't until they built St David's Hall that good quality concerts came to Cardiff.
Anyway, Beethoven's Third was my favourite then. It isn't now: I prefer The Seventh. But I like them all. I think you could call me a Beethoven freak.
So it came as quite a shock to hear Howard Goodall's comment about Beethoven on Desert Island Discs a couple of months ago.
Now Howard Goodall is presently giving a series of  TV programmes on music: "Howard Goodall's Story of Music" and James Delingpole in The Spectator last week wrote this about it: "Let's not beat about the bush: Howard Goodall's Story of Music is landmark television, a documentary series that deserves to rank with such unimpeachable classics as Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation"......
As you may have gathered, I enjoy classical music.... some classical music.... not all. Not Berg or Webern or Stockhausen but Bach, Mozart and, most of all Beethoven.
So, as I said, it came as something of a shock to hear Howard Goodall on Desert Island Discs say what he did. When asked if there was any composer he didn't like, he said: "Well I'm not too keen on Beethoven." Or it might have been stronger than that: "I don't much like Beethoven." Why didn't he come out with what he really meant and say "I hate Beethoven" because that's how I interpreted his remark.
He doesn't like Beethoven! I can't listen to someone talking about music who doesn't like Beethoven.
Which is why I didn't even start to watch his series.