The Romantics in Period Performances

Started by Que, April 09, 2007, 07:07:54 AM

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Scarpia

#200
Quote from: Superhorn on November 22, 2010, 08:02:55 AM
   What will be next? "Authentic" performances of the Richard Strauss tone poems ?  Wouldn't that be taking things a little too far?  And would they even be authentic at all? 
  Conducted by Thielemann?  Luisi? Nezet-Seguin?

Orchestras still played on gut strings in the late 19th century, so authentic performance of those works would be interesting.  I don't know if it would be essential.  I have a wonderful recording of the Brahms Sextet played using gut strings, and the sound is noticeably different and creates a different impression entirely.  To claim that it is "taking things too far" is silly.  Performers should take things as far as they like.


DavidW

Quote from: Superhorn on November 22, 2010, 08:02:55 AM
    Some people have even called for "authentic " performances of the Schumann Konzertstuck for 4 horns on natural horns,not realizing that it was written in 1849 as a showpiece for VALVED horns and is unplayable on the natural instrument !

So it's okay for people to play baroque and classical era music on modern instruments since many enjoy the sound of those instruments... but it's not okay to play romantic era music on older instruments since many enjoy their sound?  Are you a hypocrite or just logically challenged?

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: Opus106 on November 22, 2010, 08:10:12 AM
So you obviously haven't heard this Ravel.

Very nice. But to be perfectly honest what strikes me right off with these samples is how similar the orchestra sounds to early-to-mid-twentieth century French orchestras already represented on disc!!

The legacy of "authentic" Ravel is already well established on recordings (even stereo recordings) from conductors who knew Ravel, worked with him, and were compatriots. And that goes for orchestras, too.

Oh, well, I guess HIP French reborn can't be all bad! ;D

Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

Superhorn

  David W,I did not say that"it's not okay to play 19th century music on period instruments." I don't object tot he performances per se.
  What annoys me are those people who say that this is the only way and assume that they are "finally giving us performances of the music as it should actually sound".
  In fact, I HAVE enjoyed some of these performanes. But when people dismiss performances of anything on modern instruments snootily, as some critics and HIP performers do,that really gets my goat. How do they know that Schubert,Schumann,Mendelssohn,Brahms etc would not have loved the way musicians playing modern instruments if they could come back and hear them?

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Superhorn on November 23, 2010, 06:19:26 AM
  David W,I did not say that"it's not okay to play 19th century music on period instruments." I don't object tot he performances per se.
  What annoys me are those people who say that this is the only way and assume that they are "finally giving us performances of the music as it should actually sound".
  In fact, I HAVE enjoyed some of these performanes. But when people dismiss performances of anything on modern instruments snootily, as some critics and HIP performers do,that really gets my goat. How do they know that Schubert,Schumann,Mendelssohn,Brahms etc would not have loved the way musicians playing modern instruments if they could come back and hear them?

Who the hell ever says that? I've been a PIon for 10 years and know dozens of others and have never said nor heard one say that. Maybe you are reading something into their posts that is not there. I can say "that's the only way for me" and you can read "that's the only way". To give you the benefit of the doubt, I will assume that's what happens. Otherwise, I can only assume you have deep psychological scarring resulting from being whacked too often with a valve horn... :)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Scarpia

Quote from: Superhorn on November 23, 2010, 06:19:26 AM
  David W,I did not say that"it's not okay to play 19th century music on period instruments." I don't object tot he performances per se.
  What annoys me are those people who say that this is the only way and assume that they are "finally giving us performances of the music as it should actually sound".
  In fact, I HAVE enjoyed some of these performanes. But when people dismiss performances of anything on modern instruments snootily, as some critics and HIP performers do,that really gets my goat. How do they know that Schubert,Schumann,Mendelssohn,Brahms etc would not have loved the way musicians playing modern instruments if they could come back and hear them?

As Gurn said, I can't recall anyone saying anything remotely like that.   As as avid admirer of HIP I would say that it is important that period instrument performances are undertaken so we can know what the composer expected his or her work to sound like.   That said, I mainly listen to HIP because I like the way they sound.  That does not imply that interpretations that depart from period practices aren't equally valuable.

Que

Spotted Saint-Saëns on period instruments! :o :)



Les Siècles conducted by François Xavier Roth

Daniel Roth, Grand orgue Cavaille-Coll 1862
Jean-Francois Heisser, piano Erard 1874


Samples at Amazon

Q

Gurn Blanston

Can't ever remember seeing this posted here, although it certainly belongs:



As it happens, I finally got to spend some time with it this morning. Dvorak's own piano was a wonderful sounding instrument. It has a very rich and full sound. Much like a modern Imperial in fact.

A nicely satisfactory disk. :)

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Antoine Marchand

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on December 18, 2010, 01:13:09 PM
Can't ever remember seeing this posted here, although it certainly belongs:



As it happens, I finally got to spend some time with it this morning. Dvorak's own piano was a wonderful sounding instrument. It has a very rich and full sound. Much like a modern Imperial in fact.

A nicely satisfactory disk. :)

8)

It's a beautiful disc, well played and recorded. Kvapil has recorded several discs of Dvorak piano music, but -IIRC from past researches-, this was the only played on a period instrument.  :'(

Que

That Dvorak looks nice, Gurn! :)

This issue caught my eye - with Bart van Oort, Constantino Mastroprimiano, Stanley Hoogland and Jan Vermeulen! :o



Review at MusicWeb

Q

Opus106

Quote from: Que on December 19, 2010, 12:38:08 AM
This issue caught my eye - with Bart van Oort, Constantino Mastroprimiano, Stanley Hoogland and Jan Vermeulen! :o



Review at MusicWeb

Q

Four of those discs are already contained in this earlier  release. :)
Regards,
Navneeth

Antoine Marchand


Brian

Quote from: Antoine Marchand on December 23, 2010, 06:13:24 AM
After some time, it's available again:

abeille musique

:)

Cheaply, too! As the person who bought the last new copy of the original release in North America (I think), I urge anyone who hasn't heard this to act fast!

Que

I briefly hesitated between Gurn's Classical Corner and this thread to post this, but both Spohr and Onslow are listed as Early Romantics.

I searched in vain for a period instruments performance of Spohr's wind octet, a piece recommended by Gurn and he already indicated there wasn't any... :-\

What I did come across was this brand new issue on period instruments of Spohr's and Onslow's wind nonets :)! Sounds very nice upon sampling - I hope this beholds a promise of a PI recording of that octet!



Information & samples at Ramée

Q

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Que on January 01, 2011, 06:27:22 AM
I briefly hesitated between Gurn's Classical Corner and this thread to post this, but both Spohr and Onslow are listed as Early Romantics.

I searched in vain for a period instruments performance of Spohr's wind octet, a piece recommended by Gurn and he already indicated there wasn't any... :-\

What I did come across was this brand new issue on period instruments of Spohr's and Onslow's wind nonets :)! Sounds very nice upon sampling - I hope this beholds a promise of a PI recording of that octet!



Information & samples at Ramée

Q

Ah, Q, I knew you would find something if turned loose on the project. :D  The Nonet may not be as cool to me as the Octet, but that doesn't mean I don't like it! And Onslow too. An abundance of riches there.  That one will be heading for Texas posthaste. :)

PS - Due to popular demand, the Corner has found room for both of these composers under a small wing-roof that sticks out the front (the Schubert Wing, if you must know).... :D

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Antoine Marchand

Quote from: Que on January 01, 2011, 06:27:22 AM


Information & samples at Ramée


Off-topic: I think it would be a great idea to waste some time clicking those samples of the Bach motetes on Ramée... just in case.  :)

Brian

Are there any good available HIP recordings of the Schumann Fantasie in C, Op 17?

(poco) Sforzando

Quote from: Dancing Divertimentian on November 22, 2010, 06:09:39 PM
Very nice. But to be perfectly honest what strikes me right off with these samples is how similar the orchestra sounds to early-to-mid-twentieth century French orchestras already represented on disc!!

The legacy of "authentic" Ravel is already well established on recordings (even stereo recordings) from conductors who knew Ravel, worked with him, and were compatriots. And that goes for orchestras, too.

Oh, well, I guess HIP French reborn can't be all bad! ;D

I have not heard that recording either. But I have heard Ravel's own recording of the Bolero, and it exhibits a degree of freedom in phrasing that I miss in the standard 20th-century performances.

Personally, I don't object to the idea of HIP so much as to the fact that I've rarely heard HIP performances that exhibit the kind of musicianship I've found in the best mainstream recordings. (For example, there was that Schoondervoert LvB 4-5 that I saw people raving about here, and I bought it and found it seriously deficient in all kinds of ways. I've gone into this previously here, but for one thing he hasn't the vaguest idea how to create a Beethoven cadenza.) I've become gun-shy about acquiring HIP recordings, and you'll never convince me that Bach really wanted OVPP, as if there should be no distinction between solos and choruses.

What happens too over time is that the mainstream absorbs HIP influence. You won't hear mainstream Bach played in the ponderous way Otto Klemperer led the Brandenburgs or the SMP. Mainstream performers know how to double-dot their French overture rhythms and to reduce orchestra size for Haydn and Mozart.

But what bothers me too is my sense that HIPs want to wipe the slate clean and remove "encrustations" that may also represent a tradition of performance that dates back to the original creation of a work. Obviously when a tradition is passed down it can become distorted, but it can also be transmitted meaningfully. Beethoven taught Czerny, Czerny taught Liszt, Liszt had numerous pupils whose teaching led to the classic pianists of the mainstream of the 20th century. With many of these artists there is a "rightness" in phrasing that I miss in a lot of HIP performance. Just this morning I turned to Harnoncourt's LvB 1 with the COE, and with all his finicky treatment of detail I felt that the symphony just didn't flow, that it felt abnormally and ponderously long as it never does with Szell or Toscanini. And yet for all the detail, Harnoncourt's opening two measures flatten out the forte-subito piano dynamics written in the score in favor of a uniform and barely differentiated mezzo forte. If this is HIP, I want no part of it.

I would say also that the history of a work is not only a matter of recapturing its early performances - even if such were possible - as the traditions that grow over time as the work is performed and recorded over and over. Thus whether Beethoven or Brahms or Chopin would have "approved" of such or such a performance is unknowable and irrelevant. And sometimes how the work is performed over time becomes part of its history. Even Puccini is relevant here. The high B at the end of Nessun Dorma, which is written as a short, 16-note upbeat in the score and was sung by the tenor that way on the first recording, is now invariably heard as (at least) a full whole note on the downbeat and it would be inconceivable to hear it otherwise today. No doubt some HIP tenor could sing it as a short 16th and say that he is clearing the aria of the "encrustations" of tradition, but he would be booed out of the opera house, and rightly so.

Anyway, that's what I think about it all. Throw whatever brickbats you like; I don't really care.
"I don't know what sforzando means, though it clearly means something."

(poco) Sforzando

Quote from: Brian on January 01, 2011, 03:04:45 PM
Are there any good available HIP recordings of the Schumann Fantasie in C, Op 17?

But shouldn't the question be really, "Of the available good recordings of Op. 17, are any on period instruments?"

I will tell you the one way I would want to hear an HIP performance of the Fantasy, and I don't care what kind of piano it's played on. That would be to restore the original ending to the final slow movement, which Schumann suppressed in his later years in favor of the duller ending we hear almost always today. In the original version, the arpeggios suddenly break off and Schumann reprises the ending of the first movement, binding the entire work together far more meaningfully than the perfunctory close he settled on later. I once heard Charles Rosen do it that way in recital (he also publishes the original in The Romantic Revolution), and it is now the only way I play the movement for myself at home. I don't know if he recorded it that way, but to my mind that would be an essential criterion for a truly HIP performance.
"I don't know what sforzando means, though it clearly means something."

Brian

#219
Quote from: Sforzando on January 01, 2011, 04:30:39 PM
But shouldn't the question be really, "Of the available good recordings of Op. 17, are any on period instruments?"

I will tell you the one way I would want to hear an HIP performance of the Fantasy, and I don't care what kind of piano it's played on. That would be to restore the original ending to the final slow movement, which Schumann suppressed in his later years in favor of the duller ending we hear almost always today. In the original version, the arpeggios suddenly break off and Schumann reprises the ending of the first movement, binding the entire work together far more meaningfully than the perfunctory close he settled on later. I once heard Charles Rosen do it that way in recital (he also publishes the original in The Romantic Revolution), and it is now the only way I play the movement for myself at home. I don't know if he recorded it that way, but to my mind that would be an essential criterion for a truly HIP performance.

As it happens, the recording I did select to satisfy my craving last night does indeed restore that 'original ending' - Arnaldo Cohen's performance on Vox, which is very good all around. I had never heard that ending before, except in the orchestrated version of the Fantasie (on Hanssler), and frantic googling did not reveal the information you've just posted. At any rate, there we go: now I know what Cohen was playing, and now you know a recording exists.  :D

In reply to your earlier post, the HIP movement and, as you point out, the broader music scene watching it have matured considerably. I would be disappointed by Harnoncourt too based on your reports - in fact have heard a live Harnoncourt Mozart symphony (one of M forever's favorite performances) that was similarly finicky in that way. More recent recordings like the period-instrument Anima Eterna/Immerseel and the modern Saarbrucken Radio SO/Skrowaczewski and Scottish CO/Mackerras do an eye-popping job bringing out the dynamic shifts in the opening bars of Beethoven's First (esp. Skrowaczewski).