Beethoven Symphonies HIP

[Marc]

FWIW, Colin Davis is one of my favorite conductors, and I love Bohm's Mozart. I'm not as rigid as you might think.

I know.
I've read some reviews, you know.
And some contributions to the board, too.
AFAIK, the discussion we had was not about pre- or anti-HIP.

In fact: I was 'attacking' my own people 0:). Because personally, in most cases I prefer HIP. Especially in 18th century music and all periods before that.

[Franco]

Mark, the Mackerras set isn't really "HIP". Not just because it isn't on period instruments. That's not even the most decisive factor.

But to understand what is "historically informed performance" and inform others about it, one must first be informed about "historically informed". Which is, of course, theoretically anyone who knows a little about the history of the music and its historical context. But that's obviously not what is meant here.

"Historically informed performance" isn't just about smallish orchestras, quickish tempi, oldish instruments, or hardish timpani sticks either. Nor is it about using less or no vibrato. It's much more complex than that. There is a lot of "historical uninformedness" about that complex subject.

Too complex to go into it here in detail. Mackerras is one of the best "historically informed" conductors out there, and he has delivered many highly "historically informed" performances, on old instruments as well as on modern ones.
But this set isn't one of them. One could maybe call it "historically aware". But it's basically more a "modern classicist" view that he takes here rather than a "HIP" one.
Why that is, I don't know. Maybe he decided he was tired of superficially "HIP" readings which grew on every corner back then and he wanted to present a more timeless view of the music from the point of view of someone who is aware of the wide spectrum of interpretive approaches but decided it was time for him to leave all that aside and take a look at the compositional substance alone. But again, I don't know what he had in mind. But that is what it sounds like. What it doesn't sound like at all is "HIP".

Nor is Zinman a "HIP" cycle. He takes a very smilar approach but makes it look more "HIP" by tacking on a few superficial "HIP" elements here and there. If one likes that or not, is up to each listener. But it's not "HIP".

Nor would I call Gardiner particularly "HIP". Yes, he plays on old instruments and he does all the other things which superficially look "HIP". He choses quickish tempi, and he has the hard timpani sticks and all that. But what is almost completely missing from his cycle is the rhythmic flexibility, the rhetorically inflected phrasing, and other stylistic elements which are far more important to being "HIP" than the hard sticks. Why that comes from a conductor who has given us superb "HIP" readings of a lot of things, his outstanding recordings of Mozart symphonies, for instance, I am not sure either. My feeling is that Gardiner was looking for a way to set himself apart from all the other "HIPsters" who had sprung up everywhere in the meantime, all those people who felt that a few sets of gut strings were all you need to be "HIP". I suspect he wanted to create a "perfectly balanced" and "centered" "HIPpish" view, a kind of idealized, summarized, "timeless HIP" view.
I think he totally failed. What we have here is an astonishingly mechanical, sterilized and glossy run-through of the 9. Accident free and uncontroversial. One may like that, but it's not a real "HIP" performance, that's for sure.

Being "historically informed" means being aware of the vast spectrum of interpretive means which may or may not have been applied to the music at the time. Since we don't have recordings, we can't really decide "exactly" how they played back then, and that probably changed a lot depending on the given circumstances anyway.

Being "historically informed" means knowing about all that and, based on that knowledge, making *interpretive decisions*, not avoiding them, like Mackerras, Gardiner, and Zinman mostly do.

There are tons of superficially "HIPpish" contributions, but only very few truly "HIP" ones from people who have the vast background knowledge and artistic courage to make such decisions.

Among them is the ever provocative and happily controversial Sir Roger Norrington. His first traversal of the symphonies with the London Classical Players is a real trip of discovery both into the sonic world of period instruments and an large scale stylistic experiment based on what he felt was the real point of Beethoven's symphonic writing. Namely not to create timelessly esthetic masterpieces as the centerpiece of a classical canon, but to create highly dramatic, stirring, operatic musical declamations of *ideas* which transcend purelu esthetic musical values.
That was indeed what a lot of Beethoven's contemporaries felt, too, and so did the following generations of composers who felt that Beethoven had made it clear once and for all that music should not just sound good, but have a deeper content and meaning. Beethoven's music created shockwaves in the musical world which were felt even a century later and propelled a lot of other composers to seek deeper meanings in music themselves.
Now, all that is taken as a given and the Beethoven symphonies have collected a lot of dust, sitting in their place of honor in the middle of the musical pantheon. Some interpreters wipe of a little of that dust sometimes, but few bother to try to bring them really back to life and relase shockwaves like they once did.
Sir Roger explicitly set out to recreate those seismic events and remind the listener of the immense power of the music. In order to do so, he made a lot of very controversial, but bols interpretive decisions rather than playing it safe. Some of those decisions may make sense, some may be over the top, some may just be wrong, that is for everyone to decide, but at least he went out there and took the trip.
Which is why this cycle is, with all its quirks and faults, and some obviously wrong decisions, one of the few truly "HIP" cycles and something everybody should encounter at one time.

Christopher Hogwood didn't go quite that far, but his approach with the Academy of Ancient Music is just as valuable for different reasons. Or maybe more value, that is hard to decide.
Hogwood attempted more than anyone else, including Norrington, to actually go back to the sonic and stylistic substance of the music not as it may have been conceived ideally in Beethoven's mind, but as it may have actually sounded.
He doesn't postulate as much as Norrington what the music *should* sound like, his approach is more that of a competently manned workshop trying to piece the music together from carefully researched and prepared elements to see what it actually *did* sound like. He doesn't assume what it should be like, he doesn't decide to present the music from one perspective or another, he just goes ahead and investigates as much as possible what it really could have sounded like. That includes playing the symphonies in the orchestrations that are known to have been used for the first performances. That means that some of them are performed by a rather small contingent of players, some of them by a very large ensemble with doubled winds and very big string sections.
As such, his cycle is less one man's vision of historical Beethoven performance than a compendium of what we really know about instruments, playing practices, and performance conditions of the time.

As such, as refreshing as a dose of Norrington's theatralics or Gardiner's distancedly idealized classicism may be once in a while, I think that Hogwood's is by very far the best and most valuable of all cycles played on period instruments.

Maybe only until Immerseel comes around, I don't know yet. But he might be highly interesting, too.


Forget The "Hannover Band" or whatever they called themselves. There were just too many people with old instruments on the loose in London and too many buyers for "authentic" recordings back then.

Forget Brüggen. Somebody should tell him that applying baroque performance practice to Beethoven symphonies only makes the whole "HIP" thing as ridiculous as some say it is. Here it is.

Don't worry about Abbado and Haitink or all the other people in this context who suddenly completely "rethought" their ideas of Beethoven under the impression of the "HIP" movement. Their results are highly enjoyable but not at all "HIP" either.


Probably the "HIPpest" of them all is Harnoncourt, not at all surprisingly. His performances of the symphonies with the COE on modern instruments (and some "HIP" timpani and brass) but with a vast palette of truly "authentic" stylistic elements are probably among the stylistically most complex and multi-layered readings of anything I have ever heard. It is not even possible to sum up just how complex his approach his and from how many angles he reaches his interpretation at the same time, almost like a 3D version of these symphonies where almost everything else only happens in one or two dimensions.
Harnoncourt's readings reflect literally a lifetime of intensive study and practical performance of centuries of musical heritage leading up to these symphonies. But at the same time, his awareness of both the "before" and the "after" and his seamless blending of "old" and "new" make these truly "modern" readings, taken from the point of view who really understands where that music came from and what life it has led since the composer created it.
I know a lot of people don't "get" that at all. I don't either. I get parts of it, more and more, but I know there are many elemens that I haven't fully understood yet. But that's OK. That's why we have that on disc and can return to it again and again, and figure out a little more each time.

Unless you just want nice music to doodle in the background. Then all the above doesn't matter.

Just thought this post was worth bumping from the first page.

[Marc]

Oh, come on.  Marc, my friend, let's not get carried away here. 
I did not insult any board members and I did not call Colin Davis "freaking" just because he was mentioned here by someone, but because I do not like him as a conductor.

Other than that I think everyone is very smart here!  Because we all know very well what we are talking about and what was the intended scope of this thread. HIP is defined by what it stands for, the rest is all chit-chat and playing an eleborate semantics game.

Q

Points taken. Problem is: I tried to avoid mentioning names at first, because I understood your and Gurn's reaction. As I said, it was more the 'outside' than the 'inside'. And my disliking of strict divisions anyway. I admit: I think the HIP-revolution is calmed down, has been eating its own members already for sometime, and although I take HIP-conventions very seriously, I really do believe that the strong urge to 'divide' should be buried. Just my thought, though.

For what it's worth, about a certain conductor: Colin may be freakin' in your book, but in Handel, Mozart and Berlioz (to name but a few) I find him very appealing and interesting!

[Clever Hans]

When a poster states that P. Jarvi is HIP and Gardiner is hybrid HIP, I know that we're not on the same page.

I wouldn't call Jarvi HIP per se, but I would definitely place him in the HIP tradition in the sense that he has explicitly stated that he wants to do what's in a score, and recreate a Beethoven (he actually phrases it this way with Beethoven as the subject) who hasn't heard Wagner, Liszt, etc. 

Is Gardiner, conversely, really HIP anymore than Jarvi, aside from the period instruments? I doubt Beethoven was played so--perhaps inflexibly--back in the day and Bach cantatas with a large choir such as the Monterverdi, with a style as athletic as possible for a marathon tour. 

First, if someone produces a set with the sonorities of early 19th century Vienna I will buy it immediately, but I don't think anyone has yet, including Immerseel (for reasons I posted earlier, but to which no one has yet responded). That said, I want those metronome markings taken at least as a baseline and no bloated orchestras. Second, while I still enjoy the period instrument sets I have, I would like to see one on the same level of interpretation and flexibility as Harnoncourt's, above all. 

[Marc]

Just thought this post was worth bumping from the first page.

Yes, I remember that one. Very informative, but also subjective in some ways. Take his opinion about Gardiner. I think that Que didn't mean his cycle to be non-HIP.

Anyway, in those good old times, with M posting many interesting things, one large problem could occur: if you didn't agree, insulting could be your well-deserved punishment!

[Gurn Blanston]

If a moderator is saying that he felt the need to insult board members, he might be scaring people away from his own forum. In the end though, I admit, that's should not be a problem to me.
And yes, I did went a bit too bananas about it (nasty memories, I guess).

About Que: I totally understood his point, and I agree with his points many times, and I prefer 'HIP' (sigh) too, but I didn't like the way he put it. I believe that it would have helped if he tried to explain the differences in a more relaxed way. Like Don did, actually (even though I did not entirely agree with him, either).
Let's just say: c'est le ton qui fait la musique, or something like that. Especially if moderators are concerned, IMO.

Then again: I should have been more relaxed, too. My 'ton' wasn't all that beautiful, either.
Apologies for that.
Not entirely. Check out the first post by the thread starter. Indeed non-HIPers were part of the topic all along.
Sure, I would never 'categorize' Davis and Brüggen in the same group.
Having said that, it depends of course of the nature of the categories. In the end, when Beethoven is concerned, I would say that Davis is interesting and Brüggen is essential.
HIP or not HIP.

So, by your standards, it's a bad thing if I even feel like insulting someone, not actually doing it. Damn, you must think I'm an angel! Thanks for that, but in fact I am far from it, I just have enough self-control (most of the time) to keep my feelings in check. I think you can probably count on 1 or 2 fingers the number of people that have been driven away from here by my attitude.

Certainly if you want to make a genealogy of HIPness, and even include every conductor who ever swung a baton, you are welcome to do so. I don't really do any of that stuff, nor even care about it. I just listen to what I like, and a surprising amount of it is performed on period instruments. Much of that is performed in a historically informed manner. All the other stuff I really don't care about.

Oh, I might just mention though that if you are splitting hairs on HIP as it stands today, then in addition to the German, Dutch and English factions, you must have the Italians. Carmignola and Biondi and their relatives are not members of any of the above families stylistically. Just sayin'.

[Bulldog]

Is Gardiner, conversely, really HIP anymore than Jarvi, aside from the period instruments?

For me, that's a huge aside.  But I am aware that many on the board do not consider the difference in instrumentation a major consideration. 

[Antoine Marchand]

But I am aware that many on the board do not consider the difference in instrumentation a major consideration.

... when the instruments are modern.

[Gurn Blanston]

... when the instruments are modern.

[Renfield]

it usually strikes me that the only substantial issue is that people don't agree on the definition of the words they are using.

In some circles, this is known as the founding premise of analytic philosophy.

(And is the reason I only post semi-cynical, mostly rather puerile quips in all those profound threads, myself.)


Still, we can all 'sort of agree' that there is an intuitive difference between Karl Böhm and Jos van Immerseel. In fact, has anyone actually done a thorough search for a general 'Beethoven cycles' thread, or is its absence a matter of theory?

Might as well just make one, if it's needed; or indeed a 'non-HIP Beethoven' sister thread. Topic creation is free.

[Clever Hans]

For me, that's a huge aside.  But I am aware that many on the board do not consider the difference in instrumentation a major consideration.

I agree. But I was just reiterating that Gardiner may be significantly lacking in areas that may be categorized as HIP, to the point where he may be considered no more HIP than someone who plays with strong elements of HIP--chamber orchestra, little vibrato, adhering to the metronome markings, rhythmic and rhetorical flexibility, yada yada.

I think the suggestion of a period instruments Beethoven Symphonies thread is a helpful one.

[knight66]

I cannot imagine HIP as embracing any modern instrument performances. I once was in a Bach St Matthew Passion where Abbado inserted a viola da gamba into the middle of the LSO. Other than that concession, it was not in any detectable way HIP and the viola da gamba sounded out of place, an odd and I think pointless concession.

Halving the size of the choir also did little to instill HIP principles and we ended up with an orchestral heavy and rather slow performance.

So, I do think it a prerequisite that the instruments need to be 'right' before any discussion of HIP can really take place.

Mike

[Franco]

In fact, has anyone actually done a thorough search for a general 'Beethoven cycles' thread, or is its absence a matter of theory?

Might as well just make one, if it's needed; or indeed a 'non-HIP Beethoven' sister thread. Topic creation is free.

Yes, I have searched and asked this question at least twice.  There does not seem to be one.

[knight66]

Franco, You are of course at liberty to start one.

Mike

[Antoine Marchand]

In some circles, this is known as the founding premise of analytic philosophy.

I thought exactly the same, when I saw that reply: "It's just bad syntax". 

[Clever Hans]

I cannot imagine HIP as embracing any modern instrument performances. I once was in a Bach St Matthew Passion where Abbado inserted a viola da gamba into the middle of the LSO. Other than that concession, it was not in any detectable way HIP and the viola da gamba sounded out of place, an odd and I think pointless concession.

Halving the size of the choir also did little to instill HIP principles and we ended up with an orchestral heavy and rather slow performance.

So, I do think it a prerequisite that the instruments need to be 'right' before any discussion of HIP can really take place.

Mike

I dunno. The thing is, Bach orchestrated on modern instruments sounds like garbage. This is not true of Beethoven. Viol da gamba is also the last instrument which would work in that situation. But valveless trumpets in a chamber orchestra using steel strings... that's a different question.

[Gurn Blanston]

Yes, I have searched and asked this question at least twice.  There does not seem to be one.

As Mike says, you are, in fact, urged to start one. Just please don't call it "non-HIP Beethoven Symphonies".

As for the suggestion by another that there could be a PI thread on Beethoven symphonies, please consider that there aren't more than half a dozen cycles out there and a few singles, so it would of necessity be a rather short one, eh?

[knight66]

OK Hans, well, I was also in Rattle's very first attempt at the Beethoven 9th. He used modern instruments and I watched him ask for various 'older' practices. However, for one, we did nothing about altering the pitch, so the singers were still right at the top of their range. The sounds were light textured, the speeds quite fleet, but it was not a HIP performance in any meaningful way and all that apart, it was quite dull.

Mike

[Franco]

I hate starting things.

[Gurn Blanston]

I hate starting things.

Umm... you started this...