Unpopular Opinions

[Dancing Divertimentian]

So it's a bonafide unpopular opinion to actually like Beethoven's VC?? Who'd a thunk!

For my money the VC is a wonderful example of Beethoven fearlessly spreading his classicist wings. No need for fire and brimstone when proportion, restraint, vigor, and poetry are in abundance. 

Perhaps my totally sympathetic Mullova/Gardiner recording makes all the difference. Suk/Boult and Chung/Tennstedt are good, too.

[Jo498]

Yeah, the (un)popularity of opinions can differ depending on where they are expressed. I do not think I really *dislike* anything by Beethoven. But it's far from my favorite Beethoven concerto and not my favorite violin concerto either. Restrained and classicist might fit the emotional content, but the first movement is about as long as some Mozart concerti. It's a lyrical smiling behemoth!

[jochanaan]

Well, here is an opinion which may prove unpopular: Most recordings of Romantic music from about 1960 to 1980 were taken too slowly, especially those of Beethoven and Brahms.  Corollary: That's why some folks don't like the Beethoven Violin Concerto, or the Brahms concertos: they haven't heard them played at the right tempo.

Example: My favorite recording of the Brahms Double is the one made in 1951 by Nathan Milstein, Gregor Piatigorsky and Fritz Reiner leading the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia--but it's considerably faster than most modern recordings.  Their last movement rocks out!  Especially the first orchestral tutti; the kinetic energy there is awesome, far greater than in most recent recordings I've heard. -- Can anyone name a recent performance that has that kind of drive?

But to this day I've never heard a recording of the Beethoven violin concerto that had what I consider enough fire in the finale.  Most of them seem to treat it with too much reverence and not enough (to be blunt) virtuosity.

And once in the 1970s I caught a broadcast of Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto in which the pianist played the opening runs one note at a time, almost adagio--far different from the classic Rudolf Serkin/Bruno Walter one where Mr. Serkin simply roars into the opening cadenza.  How are you supposed to catch and hold the audience's attention without that kind of drive and flash?

That may be why some folks have a hard time appreciating the Three B's (and Mozart's dance movements, BTW); they've only heard reverent performances, not ones with fire and sparkle.

[Ken B]

That may be why some folks have a hard time appreciating the Three B's (and Mozart's dance movements, BTW); they've only heard reverent performances, not ones with fire and sparkle.

Really well put, and a large part of why Original Instruments, as we called HIP in the old days, was so exciting. It wasn't just the instruments, or the vibrato. It was the lively engagement with the music. OK Mr Bach, let's see what you've got for me today.

[Chaszz]

Really well put, and a large part of why Original Instruments, as we called HIP in the old days, was so exciting. It wasn't just the instruments, or the vibrato. It was the lively engagement with the music. OK Mr Bach, let's see what you've got for me today.

Fine, but it seems to me with HIP, especially Baroque, the pendulum these days often swings too far in the other direction. With Bach especially, I hear allegros that are so fast that the separation of notes is lost. My favorite example of this is the B Minor Mass chorus Cum Sancto Spiritu, one of Bach's greatest and most rhythmically intense movements. As the movement reaches its ultimate climax, a couple of bars or so from the end, the trumpet plays a little figure containing a pair of triplets and these triplets are integral to the melodic structure of the climax. In most HIP performances, you cannot distinguish these as triplets, merely a blur of sound if you can distinguish the trumpet at all in the mad rush to be out of there and go home on the subway. Why would Bach have written triplets if he merely wanted a blur? On this piece of important evidence alone, I condemn a plethora of mad rushing HIP Bach allegros.     

[Ken B]

Fine, but it seems to me with HIP, especially Baroque, the pendulum these days often swings too far in the other direction. With Bach especially, I hear allegros that are so fast that the separation of notes is lost. My favorite example of this is the B Minor Mass chorus Cum Sancto Spiritu, one of Bach's greatest and most rhythmically intense movements. As the movement reaches its ultimate climax, a couple of bars or so from the end, the trumpet plays a little figure containing a pair of triplets and these triplets are integral to the melodic structure of the climax. In most HIP performances, you cannot distinguish these as triplets, merely a blur of sound if you can distinguish the trumpet at all in the mad rush to be out of there and go home on the subway. Why would Bach have written triplets if he merely wanted a blur? On this piece of important evidence alone, I condemn a plethora of mad rushing HIP Bach allegros.   

Well I agree with you, and in fact think Mozart is often better slower than old style. But my comment was about the reverence vs engagement aspect.

[(poco) Sforzando]

In most HIP performances, you cannot distinguish these as triplets, merely a blur of sound if you can distinguish the trumpet at all in the mad rush to be out of there and go home on the subway. Why would Bach have written triplets if he merely wanted a blur? On this piece of important evidence alone, I condemn a plethora of mad rushing HIP Bach allegros.   

I hope they don't go home without finishing the Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. But I take your point: no tempo should ever be so fast as to make it impossible to articulate the smallest note values (and there are 32nds for the first trumpet in the measure before that are even faster than your triplets).

The little contemporary documentation on the matter says that Bach generally took lively and brisk tempos. But this does not mean every allegro has to be taken at breakneck speed, as some of our HIPsters are wont to do.

[Madiel]

Why would Bach have written triplets if he merely wanted a blur?   

This argument would make sense if there was a specific notation for indicating that a composer wanted a blur.

[jochanaan]

This argument would make sense if there was a specific notation for indicating that a composer wanted a blur.

It's called a glissando.

[(poco) Sforzando]

It's called a glissando.

That however does not apply to the trumpet passage in question, which is more like a brief group of mordents. Very rapid scale passages on the white keys in keyboard music (as in the first movement of the C major concerto for two harpsichords) may have been executed as a glissando using the thumb, but that would not come out like a blur.

[Purusha]

My dislike of the violin concerto is well-documented here, and it does stem in part from the unbearably slow performances that many violinists now favor.

Have you ever tried the one by Nathan Milstein? I think he recorded two of them, but i'm only familiar with the one he made in the 50s with Steinberg. Its a great performance, to the point with no saccharine embellishments.

[jochanaan]

Have you ever tried the one by Nathan Milstein? I think he recorded two of them, but i'm only familiar with the one he made in the 50s with Steinberg. Its a great performance, to the point with no saccharine embellishments.

If that one's as good as the one Milstein, Piatigorsky, and Reiner did of the Brahms Double, it must be a very fine recording!

[RJR]

Also while I'm here: Mahler's tunes are often the only redeeming parts of his symphonies. He should have given up on the orchestra and written operettas instead. Or Broadway musicals.

Circus music.

[Ken B]

BUMP!

James is right about a lot of things.

[Karl Henning]

Some of what a parrot repeats is apt, too 

[North Star]

Even a stopped clock...

[(poco) Sforzando]

BUMP!

James is right about a lot of things.

That's certainly an unpopular opinion! (FWIW, I often agree.)

[amw]

James is right about a lot of things.

Only the Stockhausen parts

[Madiel]

Now that James actually writes his own material... Look, it's difficult to say. Because there's an argument that his posts are right less often than they used to be, but now they're HIS posts so that when the post is right HE is right.

[Karl Henning]

Can we be sure?