Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

[George]

I have been thinking how nice it is to live in a time where one can easily find their preferred way to hear their favorite music. Whether one wants to hear "just what is in the score" or the wild interpretations of those who play in the "grand manner," it's all out there for us to enjoy, whenever the spirit moves us. I'm all for whatever increases and continues the enjoyment.

[DavidRoss]

I could have written this.  I am not much interested in music as a competitive sport.  The works I listen to are so well written that most of them can survive a wild variety of interpretations and I am vastly more interested in the music than any "interpretation" of it.  That said, some interpretations call too much attention to themselves and distract (imo) from the music, hence, those I care for less.

And I could have written this.

I have a couple of thousand recordings collected over the years. The overwhelming majority of titles are represented by only one recording, or at most, two. But there are some special works that appeal to me so powerfully and consistently that I've collected a dozen or more recordings of each title, not so much to compare, but to enrich my appreciation and to keep it fresh (and maybe also due to enslavement to that peculiar acquisitive nature humans and squirrels have in common! ).

Beethoven's piano sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets; Sibelius's symphonies; Mahler's symphonies; Bach's cello suites and violin sonatas and partitas and violin concertos and the Goldbergs and WTC; Debussy's Preludes ... all of these (and doubtless others) are such special works that they can not only survive but practically demand "a wild variety of interpretations" -- at least for a fruitcake like me (and several other members of this forum ).

[The new erato]

at least for a fruitcake like me (and several other members of this forum ).

Here I am!

[DavidRoss]

I have been thinking how nice it is to live in a time where one can easily find their preferred way to hear their favorite music. Whether one wants to hear "just what is in the score" or the wild interpretations of those who play in the "grand manner," it's all out there for us to enjoy, whenever the spirit moves us. I'm all for whatever increases and continues the enjoyment.

And I could have written this, too. Ah, the blessings of political democracy and economic self-determination! No elite deciding for us that we must have X, that it's for our own good because they know better. We can laugh at would-be hegemonists of musical taste like David Hurwitz and Huntley Dent, instead of having our choices constrained by what they ordain.

I'm grateful every day.

[North Star]

I agree with David, with most music, I am content with having one excellent recording, but there are some pieces that may or may not be especially dear, and benefit from different interpretations. (symphonies, late Schubert, Beethoven sonatas, lots of piano music)

David Hurwitz

Godwin's law? 

[DavidRoss]

Godwin's law? 

Ha! Damn near spit coffee all over the screen with that one!

[Gurn Blanston]

And I could have written this.

I have a couple of thousand recordings collected over the years. The overwhelming majority of titles are represented by only one recording, or at most, two. But there are some special works that appeal to me so powerfully and consistently that I've collected a dozen or more recordings of each title, not so much to compare, but to enrich my appreciation and to keep it fresh (and maybe also due to enslavement to that peculiar acquisitive nature humans and squirrels have in common! ).

Beethoven's piano sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets; Sibelius's symphonies; Mahler's symphonies; Bach's cello suites and violin sonatas and partitas and violin concertos and the Goldbergs and WTC; Debussy's Preludes ... all of these (and doubtless others) are such special works that they can not only survive but practically demand "a wild variety of interpretations" -- at least for a fruitcake like me (and several other members of this forum ).

Speak for yourself, David. I wouldn't ever have more than 1 (or 90  ) version of anything.    0:)

[DavidRoss]

Speak for yourself, David. I wouldn't ever have more than 1 (or 90  ) version of anything.    0:)

Maybe you should think about getting another LvB 9th -- here's one:

http://www.youtube.com/v/GBaHPND2QJg

[Madiel]

Is this why you are not answering the question?

And perhaps you can elaborate on how a few posts on a forum constitutes good science.

I've got a year of neuroscience at university, not a few posts.

Your senses are geared towards registering change.  Vision - seeing something move out of the corner of your eye makes you look.  Things that aren't moving, don't make you look.  You don't sense absolute temperature, you sense hotter or colder.  You don't sense speed in a car, you sense acceleration or deceleration.  60km/h feels fast after going 20km/h through roadworks, and it feels like a crawl after coming off 100km/h on the highway.  Human beings have been demonstrated repeatedly to be quitelousy at judging the absolute values of quantities, but incredibly good at judging change.

Oh, and music: virtually everyone can tell that a note is higher or lower than the last.  Not many people can tell you the note is Bb.  Similarly, it's very easy to tell that something is slower or faster than what you heard before it, but try judging the number of beats per minute.

[Mandryka]

Of course, I am hugely unimaginative by nature, but the music itself is interesting enough for me (if it is written by a great composer. Anyone want to argue that Beethoven wasn't a great composer?).   

But you can never listen to the music  itself. It's always going to be refracted through the prism of a performance. I don't buy the idea of "interventionism" -- they're all intervening in different ways.  Lim has made as many performance decisions as Roberts or Badura Skoda. What's needed is some concepts  to evaluate those decisions.

[Mandryka]

The entire concept or arranging symphonies into solo piano sonatas is not something that a Classical composer, such as Beethoven was, would have even thought of or seriously considered. Not saying he couldn't, saying he wouldn't.

I thought this was a very interesting point. I certainly would appreciate it if you could explain why classical composers wouldn't have transcribed symphonies  for widespread domestic instruments -- just a steer to some book or paper would do for me.

[Mandryka]

These days I think that my best judgment about a recording's merits are formed after living with it and hearing it many times. Hearing the same work over and over again is too bloody fatiguing for me--although occasionally hearing the same work, say, back to back by two or three different performers can be enjoyable and often helps me to appreciate whatever special something each performer "has to say about it."

There are some interesting questions which come out of this point.

For me, recorded music, or most of it, is very ephemeral. Play it today, listen and learn and reflect, move on to the next one.

That's partly because there's so much of it, and with spotify and torrents, and with storage devices like the squeezebox,  it's so accessible. I can download or stream practically anything instantly or  in a few hours max, at hardly any cost at all. I can acess a huge library at a touch of a button. I can create a playlist to compare and contrast in a jiffy.

Three consequences. 1. listening to a record may be more like going to a recital. It's not something which is repeated, or rarely and not much and at quite widespread time intervals. That doesn't mean to say that the listening is shallow by the way. 2. You can get a huge experience of different styles, traditions, very easily. And 3, you haven't got the sort of emotional commitment to a recording that you would have if you'd paid a lot of money for it, or gone to a lot of trouble to obtain it.

I think this change in listening habits is a good thing.

[Todd]

I've got a year of neuroscience at university, not a few posts.

Then clearly you are the leading expert in the field.  What your post fails to do is explain is my listening experience where overall impression trumps specific detail.  (I don't listen score in hand following every little everything; many, and probably most, people do not.)  Still waiting on that one.  It also seems to be a bit light on auditory memory, which presents its own limitations, I would think.  Unless I listen to, say, Gilels and then Gulda immediately thereafter, I am really comparing a faulty memory of one to the other, to the extent I'm even comparing the two.  But then that's always the case.

[Madiel]

Then clearly you are the leading expert in the field.

Your sarcasm is marvellous and refreshing, and beside the point.

[Todd]

Your sarcasm is marvellous and refreshing, and beside the point.

Alright, no sarcasm: I'm asking you to explain how your preferred theory of listening, from the music critic you referred to but did not cite, squares with my listening experience.  As a bonus, since you are scientifically inclined, perhaps you can address the influence of faulty auditory memory as well.

[DavidRoss]

But you can never listen to the music  itself. It's always going to be refracted through the prism of a performance. I don't buy the idea of "interventionism" -- they're all intervening in different ways.  Lim has made as many performance decisions as Roberts or Badura Skoda. What's needed is some concepts  to evaluate those decisions.

If you include unconscious, intuitive choices in your concept of decisions, I agree. But if by "decisions" you mean not just a literal cutting away of potential alternatives, but some sort of conscious decision-making, I question whether you're right.

Of course I don't know Roberts or BS or Lim, but I do know very well what it's like to be so comfortable with and so much inside of something that the conscious ego-centered "self" disappears and all that's left is the doing, with choices made not deliberately but intuitively.

Any performer, whether in the arts or sports or any other arena of activity, knows what I'm referring to.

"Interventionism," as I apply the term, refers to conscious, deliberate decision-making that steers the performance away from the clear intent of the composer reflected in the printed score. And that is something VERY different from what happens when the music is intuitively filtered through the sensitivity, perception, experience, mood, and skill of the performer.

[DavidRoss]

3, you haven't got the sort of emotional commitment to a recording that you would have if you'd paid a lot of money for it, or gone to a lot of trouble to obtain it.

Elsewhere on this forum some of us have been discussing the differences between experiencing live performances and recordings (most narrowly, the difference between live opera and recordings of opera on blu-ray in a "state of the art" home theatre).

I think your point above describes the increased interest and enthusiasm we usually feel when attending live performances, which may enhance our receptivity to and enjoyment of the experience.

Yet I have at times gone out of my way to attend a live performance but been disappointed enough to leave early, and likewise I have bought expensive box sets of music and video recordings of operas only to find little or no enthusiasm for them, despite the 'emotional commitment" entailed by the expense or trouble involved.

I think this change in listening habits is a good thing.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. If you're referring to the ephemeral nature of much listening today, then I cannot agree.

Sure, it's great for getting rapid exposure to many things ... but understanding and appreciation require much more than mere exposure. There's a significant difference between "superficial knowledge about" and "profound understanding of." A culture that, like ours, celebrates the superficial and ephemeral at the expense of the profound and lasting dooms itself.

[Mandryka]

Aye, I love Goode as well, especially his account of the Hammerklavier, probably the most memorable Hammerklavier for my taste.

Your post prompted me to listen to his Hammerklavier I. What struck me most is that he simplifies the music. He latches on to the tunes. So the music becomes very accessible and melodious.

I wonder what you think of someone like Peter Takacs in Hammerklavier I. He seems exactly the opposite of Richard Goode. His performance is strobe lit - as if he penetrates down into the layers of tones in the music's texture. The result is far more complicated, and far less like a sequence of tunes with accompaniment.

Takacs reminds me a bit of Kocsis -- especially in the DVD of Op 111 and in a bootleg Op 2/1 which I have, though I think you get some feel for his strobe lit Beethoven from the Philips CD too -- just not as much.

[George]

I just looked over my notes on the Goode set. A few things stuck out:

1. He seems to do very good in the early works (Op. 2-28), good in the middle works (Op. 31-81a) and fair in the late works (Op. 90-111.)

2. His best performances are of Opuses 2/3, 22, 31/3, 79. For these he is either the best I have heard, or close to it.

3. His Hammerklavier just doesn't do it for me. I like at least 11 pianists more than him in this work. Pollini I like most of all, with Gulda (Amadeo) and Annie Fischer close behind.

[johndoe21ro]

Forgive me for the long list. I do not favor Valentina Lisitsa much although she's not a bad interpreter. Still, when it comes to Beethoven there are so many others ahead of her. I posted the videos because of the piano used. It's a Bosendorfer and you can hear (even on youtube) how heavy and dense it is, those unique low octaves (a Bosendorfer trademark), its sheer power, nobility and sobriety. These days you seldom hear anything else other than Steinway. I'd love to hear more Bosendorfers, more Bechsteins, more Kawais and even Faziolis... Each model and each brand has its own distinctive sound that can favor some pieces and composers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TwysjbPmus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgFkF0UISgc&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZOCQJppHsg&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxkAG8XZwXk&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRDcgjvjj2E&feature=relmfu