Bruckner's Abbey

Started by Lilas Pastia, April 06, 2007, 07:15:30 AM

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Drasko

Quote from: O Mensch on January 04, 2008, 09:50:56 AM
Didn't know those existed! Where might one find these?

Harding was available for streaming from Swedish radio, it's bound to pop up on operashare and Berky has to have it, try e-mailing him.

From few people heard that it was really excellent performance, here is concert review by editor of Bruckner Journal

http://www.brucknerfreunde.at/forum/konzertkritiken/2831-daniel-harding-macht-eine-4-satz-bruckner-ix-stockholm.html#post8066


M forever

#541
Quote from: O Mensch on January 04, 2008, 08:09:33 AM
Query, though, how much of that is due to conductors' and orchestras' unfamiliarity with the final movement. E.g. in the Harnoncourt recording, the VPO's playing of the first three movements is leagues better than their tentative baby steps in the excerpts of the finale.

Nonsense. The playing is very assured, technical on a high level and stylistically spot on and balances and phrasing are obviously meticulously rehearsed. Once again, you mistake your emotional reaction to the music - which indeed leaves the listener "hanging" quite a bit since it is, well, fragments, not a complete and coherent musical structure - with the actual playing of it.

Quote from: Jezetha on January 04, 2008, 08:28:01 AM
I think the musical ideas in the Finale aren't, for whatever reason, among Bruckner's most inspired.

Allow me to completely disagree. I think many ideas in the finale fragments are simply breathtakingly original, innovative and singular - I couldn't believe my ears when I first heard the fragments. This may not be Bruckner at his most "inspiring", "solemn" and "hymnic", but it is Bruckner at his most innovative and daring, way beyond even what he dared in the preceding movements - but a logical step, or maybe even several, further ahead from what he did there. "Like a stone from the moon", as Harnoncourt so aptly puts it in the workshop concert. A lot of it sounds very "modern". However, my feeling is that even though Bruckner apparently completed this first version of the finale in its outlines before some of the pages were lost, it was still quite far from actual final completion at that point. If you look at the original, intermediate and final versions of the slow movement of the 8th symphony, for instance, you can see how drastically Bruckner changed that movement with each revision. My impression is that while the first three movements of the 9th are really more or less finished the way they are, Bruckner, in his "race against death", rushed to somehow complete the finale, he put all his ideas in there and outlined the general structure, but never got around to actually work them out quite as much as this daring material would have needed it to really unfold its great potential. How he would have done that had he lived maybe a year longer, we will never know. He was so "out there", in a realm and on a level of musical invention there so far ahead of and removed from what normal musical minds can grasp, I don't see any way how this material can be reconstructed and "finished" by anyone else in a way which can approach what he might have worked out. So, I think presenting the surviving finale fragments in a workshop concert is as far as one should go - it is very tempting though to analyze his ideas and, based on how he elaborated on his ideas in the earlier symphonies, "wildly guess" what could have been there in the end. But we will never know.

MishaK

Quote from: Gustav on January 04, 2008, 10:18:37 AM
The sound in Bosch is sometimes a little too reverberant for me, I don't know where they record it (in a church maybe?).

If it is indeed the performance I am thinking of, then it was indeed performed in a church, the Aachen cathedral, IIRC.

Quote from: M forever on January 04, 2008, 12:06:27 PM
Nonsense. The playing is very assured, technical on a high level and stylistically spot on and balances and phrasing are obviously meticulously rehearsed. Once again, you mistake your emotional reaction to the music - which indeed leaves the listener "hanging" quite a bit since it is, well, fragments, not a complete and coherent musical structure - with the actual playing of it.

M, once again it is you who is being emotional - as always when you perceive, however unreasonably, that someone criticized the VPO unfairly - and who preemptively throws an accusation of emotionalism about, and who choses to misread plain English just for the purpose of playing the righteously "offended liver sausage". Yes, they play "assurred, technically on a high level and stylistically spot on" and it is indeed a performance of "fragments", but that doesn't change the fact that the playing in the first three movements is of a different caliber. The first three sound like a comfortable, worn in piece of clothing. The performers know where they are going and know what risks they can afford to take. They are thoroughly at home at every turn. That is simply not the case in the playing in the finale excerpts. The dynamic range is more limited and the playing is much more on the "safe" side. The phrasing is comparatively stiff. The first three movements are standard repertoire and the fourth is uncharted territory and it shows. You might argue that this is due to the fact that they are just playing excerpts for illustration purposes. But there are some quite sizeable stretches of music that could have been played with more conviction, more interpretive cohesion and generally more assured ensemble work. It's still the VPO, no question, and it's excellent. Just not as good as it could have been. Wildner's Neue Westfälische Philharmonie is no VPO and doesn't have the VPO brass section's glow, but they play on that recording with more assurance in the last movement. Certainly it makes a difference that this was a complete performance and the Harnoncourt/VPO isn't - thereby allowing Wildner to mould a longer line. But for purposes of illustrating what the finale could sound like, I think Wildner makes the better case. And that is what we are discussing here. Not whether or not the VPO is infallible. I wasn't criticizing the playing of the VPO as such. But that obviously escaped you.

Sydney Grew

Quote from: jwinter on January 04, 2008, 05:53:42 AM
If you're curious, here's a fairly cheap way to check out the projected finale:


It's fleshed out from Bruckner's sketches, obviously, but from what I can tell from the liner notes there was a considerable amount of material to work from, and they seem to have taken great care with it.  The finale is the only reason I'd draw this CD to your attention, though -- overall this is a decent but not great 9th; it's a bit slow (which isn't necessarily a problem) but it also lacks drive and excitement IMO.  It all just feels a bit slack.

Thank you so much for directing our attention to this recording; we shall eagerly seek it out. Thanks too to all those Members who have contributed nuggets of further information; how inspiring it all is! Because Bruckner was a sort of musical saint almost was he not - a man whose whole life was devoted to the musical expression of profound spiritual insights.
Rule 1: assiduously address the what not the whom! Rule 2: shun bad language! Rule 3: do not deviate! Rule 4: be as pleasant as you can!

Lilas Pastia

#544
I have heard a few of those completions (or attempts at), and only one gave me the impression of a cohesive, organically conceived movement: it's the Eichhorn version. This is basically the same as the Bosch or Harding (they use the most recent revision of the Samale//Philips/Mazzuca/Cohrs realization). It could be that this is the latest I have heard, so increased familiarity may be a factor. But I distinctly remember how much more of a piece, more 'fleshed out' it sounded compared to Talmi, Wildner and Naïto. I find the Harding quite formidable too (thanks for alerting us to these youtube vids, Gustav!). There's no doubt in my mind that SPMC is a better solution than Carragan's recomposition.

There are familiar quotes, semi-quotes and near-quotes in this movement, the most striking instance being the main theme of the 3rd symphony that pops up in the coda. I agree that the whole thing has an air of haste and expediency. The eternal self doubter in Bruckner would have wanted to rework this movement for years. It is indeed strikingly modern sounding, but I wonder how much of that impression is borne of the almost disjointed assemblage of rather angular thematic material. Could this be a voluntary move by Bruckner ? The first movement's effusive, beseeching gesangsperioden are a thing of the past when the adagio starts. That movement's own slow and lyrical portions are anguished aftermaths of the explosive outbursts that dot this lunar musical landscape. From that quasi disintegration to the bold, gaunt and seemingly inconclusive finale, there seems to be some kind of progression toward a more abstract musical language. But that could also be an effect of the intervening years: musical advances could have mingled with declining mental powers and advancing illness. By the time he died in October 1896 Bruckner had suffered debilitating bouts of pneumonia and pleurisy.

As has been said by M we will never know. There is a very interesting (and lengthy) essay on the finale here. After having read it I am still not convinced. A lot of the ardent advocacy reads like it's from someone who'd do anything to sell his argument. That automatically makes me raise my guards, so in the end the argument comes down to this: if one believes Bruckner would have indeed completed his finale had he lived longer (and unlike Schubert he never abandoned work on one of his works before), then one should be prepared to reassess the 9th altogether, keeping in mind that the finale will always be conjectural.

M forever

Quote from: O Mensch on January 04, 2008, 12:24:46 PM
The first three sound like a comfortable, worn in piece of clothing. The performers know where they are going and know what risks they can afford to take. They are thoroughly at home at every turn. That is simply not the case in the playing in the finale excerpts. The dynamic range is more limited and the playing is much more on the "safe" side. The phrasing is comparatively stiff. The first three movements are standard repertoire and the fourth is uncharted territory and it shows. You might argue that this is due to the fact that they are just playing excerpts for illustration purposes. But there are some quite sizeable stretches of music that could have been played with more conviction, more interpretive cohesion and generally more assured ensemble work.

Can you give examples for that? In the first section (track 2), the only insecure moment I hear is the very first entry of the strings. In fact, the force and determination with which the first tutti entries, especially the motif at 1'45 come crashing in totally startled me when I first heard it. It is also ideally prepared in the context when the the build-up towards it starts to fade away a little, suggesting that there will be no tutti entry after all, and then it suddenly comes anyway (I think Bruckner wrote that rather cleverly). I hear no indecisive or uneasy playing in general later either, no "are we playing here?" or "oops, how does this go?" moments, although there may be some which I don't recall right now. The general impression I had after listening to it several times was the exact opposite. Some of the playing, like the strings totally digging in in the fugato sections with sometimes pretty noisy attacks, I actually almost found a little too "emphatical" The internal musical development and context in those sections and passages that are largely intact makes sense to me to, like the way transitions or build-ups are handled. So what you are saying does not make sense to me at all. There is no "baby-stepping" going on here. The very ending of the excerpts is extremly confident and points to more coming after that - but there isn't. That, and the fragmentary nature of the material, with missing passages and all that, unsatisfying in itself and leaves you sitting there feeling short-changed. But that is the nature of what we have here - musical fragments, not of he composition as far as we can tell. It could be, since we don't know if the missing passages would have "made sense" or not (chances are they would have though, seeing that Bruckner was pretty good at composing large scale symphonies, he had actually done a few before). And not of the presentation either.

M forever

#546
Quote from: Lilas Pastia on January 04, 2008, 05:01:17 PM
It is indeed strikingly modern sounding, but I wonder how much of that impression is borne of the almost disjointed assemblage of rather angular thematic material.

In my case, that impression doesn't have anything to do with that. It is the material itself, not the way it is put together which strikes me as rather innovative. But not "randomly" so because it has a lot of relationships with typical Bruckner ideas and material. It just takes the use of those ideas in musical contexts a few steps further. A typical Bruckner element is the use of ostinati, and there isn't much new about that at all in historical terms, but the way he does that here points forward even to some later "minimalist" developments.

Quote from: Lilas Pastia on January 04, 2008, 05:01:17 PM
From that quasi disintegration to the bold, gaunt and seemingly inconclusive finale, there seems to be some kind of progression toward a more abstract musical language. But that could also be an effect of the intervening years: musical advances could have mingled with declining mental powers and advancing illness.

Maybe. Or maybe not. It's not only that the finale is simply not completely finished as it is, it is also that the point of such a large-scale piece is not only to amass a lot of great musical ideas, but to present them in a coherent context and work out a symphonic argument between the elements to achieve that coherence. The bolder the material, the more potential there may be to elaborate on it in interesting and innovative ways, but the more difficult it also is to actually make that convincing. Some of the earlier versions of his finished symphonies also leave a somewhat incoherent, "rambling" impression. I think in most cases when Bruckner revised some of the symphonies, for whatever reason, be it that he felt the need for a revision himself or that he yelded to external pressures, the revised versions make more sense. And that in itself makes sense since Bruckner's symphonies are all very ambitious. It makes sense that he could find more convincing solutions for symphonic problems he had worked out earlier when he returned to them later, more experienced.

Whether or not his declining physical and mental health played a role in how he formulated his musical ideas we simply can not say. Because we don't understand what went on in Bruckner's head anyway, at any point in his life...

But he was not the kind of composer who would come up with daring musical ideas while sitting at the piano improvising wildly next to the open window during a stormy night, his hair blowing in the wind. That wouldn't have worked anyway in his case. He was an extremely organized and meticulous worker who was obsessed (literally) with counting and organizing things. That can also be seen from his scores in which he numbered every single bar and the music itself which has a lot of mathematical proportions in its form. So I think it is rather unlikely that what we have here are some random "crazy" ideas. He may not have been mentally healthy enough not actually manage to work out these ideas optimally, but then again, we don't know because we can't do better ourselves, and besides that, I think Bruckner was, in a way, mentally very seriously ill all his life. He definitely was pretty far "out there", but he brought us a lot of great music back from wherever he was.

Remember even many of his friends and supporters didn't "get" him and felt the need to "correct" and "improve" a lot of his music. That is why Bruckner gave his scores to the Austrian national library because he hoped they would survive there for posterity in the way he had written his music. It was apparently the younger Schalk brother who was supposed to bring together everything that Bruckner had written for the finale and who failed to do so. I think that's a great loss.

Quote from: Lilas Pastia on January 04, 2008, 05:01:17 PM
There is a very interesting (and lengthy) essay on the finale here. After having read it I am still not convinced.

Convinced of what? That Bruckner wanted to complete the finale and that the 9th symphony was not supposed to end with the 3rd movement, or of this particular attempt at completing it?

Quote from: Lilas Pastia on January 04, 2008, 05:01:17 PM
A lot of the ardent advocacy reads like it's from someone who'd do anything to sell his argument. That automatically makes me raise my guards, so in the end the argument comes down to this: if one believes Bruckner would have indeed completed his finale had he lived longer (and unlike Schubert he never abandoned work on one of his works before), then one should be prepared to reassess the 9th altogether, keeping in mind that the finale will always be conjectural.

Well, what do you expect? Would you rather want to read somebody's arguments who does not appear to be convinced himself of what he is saying? I may not understand what you meant here.

Whether or not Bruckner would have completed his finale is not a matter of belief had he lived longer. Working on that is pretty much everything he did during the last phase of his life, and he was very far advanced with it when he died. Harnoncourt estimated it would only have taken him another 2 months or so to complete this first version.

Lilas Pastia

What I meant is not even clear to me, in a sense. There is ambiguity in the subject itself, and my response is to think "maybe. Or maybe not". Bruckner left masses of score sheets that he never used in a finished work. All composers jot down tons of material that simply helps them organize and try things in different ways. Upon moving into his last apartment, a few months before he died, he ordered his secretary to burn a lot of stuff. What I'm wondering is, how can we assume that all the sketches for the finale would actually have been used by Bruckner? He might  have reworked or even rejected some of his ideas.

That's why I'm ambivalent about the result that is presented to us in these reconstructions. Following the article (did you actually read it?) there's an interview in which Gunnar-Cohrs exemplifies the problem by saying: what if we'd take the seventh symphony's first movement, follow it by the scherzo and conclude with the Wagner adagio? Wouldn't our whole view and appreciation of the work be totally different?  That's why I think if one is to believe that the three movement 9th should be completed, then our whole reference grid for that work (made up of decades of hearing it in that truncated format) would become more or less useless. And the problem is further compounded when one had doubts about the validity of the completed finale.

Clearly there's a new dynamic at work that is starting to take root and gather momentum. It's a process that will take a while to become an accepted option in the Bruckner canon, and from there, it will take even more time and effort to find its place in the concert hall.

J.Z. Herrenberg

#548
Quote from: Jezetha on January 04, 2008, 09:16:38 AM
I promise to give the Wildner another spin tomorrow. And then I'll report back.

I listened two times to Wildner's performance of the Finale today... Yes, there are some undeniably beautiful and powerful moments, and yes, it is moving to be able to listen to some of the music that Bruckner must have heard inside his head, but: they are not enough to build a coherent whole, with all the slow-moving and grand inevitability I associate with Bruckner.

I haven't heard the latest version, so I don't know whether that would change my mind.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

not edward

Been giving the Harding version of the latest completion a couple of listens.

I find this really frustrating: no, it's not particularly convincing as a completion but damn, some of the musical ideas are wonderful, pushing the boundaries even further than the first three movements did. I hadn't previously heard the sketches in any form and had had no idea how the a finale could possibly have worked after that Adagio: now I at least think I know.

I think what I'd like to hear more than further attempts to complete the finale would be if some composer with a strong personality but a good empathy for the idiom (Wolfgang Rihm, say?) were to write a lengthy piece using the extant fragments: something like Berio's Rendering where no attempt is made to make a completion, merely setting them in an appropriate context. It would make an intriguing concert pairing with the three-movement version of the symphony, at least.
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

M forever

Quote from: edward on January 07, 2008, 08:32:59 PM
Been giving the Harding version of the latest completion a couple of listens.

I find this really frustrating: no, it's not particularly convincing as a completion but damn, some of the musical ideas are wonderful, pushing the boundaries even further than the first three movements did. I hadn't previously heard the sketches in any form and had had no idea how the a finale could possibly have worked after that Adagio: now I at least think I know.

You can also find that out by listening to the 8th symphony. The slow movement is just as expansive, and it also has a very "final", peaceful ending. If that symphony had been the last, and without a completed finale, it could and would be played just like the 9th.

Don't be frustrated if what you heard doesn't seem to make sense to you. It really doesn't make complete sense to anyone I think. It is, after all, just fragments, in whatever context they are presented. That may also be a problem with the version you listened to. I know there is an actual released CD of the Harding version which I haven't heard. But I listened to a live recording which is a total mess. It is obvious that he can't make sense of whatever is there himself and he really doesn't know how to steer the orchestra through the movement. That makes it all sound even more fragmented and coherent than it actually is. That, plus the suprisingly bad and insecure playing of the Swedish RSO (O Mensch really needs to listen to that when he wants to hear "babystepping") make this a very frustrating listening experience in itself.


MishaK

Quote from: M forever on January 05, 2008, 02:22:43 AM
Can you give examples for that? In the first section (track 2), the only insecure moment...

No, I can't. I wasn't speaking of "insecurity", I was speaking of comfort and familiarity. The excerpts just don't flow as naturally as the prior three movements. There is nothing wrong or sketchy about the playing as such.

Quote from: M forever on January 05, 2008, 02:22:43 AMBut that is the nature of what we have here - musical fragments, not of he composition as far as we can tell.

I made that point already.

M forever

Quote from: O Mensch on January 08, 2008, 07:29:41 AM
No, I can't. I wasn't speaking of "insecurity", I was speaking of comfort and familiarity. The excerpts just don't flow as naturally as the prior three movements.

Of course they don't. They are fragments. Even the more or less completed sections aren't ompletely "fleshed out" and "filed" yet. You can tell from other symphonies an the first three movements that Bruckner played the completed material on the piano and filled in little musical gestures here and there, details which make the music flow and proceed more organically, and more playable. Even the larger completed stretches, like track 2, still lack some of these elements. The nature of the material is rather "blocky". But the internal context, the way they move from one group of ideas to the next, makes a whole lot of musical sense. Again best heard in track 2. I am pretty sure you understand that the careful way the movement begins is defined by the nature of the material which appears from nowhere. But the buildups to the first tutti entries and the ebb and flow between them are very organical. Same about the transition to the second theme group. I particularly like how those dotted motifs in the violins appear to float in from a differen space. The buildup to and the way they play the grand choral like theme around 6'00 is just magnificent. I can't imagine a better advocacy for these musical fragments at this point. Actually, it is mostly that track which makes me regret that there isn't a coherent finale, even just a first version, because all that is very, very promising. Most of the rest of the fragments are just glimpses into what could have been. Very tantalizing, very mysterious.
BTW, NH had already conducted the finale fragments in concerts years before the recording was made. You probably thought he didn't and though it would just be cool to say that. Oops.

MishaK

Man, M, we're going in circles here. You just don't want to read plain English. I KNOW THEY ARE FRAGMENTS! All I am saying is that even as fragments they could have been played with more conviction and flow and that among the choices Wildner makes a better case for the last movement, or what's left of it. That should have been apparent from my first post and we could have spared ourselves the waste of time and bandwidth that it took to read and type the last few posts. You can spare yourself the nonsensical speculation about what you think I thought about NH. Geez...

M forever

Quote from: O Mensch on January 08, 2008, 10:36:40 AM
I KNOW THEY ARE FRAGMENTS!

Oh, good.  ;)

Quote from: O Mensch on January 08, 2008, 10:36:40 AM
All I am saying is that even as fragments they could have been played with more conviction and flow

I am beginning to think we are actually talking about different recordings here. I have a hard time imagining this to be played with more "conviction", seein how the strings dig in in the first tutti entries, the fugato sections, how the whole orchestra comes crashing in with full force in the first tutti, and how well everything is phrased. I don't see any want of flow there either, especially in critical transitions. For instance, the transition from the first to the second group and the way these dotted string figures float in is masterfully handled. To clear this up, which recording were you talking about all the time?

I meant this one here:

MishaK

Quote from: M forever on January 08, 2008, 12:12:17 PM
Oh, good.  ;)

I am beginning to think we are actually talking about different recordings here. I have a hard time imagining this to be played with more "conviction", seein how the strings dig in in the first tutti entries, the fugato sections, how the whole orchestra comes crashing in with full force in the first tutti, and how well everything is phrased. I don't see any want of flow there either, especially in critical transitions. For instance, the transition from the first to the second group and the way these dotted string figures float in is masterfully handled. To clear this up, which recording were you talking about all the time?

I meant this one here:


You know very well that I meant that same recording. No go compare to the Wildner. I found his flow more convincing.

Again, I might remind you that we started off with this nonsensical tangent because you took my comments way too extremely, while I merely was suggesting that the Wildner recording provides a better overall picture of the last movement.

Don

Quote from: O Mensch on January 08, 2008, 12:45:29 PM
You know very well that I meant that same recording. No go compare to the Wildner. I found his flow more convincing.

Again, I might remind you that we started off with this nonsensical tangent because you took my comments way too extremely, while I merely was suggesting that the Wildner recording provides a better overall picture of the last movement.

If you mess around with Harnoncourt, M forever will hunt you down.  Don't you know that?

M forever

No, I just want to actuallly *discuss* music and interpretations. Instead of making blanket statements without backing them up or illustrating how one has arrived at that conclusion, I want to discuss the interpretation with some kind of musical argumentation referring to specific points or examples, like I provided here:

Quote from: M forever on January 08, 2008, 12:12:17 PM
I have a hard time imagining this to be played with more "conviction", seein how the strings dig in in the first tutti entries, the fugato sections, how the whole orchestra comes crashing in with full force in the first tutti, and how well everything is phrased. I don't see any want of flow there either, especially in critical transitions. For instance, the transition from the first to the second group and the way these dotted string figures float in is masterfully handled.

Or here:

Quote from: M forever on January 08, 2008, 09:39:44 AM
But the internal context, the way they move from one group of ideas to the next, makes a whole lot of musical sense. Again best heard in track 2. I am pretty sure you understand that the careful way the movement begins is defined by the nature of the material which appears from nowhere. But the buildups to the first tutti entries and the ebb and flow between them are very organical. Same about the transition to the second theme group. I particularly like how those dotted motifs in the violins appear to float in from a differen space. The buildup to and the way they play the grand choral like theme around 6'00 is just magnificent. I can't imagine a better advocacy for these musical fragments at this point.

Or here:

Quote from: M forever on January 05, 2008, 02:22:43 AM
Can you give examples for that? In the first section (track 2), the only insecure moment I hear is the very first entry of the strings. In fact, the force and determination with which the first tutti entries, especially the motif at 1'45 come crashing in totally startled me when I first heard it. It is also ideally prepared in the context when the the build-up towards it starts to fade away a little, suggesting that there will be no tutti entry after all, and then it suddenly comes anyway (I think Bruckner wrote that rather cleverly). I hear no indecisive or uneasy playing in general later either, no "are we playing here?" or "oops, how does this go?" moments, although there may be some which I don't recall right now. The general impression I had after listening to it several times was the exact opposite. Some of the playing, like the strings totally digging in in the fugato sections with sometimes pretty noisy attacks, I actually almost found a little too "emphatical" The internal musical development and context in those sections and passages that are largely intact makes sense to me to, like the way transitions or build-ups are handled. So what you are saying does not make sense to me at all. There is no "baby-stepping" going on here. The very ending of the excerpts is extremly confident and points to more coming after that - but there isn't.




Quote from: O Mensch on January 08, 2008, 12:45:29 PM
You know very well that I meant that same recording. No go compare to the Wildner. I found his flow more convincing.

I don't have that. Can you upload the finale somewhere for the sake of comparison?

MishaK

Quote from: M forever on January 08, 2008, 01:14:53 PM
No, I just want to actuallly *discuss* music and interpretations. Instead of making blanket statements without backing them up or illustrating how one has arrived at that conclusion, I want to discuss the interpretation with some kind of musical argumentation referring to specific points or examples, like I provided here:

Great! Give yourself a big pat on your back for meeting your own criteria.

Quote from: M forever on January 08, 2008, 01:14:53 PM
I don't have that. Can you upload the finale somewhere for the sake of comparison?

Then why were you arguing with me when you can't even make the comparison? That's all my post was about. Since it's a currently available recording, uploading would violate copyright law. It's a Naxos CD. That should be within your budget.

Bonehelm

Quote from: Don on January 08, 2008, 12:53:23 PM
If you mess around with Harnoncourt, M forever will hunt you down.  Don't you know that?

Harnoncourt is bad.

Come on, baby.