What, Actually, Is a Bad/Wrong Performance?

[Florestan]

(The idea of this thread was suggested to me by a post by @Mandryka  in the WAYLTN thread: https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,29166.msg1517564.html#msg1517564)

The question is: what objective criteria, if any at all, are there for the ascertainment of the good/right or the bad/wrong of a performance?

I will wait for some answers before presenting my own theory.

[SimonNZ]

Disrespect through disregard.

or

Disregard through disrespect.

[david johnson]

Bad intonation!

[Roasted Swan]

technical brilliance placed above musical insight

[Mandryka]

Wrong and good

Right and bad

[DavidW]

Sloppy playing, making mistakes.

Anything else is just subjective preference.  You might not like the choices that a performer makes, and you might not like the performance.  But that is just a matter of taste.  No matter how unpopular any recording is, I guarantee that you can still find a good sized crowd that loves it.

[Brian]

Some additional thoughts in orchestral performance - though they tip toward the subjective - include poor balancing (main idea obscured by accompaniment, sections inaudible, counterpoint buried) and a disinterest in rhythm (rhythm is slack, lumpy, inconsistent, or unrecognizable).

[Todd]

Sloppy playing, making mistakes.

Not always.  Alfred Cortot made some sloppy recordings filled with mistakes, and they can be awesome - in something approaching the literal sense of the word.  Likewise, some of Wilhelm Kempff's live recordings are riddled with goofs, yet he manages to make the performances work.

[Mandryka]

making mistakes.

For example, an inadvertent incorrect pitch. I tend to agree that enough of them make for a bad performance, though I agree with @Todd 's suggestion that this bad performance can be enjoyable and even insightful.

What it shows is that lots of nuanced distinctions are needed to make this sort of discourse coherent. You can have a bad awesome performance. Bad qua  execution,  fabulous qua  ideas or entertainment value.

I'm not convinced it's worth thinking about myself.

[Spotted Horses]

For example, an inadvertent incorrect pitch. I tend to agree that enough of them make for a bad performance, though I agree with @Todd 's suggestion that this bad performance can be enjoyable and even insightful.

What it shows is that lots of nuanced distinctions are needed to make this sort of discourse coherent. You can have a bad awesome performance. Bad qua  execution,  fabulous qua  ideas or entertainment value.

I'm not convinced it's worth thinking about myself.

+1

A bad performance is a performance in which the performer failed to achieve what he or she was trying to achieve, which is itself subjective or perhaps best judged by the performer. 99% of the time when I read a performance is bad, it seems to me that what is being described is a performance that the person commenting simply didn't like.

[Florestan]

Thank you for the interesting replies, gentlemen. Here is mine.

Imo, there is no such thing as a bad or wrong performance, nor is there any such thing as a good or right performance. There is simply no universal, objective criteria for the ascertainment of that. As various posters correctly stated, a performance with a few wrong notes here and there, or even an overall sloppy technique, can have great value for many people; conversely, may I add, a technically flawless performance can leave many people cold. The bad or the good, the right or the wrong --- it's all in the ear of the listener. If a performance aligns with one's own aesthetics, taste and preferences, or is enjoyed on a purely aural level, it is praised as good or right or both; if it doesn't align with one's own aesthetics, taste and preferences, or is not enjoyed on a purely aural level, it is crtiticized as bad or wrong or both. The technical jargon deployed by professional critics and musicologists in order to give an appearance of objectivity to their pronouncemennts is just ex post facto rationalization of a purely personal, subjective reaction.

Disrespect through disregard.

or

Disregard through disrespect.

I presume what is meant here is disregard/disrespect for the score or for the composer's intentions --- so let me think aloud a bit.

As an example of disrespect through disregard, I can imagine the following situation: a performer plays a piece to the composers of that piece and it is told by the latter that he (the composer) has a different notion of how the piece is to be played; yet the performer keeps playing the piece his own way. Clearly, he disregards the composer's own view of the piece.

As an example of disregard through disrespect, I can imagine a perfomer who has in his repertoire a set of variations consisting of, say, 20 variations; yet the actual number of variations he plays at any given recital is variable (pun) and depends on the perceived reaction of the audience, so one night he can play 13 variations, another night 16 and yet another night only 10. Clearly, the performer disrespect the composer's piece as a whole.

And yet --- and here's the trick --- both *disrespectful/disregardful* practices imagined above are documented as having the full sanction of the composer, who in the variations case was none other than also the performer.

American pianist George Copeland was praised by Debussy as an ideal interpereter of his pieces, yet one day Debussy asked him why he played Reflets dans l'eau the way he did. "That's how I feel it should be played", responded Copeland, to which Debussy replied "I feel differently but, by all means, play it as you feel it should be played."

Rachmaninoff told his life-long friend Medtner that while playing his own (Rachmaninoff's) Corelli Variations he regulated the number of variations by the coughing of the audience: if the coughing was intense, he would skip the next variation, if there was no coughing, he would play them in order; thus, the lowest number of variations he ever played was 10 (out of 20) and the highest was 18, but never did he play them all.

So, what we have here is two very different composers who treated their own scores with far more liberality than is allowed today, and using the criteria of disrespect and disregard, one would qualify as a wrong performance what Debussy approved of motu proprio and as a bad performance what Rachmaninoff did with his own music. But isn't the composer supposed to know better than anyone else? This is the paradox one gets into by treating a score like a Wholy Writ from which nothing shalt be taken and to which nothing shalt be added, under penalty of anathema.

[AnotherSpin]

What does not meet the listener's expectation is perceived by the listener as wrong. If the listener is able to transcend his or her initial conditioning, the same performance can be recognised as correct.

[Roasted Swan]

I think there can be a bad/wrong performance.  Supposing there was a piece written to be played slowly and quietly throughout and the performer chose to play it loud and fast then I think most folk would accept that as bad and/or wrong. 

But of course what we are really discussing here is a matter of degree.  Generally most performers of a professional standard will be playing and interpreting a musical work within a fairly narrow band of 'convention'.  For me just because that performer's version might not correspond to my personal ideal does not make me consider it bad or wrong.  Indeed I would always argue that the greater the music the wider the interpretative range it can support.  Part of the reason I collect as much music as I do is simply because I don't think I know or have heard the last word on any piece of music written and therefore and I am always intrigued to discover a new musical insight that had never occured to me before - even in the most familiar works.

[Mandryka]

Imo, there is no such thing as a bad or wrong performance,

Do you believe that there are bad or wrong actions of any kind?

[Spotted Horses]

I think there can be a bad/wrong performance.  Supposing there was a piece written to be played slowly and quietly throughout and the performer chose to play it loud and fast then I think most folk would accept that as bad and/or wrong. 

Brings to mind Berstein's WPO recording of Sibelius Symphony No 2 (on DGG). At times it seems like it's half speed. It's bad by your definition, but great.

[DavidW]

What does not meet the listener's expectation is perceived by the listener as wrong. If the listener is able to transcend his or her initial conditioning, the same performance can be recognised as correct.

I remember there being a particular way a specific passage was played in the first recording I had of Schubert's 9th (and separately Mozart's 35th).  When I heard other recordings I was unhappy that nobody else played it that way.  It took me awhile to appreciate that it was probably just played wrong in those first recordings, and I liked how it was played wrong.

[Roasted Swan]

Brings to mind Berstein's WPO recording of Sibelius Symphony No 2 (on DGG). At times it seems like it's half speed. It's bad by your definition, but great.

I can't say I know that performance - but to take Lenny's Nimrod as an equivalent; for sure it pushed the boundaries/norms for the piece as "usually" performed but it is not diametrically different from the score indications which was what I meant.

[Florestan]

Do you believe that there are bad or wrong actions of any kind?

Yes.

[Mandryka]

Yes.

Please give me an example of a bad action and an example of wrong action, and explain what makes it bad or wrong.

[Florestan]

I think there can be a bad/wrong performance.  Supposing there was a piece written to be played slowly and quietly throughout and the performer chose to play it loud and fast then I think most folk would accept that as bad and/or wrong.

If the performance would make sense musically and aurally and would give pleasure to some people, where is the bad/wrong, I wonder?