Musical Personalities

[atardecer]

I've been listening to Julius Katchen's Brahms lately which I find exceptional, and it made me want to explore some of his other recordings, and I came across this oddity:

Falla - Ritual Fire Dance, Julius Katchen

Compare to this:

Falla - Ritual Fire Dance, Alicia de Larrocha

Katchen's Falla isn't bad per se, but his style to me isn't ideal in this kind of music. I find his musical personality well-suited to Brahms, but missing some intensity in the Falla piece. In the latter I think Alicia de Larrocha's approach is ideal.

This is a thread for other such examples, or feel free to post what musicians you think are best suited to certain composers or repertoire.

[Luke]

Katchen, of course, is the soloist who declared the Tippett piano concerto unplayable and walked out shortly before he was due to perform the premiere. It has subsequently been successfully performed by many pianists, and although it is of course a difficult piece I wouldn't say its technical hurdles were greater than those in other works Katchen performed. This has always suggested to me that Katchen's issue with the piece was more one of affinty or, to use your terms, a clash of musical personalities.

[Mandryka]

Obviously every performance is a clash of the personality of the performer and the personality of the composer -  the personality of the listener too. For me some of the most interesting performances are where the clash produces something unexpected. An example came up yesterday for me with this

And this a few months ago

This comes to mind too

I much prefer to see music in performance as a matter of human encounter, rather than in terms of truth related concepts like "revelation" or "correctness" or "appropriateness"

[atardecer]

Two general categories of musician are those who put their 'musical personality' in the background as much as possible seeking to perform the music as written and as the composer intended. Category two is musicians where the personality comes to the forefront more. The latter I believe was more common in earlier times, from the Baroque era well into the 19th century, but category one seems to be more prevalent today. Perhaps the most prominent among more recent category two musicians would be Glenn Gould (although Gould did not improvise like earlier musicians).

As far as Gould I think he brings some interesting things to Bach, though I avoid his Mozart and Beethoven generally. I must admit this is largely just because he has criticized the latter composers. I don't like the idea of musicians performing music they don't have an affinity for.

[atardecer]

Right around this time of transition between these different approaches to performance was a clash between Ravel and Paul Wittgenstein, (who Ravel composed the left-hand concerto for). Wittgenstein wanted to make changes to the score saying that performers should not be slaves, Ravel did not agree and told him that performers are slaves! That statement might sound harsh, but Ravel was quite upset because Wittgenstein had gone so far as to make changes to Ravel's orchestration.

I think Ravel was a composer that was influential in the transition between styles of musical performance.

[Jo498]

Paul Wittgenstein was apparently a cantankerous person (maybe understandable after losing an arm but the whole family had a history of sometimes severe mental health problems) and liked very few of the left hand pieces composed for him, so Ravel was not the only composer he fell out with.

[Mandryka]

For an amusing story featuring Paul Wittgenstein, I'm not sure if there's any truth in it, I recommend Thomas Bernhard's Wittgenstein's Nephew. Thomas Bernhard's fun - maybe less so if you're an Austrian aristocrat!

[atardecer]

I think Ravel was a composer that was influential in the transition between styles of musical performance.

Ernest Ansermet once described a meeting with Debussy where the composer gave him a score of the Nocturnes, that contained some corrections. When Ansermet asked which should be followed, Debussy replied, "I am no longer certain. They're all possibilities. Take the score and use those which seem good to you." That attitude would have been anathema to Ravel. It is an example of the difference between those composer's musical personalities.

[Cato]

Ernest Ansermet once described a meeting with Debussy where the composer gave him a score of the Nocturnes, that contained some corrections. When Ansermet asked which should be followed, Debussy replied, "I am no longer certain. They're all possibilities. Take the score and use those which seem good to you." That attitude would have been anathema to Ravel. It is an example of the difference between those composer's musical personalities.

In the same way that one can imagine impossible monsters or life on other planets, the composer might imagine certain sounds and  think that the orchestration is producing that sound.


I think if Ernest Ansermet told me e.g. "This idea with the Bass Flute, English Horn, and the D Trumpet just will not work," I would listen to him! 


Concerning "musical personality" between conductor/performer and composer....


Was this unexpected?

[Florestan]

Ernest Ansermet once described a meeting with Debussy where the composer gave him a score of the Nocturnes, that contained some corrections. When Ansermet asked which should be followed, Debussy replied, "I am no longer certain. They're all possibilities. Take the score and use those which seem good to you." That attitude would have been anathema to Ravel. It is an example of the difference between those composer's musical personalities.

This is corroborated by an event quoted by Richard Taruskin, in which the same Debussy asked an American pianist whose name I can't remember otomh and who was a champion of Debussy why he played a piece of his (Debussy's) the way he did, which was not how Debussy himself played it; the pianist responded "That's how I feel it should be played" and Debussy replied "I feel differently but by all means, keep playing it in whatever way makes sense to you."

[atardecer]

I think Ravel was a composer that was influential in the transition between styles of musical performance.

This said, I don't think Ravel's influence in this area was really too significant, after all this kind of approach goes much further back.

"I declare...that my pieces must be executed as I have marked them, and that they will never make an impression on those persons of real taste unless one observes to the letter all that I have marked without any additions or deletions." - François Couperin

I think by far the biggest reason for change in performance style is the development of recorded music.

[atardecer]

"I declare in all good faith that I am more pleased with what moves me than with what astonishes me." - François Couperin

"I'm not interested in how music sounds, I'm interested in how it is constructed." - Boulez

[Cato]

"I'm not interested in how music sounds, I'm interested in how it is constructed." - Boulez

That must be something from Boulez in his persona as enfant terrible and provocateur.

He is surely interested in both: from an interview in his later years:

"...And I am generally very sensitive to sound. I think that sound should be a very important element of music, and not just something you "add" superficially afterwards. You therefore hear a different sound in my work – in the Improvisations sur Mallarmé, for instance....

Concerning the topic, Boulez says that his "personality" was ultimately struggling against the "12-tone" system:

...And I suppose that for me, on the contrary, the constructivism of the three Viennese was occasionally a bit of a burden, and I thought that the inventiveness and ingenuity, the spontaneity of a Debussy were very necessary sometimes.

You really cannot just be constructive all the time; you have to be descriptive, as well. And I suppose that's the sort of combination between constructivism and spontaneity which I found to be very important...

...between the spontaneity of the one (i.e. Debussy's ideas) and the constructivity of the other (i.e. Schoenberg's).

I really think that there was a balance to be established. And I was attracted to both sides. I must admit that sometimes, of course, the music of Debussy is very light. I won't deny that. Sometimes, I say.

In his major works, however, certainly not – these are as deep as can possibly be. And the constructivism of the Viennese School, on the other hand, can also sometimes be viewed as burdensome.

Therefore, you have to work with this constructivism in such a way that you are also free from it – and I suppose that's the liaison between constructivism on the one hand and spontaneity on the other. For me, these are the two elements of a musician.

... I listened to quite a lot of non-European music: Balinese music, African music, Japanese traditional music, Chinese opera and so on. I was similarly interested in the sounds contained in such music, and I do think that each civilization has its own sound. Bali, for instance, has a kind of metallic sonority.

.

People change their minds! 

https://musiksalon.universaledition.com/en/article/boulez-on-boulez

[atardecer]

^ Good post Cato. Boulez made some provocative statements, but if you think about it, the quote of his that I posted isn't too far removed from:

"Music is not a sound, it is an idea." - Plato

And I think there is something to this, though perhaps not the whole truth. A lot of great quotes contain an element of truth, but can be looked at in different contexts in which other sides can be seen. I think it is very difficult to make completely true statements in general. Many of the best quotes sacrifice a little bit of accuracy for pithiness.

[Iota]

^ Good post Cato. Boulez made some provocative statements, but if you think about it, the quote of his that I posted isn't too far removed from:

"Music is not a sound, it is an idea." - Plato

And I think there is something to this, though perhaps not the whole truth. A lot of great quotes contain an element of truth, but can be looked at in different contexts in which other sides can be seen. I think it is very difficult to make completely true statements in general. Many of the best quotes sacrifice a little bit of accuracy for pithiness.

Rather neatly, with your last sentence, you seem to have ended your post with what I'd deem a 'completely true statement'. And a very well put one too. Bravo.

[atardecer]

Conductor Jonathan Berman discussing the music of Franz Schmidt, and some of the differences between Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler and Schmidt.