Maximianno Cobra's Beethoven Symphonies and Theory

[Gustav]

Symphony N° 9 op. 125
" Finale with Chorus on Schiller's Ode to Joy "


EUROPA PHILHARMONIA
CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA

Erika Miklósa, Soprano
Bernadette Wiedemann, Alto
András Molnár, Tenor
István Rácz, Bass

MAXIMIANNO COBRA, Conductor
http://hodie-world.com/cms_fr_full/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,28/Itemid,32/lang,en/

His own explanation of his "Theory"
http://www.maximiannocobra.net/prag_fr/Content-pid-14.html

[not edward]

Maybe he can get together with Richard Kastle for some truly innovative concerto recordings which present the composer's intentions for the first time ever.

[Symphonien]

This is not some fascinating new innovation, that will give us any more insight into the music or what the composers had in mind - simply playing everything at half-tempo. Great way for him to stand out from the crowd without actually knowing anything about music at all, or having to put in any other interpretation of his own. Look, I can conduct things at half-tempo!

I feel very sorry for those musicians...

[jochanaan]

Can someone with a faster connection than mine tell us how Maestro Cobra actually leads B9?  I'd be interested to know if his theories result in a vital, effective and affective performance.

[Brian]

Well, the first two minutes were lousy.

Apparently Mr. Cobra does not realize that Beethoven intended for the Symphony to be much faster than the way in which most conductors perform it. In fact, Beethoven and his close friends all seem to agree that the Ninth Symphony should be playable in forty-five minutes!    See Benjamin Zander's fascinating article, which demonstrates that Cobra doesn't merely have it wrong ... he has it really wrong! 

NOTE: I have not listened to Zander's performance, though I have wanted to for quite a while. It's no longer available anywhere ... 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I just listened to the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth. At first you think 'This can't be true, this is too slow!' It is as if you're listening to someone in the earliest stages of learning to play the piano, where everything is a struggle. After a while you start to get used to the tempo, more or less, and the experience is in a sense instructive, because you can hear a lot of the detail you otherwise miss without recourse to a score. But in the end the music starts to sound unnatural, almost perverse. Music is human, it has a pulse, it changes, varies.

This is Celibidache on speed, or its opposite, rather. I don't think I will explore any further.

[jwinter]

I'm listening to the very (un) allegro molto vivace as I type.  This is just bizarre.  And I'm saying that as someone who's generally a fan of slow 9ths -- heck, my oft-proclaimed all-time fave is Bohm's last Vienna recording, which is about 80 minutes on the nose.  But this is waaaaay too much.

Can someone with a faster connection than mine tell us how Maestro Cobra actually leads B9?  I'd be interested to know if his theories result in a vital, effective and affective performance.

Aye, there's the rub.  When Bohm, late Bernstein, or Celibidache slow things down (generally speaking), it often seems to bring out some of the rhythmic interconnections and orchestral textures that can get glossed over at a faster tempo.  I often feel like I'm hearing more of the music, and it allows me to really savor and enjoy the many various components of the sound.  The rhythm is slower, but it's still there, it still moves you.   This, on the other hand, is slow to the point where the underlying beat just falls apart in places, IMO.  It's more annoying than anything -- I haven't bothered with the conductor's "theory", but if he actually thinks the music is supposed to sound like this, he's nuts. 

Thanks for the link, though -- it made for fascinating listening. 

[Symphonien]

This is Celibidache on speed, or its opposite, rather. I don't think I will explore any further.

Yes, but the difference between him and Celibidache is that Celibidache actually had something to say about the music rather than just play it slow for the sake of it.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Yes, but the difference between him and Celibidache is that Celibidache actually had something to say about the music rather than just play it slow for the sake of it.

Of course. I really have some time for Celibidache.

But this Cobra will be the death of me.

[Symphonien]

Of course. I really have some time for Celibidache.

But this Cobra will be the death of me.

Indeed. I wonder how long his Beethoven 9th is? Like 2 hours... and something. Must be soooo boring and tiring for those poor musicians. And his audiences must all be asleep.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Indeed. I wonder how long his Beethoven 9th is? Like 2 hours... and something. Must be soooo boring and tiring for those poor musicians. And his audiences must all be asleep.

"Maximianno Cobra - the insomniac's conductor. His bite really puts you to sleep!"

[MahlerSnob]

Playing in the orchestra for such a thing is one thing, but I can only imagine what it must be like to SING a Beethoven 9 at that tempo. I've done plenty of slowish B9's (Rafael Frubeck de Burgos currently holds that record for me), but this is just murder. Conductor's like this are why the AFM and AGMA exist.

Now that the performer part of me has spoken it's time for the conductor part of me to comment. This guy is completely misinterpreting Beethoven, who, as composers go, is pretty clear in his tempo indications. His treatise of tempo is essentially regurgitated Max Rudolf and Gunther Schuller, but completely missing the point. Rudolf and Gunther both argue for treating the score as if it were gospel - exactly what is printed, exactly where it's printed. Mr. Cobra claims to take this approach, but through an extremely convoluted series of calculations ends up thinking that all of Beethoven's tempo markings are twice as fast as they are "supposed" to be. The conductor part of me says that this guy is a moron.

[max]

Beethoven would not have been pleased. He wasn't even nice when he was!

[Gustav]

check out this website, and be sure to participate in the "Survey", before voting, you might want to check the results first, an overwhelming 87% of people agree with this "Tempus" theory. You might want to participate in the voting yourself, but for some reason, if you vote "I do not agree", a message will come up and says something about cookies not enabled, and thus preventing registering the vote. HOWEVER, if you choose "I agree", there is no such error, interesting huh? It's just like one of those old Soviet elections! 

http://www.hodie-world.com/

[Brian]

check out this website, and be sure to participate in the "Survey", before voting, you might want to check the results first, an overwhelming 87% of people agree with this "Tempus" theory. You might want to participate in the voting yourself, but for some reason, if you vote "I do not agree", a message will come up and says something about cookies not enabled, and thus preventing registering the vote. HOWEVER, if you choose "I agree", there is no such error, interesting huh? It's just like one of those old Soviet elections! 

http://www.hodie-world.com/

I got it to work by voting twice.    0.6% of people disagree.

[M forever]

Mr. Cobra claims to take this approach, but through an extremely convoluted series of calculations ends up thinking that all of Beethoven's tempo markings are twice as fast as they are "supposed" to be. 

Plus the actual metronome markings are only part of the information. A lot of the musical material (not just in the 9th symphony) can be correlated to known generic material, marches, dances, songs etc for which a tempo frame can be established easily. There is much more information about this than most people know. Even for the periods before the metronome. For instance, in the late 18th century, mechanical devices which played little pieces, for instance, menuets, were rather popular and the tempi these play back at fit perfectly into that framework established by a lot of other historical performance practice studies. So what that guy saying is just total nonsense.

You might want to participate in the voting yourself, but for some reason, if you vote "I do not agree", a message will come up and says something about cookies not enabled, and thus preventing registering the vote. HOWEVER, if you choose "I agree", there is no such error, interesting huh? It's just like one of those old Soviet elections! 

Or like voting in Florida!

[m_gigena]

After a while you start to get used to the tempo, more or less, and the experience is in a sense instructive, because you can hear a lot of the detail you otherwise miss without recourse to a score. But in the end the music starts to sound unnatural, almost perverse. Music is human, it has a pulse, it changes, varies.

I think Cobra's attempt is a valid one (that can also be perfected), as long as you see it as a means of education on the work. I don't think anyone can sit and listen to the whole recording, but if there are some tidbits you want to explore further this video can help doing that. Not everyone can work things out just by reading a complete orchestral score. After taking what this video has to offer, we orchestral amateurs can go back to our Celi's and Furtwänglers' with a bit of an additional understanding of the Ninth.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I think Cobra's attempt is a valid one (that can also be perfected), as long as you see it as a means of education on the work.

I agree Cobra's approach could have some validity as an educational tool. The point is, though, he presumes to do so much more: to make us hear the music as it should be played. And there he really is, I think, gravely mistaken.

Johan

[PSmith08]

The performance stalled out for me after about three minutes of the Molto vivace. It never achieved the speed I consider necessary for forward momentum, and it just sort of collapsed under its own mass. I would say that Mr. Cobra's performance rendered the ordinarily familiar architecture and phrasing of the 9th an utterly incomprehensible mess.

The performance could be good to illustrate various parts of orchestration, i.e., what is Beethoven doing here, and so quickly that we can't tell? Otherwise, it is just bloated and silly.

[M forever]

BTW, it's not even his theory. A few people before him came up with similar nonsense about the "real meaning" of the metronome markings, like the German pianist Grete Wehmeyer. Or actually, I wouldn't call her a pianist because her piano playing is pretty unremarkable, I don't even think she could actually play some of the pieces she presents at half tempo at the (more or less) "real" speed. But she got a lot of attention in the 80s with her very special "theories" about "rediscovering the slowness" in music. And not just in music, in life as well. In her case, her "revelations" come sprinkled with a lot of pseudo-philosophical BS about how our lives have become too fast and too hectic since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, and that that also led to the music being played faster and faster because people had less and less time and patience to really enjoy playing and listening to music the way they had allegedly done before. Which is of course complete crap because while it is true that our lives have become faster and more hectic in the last 200 years or so, the reception of music shows that there has always been a very strong and almost general tendency for the tempi typically chosen for the interpretation of earlier music to become *slower* with progressing time. We all know how, for instance, the majority of Beethoven interpreters leaned towards tempi markedly slower than the metronome marings - and some still do, sometimes with good musical reasons.

She also has a good explanation for why Beethoven on the one hand was a musical genius of epic proportions and on the other, and at the same time, an idiot who couldn't understand how a metronome worked: because he was already deaf when the metronome made its appearance, he couldn't hear the clicks, and so, according to Wehmeyer, he misinterpreted the motion of the metronome arm as imitating the movements of a conductor who would raise his arm to give a beat, then beat down and mark the right moment in time, raise his arm again etc. So Beethoven thought the new gadget was a little mechanical conducting machine!

Which is of course complete nonsense because anyone who has ever handled a metronome know that you can also *feel* the clicks. We know how Beethoven made a lot of desperate attempts to feel music when he went deaf, with those wooden sticks he attached to the piano and bit down on, so it is rather unlikely that he didn't notice how the tool worked. Plus the units have from the very beginning been clicks per minute, so there could have been no misunderstanding about that. And actual clocks which tick every second were already very widely used at that time, so Beethoven defiinitely knew what a minute and a second was.

I agree Cobra's approach could have some validity as an educational tool. The point is, though, he presumes to do so much more: to make us hear the music as it should be played. And there he really is, I think, gravely mistaken.

You already get that effect from some of the more serious interpreters who chose slow tempi because they feel they have a lot to say and in whose cases that is actually true, like, for Beethoven's 9th, Böhm in his last recording or Celibidache, or for the 3rd, Giulini's remarkably slow but very musical LA recording.