Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Thanks for sharing. I think it is NOT an improvement artistically. Part of it is the society changes - very few now spend their whole children on a specific art / trade ...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Thanks for sharing. I think it is NOT an improvement artistically. Part of it is the society changes - very few now spend their whole children on a specific art / trade ...
I've recently been introduced to the rather underrated Bohuslav Martinů - though his time, I think, is coming upon us quickly.
His symphonies in particular are so vibrant, colourful and passionate - I'm really quite bowled over by them. I've always had a love of powerful, rousing, emotional, joyful music - and he fits the bill perfectly.
Here's my current favourite, the 5th Symphony:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
StLukes, you said something in another thread that I'd like some more explanation on. You said:
So, what was different from the romantic performances and the HIP performances. What were the different instruments? How were they performed different?Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Like playing harpsicord or cembalo for keyboard rather than using pianoforte ... using smaller ensemble vs. bigger ones ...
StLukes, you said something in another thread that I'd like some more explanation on. You said:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Throughout much of the 20th century, Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel represented the farthest reaches of classical music to the era. In many cases, even these composers were heard swathed in the tradition of the great Romantic orchestras. It wasn't until the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement in the 1980s that the great Baroque composers began to be heard played on appropriate instruments and in the appropriate manner.
So, what was different from the romantic performances and the HIP performances. What were the different instruments? How were they performed different?
Here is Bach as orchestrated by Stokowski:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnEI22XlxhY
Here is the original as played on organ:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJD3dL4diY
and for violin... which may indeed have been the first incarnation of the work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNfox7ORW1Q
This is an extreme example... but essentially what lawpark states is correct. The HIP or Historically Informed Movement led toward conductors and performers approaching older works of music with an understanding and use of original instruments, orchestration, and performance styles. By the late 19th century the Romantic orchestra had expanded until it comprised of quite often 100+ instrument. Their manner of playing was often slow and languorous. There is nothing wrong with this if such was the original intent of the composer... but quite often with early music the result was to strip away the energy and layer it in a ponderous, deadening sound. Mozart, for example, often employed an orchestra of 30 or 40 musicians.
Here for example in a recording by the great old English conductor, Thomas Beechham, of the last two movements of Mozart's 41st Symphony. Note how slow and reserved it is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bxD-rIAS9w
especially in comparison to the performance by Sir Charles Mackerras. In spite of fewer instruments, Mackerras is rock-n-roll by comparison. There is an openness and clarity of space that comes from removing excess instruments. There is also a greater muscularity to the manner of performance that is closer to the truth of Mozart than the effete and non-offensive manner that has long deadened his music.
Now check out the energy-level on a number of recent HIP performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvd4tMkFHc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-XQv2TnjpM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYELA...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBT1pfVAKQ
Now don't get me wrong. I am not calling for the end of the great classical orchestras... but largely now most performances of Bach, Handel, Mozart... even Beethoven and Brahms employ an orchestration and instrumentation that is appropriate to the composer's intentions. As such... if you want Wagner of Bruckner or Beethoven or Mahler you might turn to the Berlin Philharmonic or the Chicago, or London, or Vienna, or Cleveland Orchestras. If you want Bach you turn to John Eliot Gardiner and the English Chamber Orchestra or Jordi Savall or Masaaki Suzuki or Philippe Herreweghe. In other words the musical scenes is becoming more specialized. The same holds true of vocalists. There are now singers who specialize in Baroque and earlier music, just as we have long had singers who specialized in bel canto or heavy heroic opera (ala Wagner and Richard Strauss
Interesting. When I attended the symphony a few months ago, they were doing small pieces from all sorts of composers, mostly late romantic to early modern, but they also did a couple Mozart pieces, which a good chunk of the orchestra left for.
I am in general agreement with the smaller sized orchestra scenario when it comes to symphonic music pre Beethoven where music begins to move away from the 'classical' period, but this puts Beethoven's symphonies in an equivocal position regarding the number of musicians required. It is worth remembering that both Mozart and Beethoven's orchestral works were played by orchestra's cobbled together from freelance musicians and therefore may not have matched the composers intentions. We do not know whether Beethoven would have preferred the modern day symphony orchestra but, given the scope of his music, it is quite likely that he would have approved rather than be straitjacketed within the confines of the orchestras of his time. I think it's pretty much acknowledged today that Mozart's scores do not require a full sized modern symphony orchestra and the classical metre of the music emphasises the fact. Haydn, of course, had the benefit of working for the Esterházy family as Kapellmeister, and his orchestra was a professional and compact unit that enabled him to practically invent the symphony but it was very small consisting of something like 16 players.
However, when we arrive at the romantic period, the orchestral forces at a composer's disposal are greatly improved and by the time of Brahms's symphonies the colossal nature of their content requires a very large orchestra to illustrate their greatness.
http://youtu.be/LEyBKjo5Fvc
By the time we get to the end of the romantic period, nothing but the stupendous power of 120 musicians is able to express the gigantic vision of Richard Strauss.
http://youtu.be/fozsVQ30jqU
In short, it would be wrong to start scaling back on the great works, symphonic or otherwise, of the romantic period just for the sake of experimentation
I think the interesting question is for Schubert's symphonies - how big should the orchestra be?
Well Schubert's symphonies are not very often performed in concert, except 5, 8 and 9, although it's possible to find most of them on disc where smaller ensembles are often used, except for 8 and 9 which require a larger orchestra.Quote:
Originally Posted by lawpark
I am in general agreement with the smaller sized orchestra scenario when it comes to symphonic music pre Beethoven where music begins to move away from the 'classical' period, but this puts Beethoven's symphonies in an equivocal position regarding the number of musicians required. It is worth remembering that both Mozart and Beethoven's orchestral works were played by orchestra's cobbled together from freelance musicians and therefore may not have matched the composers intentions.
Personally, I'm no purist. I prefer the voice of a female singer in Bach to the countertenor or choirboy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJcL-dSn5zo
And certainly I prefer the masterful English Chamber orchestra or the Bach Collegium Japan to the less-than-professional musicians that Bach had available.
As for Handel... well I doubt we'll being seeing castrati any time soon so I'll stick with the countertenors and female vocalists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsbYGdCQsgk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M-QHWlF-20
I agree that there are a number of problems facing the HIP purist. In many instances I agree with Sir Thomas Beecham that the sound of the harpsichord is as of "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm."
This owes much to the recording technologies and placement of the microphones as well. This recent recording of Bach's Sonata in G major, BWV 968 by Andreas Staier on harpsichord is quite warm and wonderful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyUcDb651JE
Still my favorite performances of Bach's keyboard works are on piano: Glenn Gould...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkaw_Vwz0Y
as well as Angela Hewitt, András Schiff, Murray Perahia, etc...
In most instances I get around the question of period performance vs modern by having an exemplary version of each. With regard to Beethoven, for example, I have the grandiose Berlin Philharmonic with Herbert Karajan and the unsurpassed carlos Kleiber...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqsT0...eature=related
but I also have a HIP recording such as that of John Eliot Gardiner with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx827bYPBNw
(Unfortunately I couldn't find Gardiner's 5th so you might see a direct comparison)
By the same token, I have Mozart on grand piano... and on piano forte with the smaller orchestra. Beethoven, I must admit, I have not been able to stomach on the piano forte... his music seems to call for the grand piano. Brahms has only recently undergone some powerful recordings by John Eliot Gardiner employing the proper orchestration and layout of the orchestra as per Brahms notes etc... Schubert, I have yet to have heard in HIP. I have the traditional romantics with the large orchestras: Karajan, Furtwangler, Bohm, Kleiber... although looking on Amazon I find Charles Mackerras has made a recording that I will need to explore.
...when we arrive at the romantic period, the orchestral forces at a composer's disposal are greatly improved and by the time of Brahms's symphonies the colossal nature of their content requires a very large orchestra to illustrate their greatness.
One of the criticisms directed toward Brahms has long been that his symphonic work is far too dense or ponderous... unlike his chamber work, the brilliance of which is unquestioned. Recent studies of his notes and records of performances of his symphonies have led to a somewhat pared-down orchestra that shows an increased muscularity and clarity of the individual instruments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbFETUlSm34
By the time we get to the end of the romantic period, nothing but the stupendous power of 120 musicians is able to express the gigantic vision of Richard Strauss.
In short, it would be wrong to start scaling back on the great works, symphonic or otherwise, of the romantic period just for the sake of experimentation
I haven't heard of any such effort to strip down Strauss... or Wagner or Mahler for that matter... although Schoenberg did produce a fascinating chamber score of Mahler's Song of the Earth which is avaliable in a magnificent recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Fritz Wunderlich as vocalists.
It's an interesting performance and it does point up certain parts of the work which generally remain submerged. The problem is that Brahms's intellect was such that there is often a great deal going on in his large scale works and it requires a lot of skill on the part of the conductor and also a good recording balance to bring out the best in his original scores. It took him twenty years to produce the first symphony but it immediately established him as the heir to Beethoven.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I was watching the interview that Yuja Wang gave recently in Paris where she said that the Brahms/Paganini variations are ten times harder to play than the Rachmaninov, and Sahra Chang says that the Brahms violin concerto is one of the most difficult to play, so it seems that Brahms had a natural tendency in some of his work to require a lot of attention from the musicians and the conductor if the work was going to succeed on all levels.
I was listening today to recording on the radio of Weber's Euryanthe Overture by a small orchestra called the Tapiola Sinfonietta and although it was probably about the same sized orchestra that Weber would have had when he composed the opera, it sounds distinctly underpowered by modern standards when it sounds so much better like this.
http://youtu.be/hjngjUhk9so
Here's Rachmaninov's take on Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead.
Böcklin painted several versions of this subject and Rachmaninov was inspired to write a musical version after seeing one of them. I saw a version of it in Berlin many years ago and another in Basle more recently. I was shown the house where the artist lived in Zurich by a friend who had lived close by.
http://youtu.be/N10YZ2Sk3Kg
One of the most spine-chilling choruses in the whole of music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mADk_...rec_grec_index
By the way, Brian... your sweetie, Yuja played here two weeks ago. Had I known ahead of time I might have gone.
Yes that's the trouble, she doesn't hang around. I was recently looking at her schedules for this year and next and it's difficult to imagine how she's in Barcelona one day and in Tokyo a few days later and then in various cities right around the globe. Anyhow, she's appearing in London next May so I shall try to get a ticket.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Thanks to St. Luke for a good summary of Romantic versus historically informed performance practices and for providing excellent musical examples in illustrating his points. For another view on some of these issues: Richard Taruskin, in an article in the New York Times years ago, argued that in many respects the HIP movement was an attempt to impose a modern (Stravinskian) sound ideal on older music; not that the practitioners were historically inaccurate per se—more like they arbitrarily decided any ambiguous or murky issues in favor of the modern ideal. Moreover, he thought that this arbitrary imposition of a foreign sound ideal was good because it was a vital and original approach that threw tradition to the wind. Provocative and worth reading—if it can be located.