Some time ago I contributed to a review of a complete set of the Haydn symphonies over which there was some disagreement on the Amazon site. One of the reviewers argued along the lines that the set must be superb as the conductor in charge sported a list of academic qualifications as long as your arm and leg measured together. There seemed to be the suggestion - not expressly stated - that no mere Amazon reviewer should have the temerity to question the results achieved by a musician so endowed with sets of letters behind his name who furthermore had done oodles of research into the history and various editions of Haydn's work. I pointed out that Sir Thomas Beecham who sported no such qualifications - although, doubtless, he could have obtained all of them with ease if he so-wished- performed a number of the Haydn symphonies with a large orchestra using faulty editions yet still managed to obtain results which put into the shade the present offerings which sometimes came across as plain dull.
As to editors, their main task nowadays should be to produce a score that reflects, as close as it is possible, the intentions of the composers wherein (as far as editors are concerned) lies its spirit ; sometimes that involves fiddling with minutiae. In the days before all sorts of recorded versions of works were available, editors produced editions wherein were enshrined the ideas that distinguished performers had about the way the music should go. Hans von Bulow made an edition of the Beethoven sonatas that for years served generations of pianists as their basis for working at these masterpieces. Today, the edition is anathema....except to those of us who are interested, in the absence of recordings, in the way that Bulow might have played the works. It's said that Bulow did record on a very early recording machine but on hearing the playback fell into a fit out of which he never fully recovered !
When this thread first appeared I took down my score of the Bruckner 6th. (Philharmonia 199) and followed several recordings using it. I couldn't understand that none of the conductors I heard followed to the letter the very clear instruction given that the quaver beat of the trio should equal the crotchet beat of the scherzo; I went to the IMSLP site to view the scan of Bruckner's autograph and discovered that this instruction was not there so must have been an editorial edition ....very naughty as most other editorial marks are plainly indicated as such in the score.
Alexis Weissenberg ? Yes and no. I have some very impressive recordings that he made including of the Four Chopin Concert pieces for piano and orchestra. However his recording of the B minor sonata and scherzos that I once purchased soon found its way to the charity shop where any self-respecting music-lover should have left it.
The "Wood for trees" syndrome is evident, in my view, in a widely-admired set of the Mozart Piano Concertos recorded by Mitsuko Uchida. Ms. Uchida not only bothers with the trees but constantly takes detours to examine the wildflowers also. I find this fussiness extremely irritating, obscuring the wider view of the work in hand and emasculating Mozart by turning him into a be-wigged and powdered Dresden china figurine. Regrettably none of these performances have been issued on dvd where we could have benefited from Ms. Uchida's gesture-illustrated guide to the mood of the moment.
Obviously I can judge only from my own perspective as a rank amateur and a member of the despised race of critics, but I maintain that there are is a category of great musicians who are technically impeccable but not actually very musical - or are persistently handicapped by what has rightly been called an inability to see the wood for the trees. This is a problem which can apply to musicologist editors, too; they are too preoccupied by putting their own mark on a work or fiddling with minutiae to maintain its spirit.
I am informed by a "Learned Friend" that this is sometimes known as the "Alexis Weissenberg syndrome" and I suspect that some of us would include certain conductors in that bracket, regardless of their eminence.
Perhaps a more common problem these days is that of encountering routine recordings and performances, in which the evident boredom or lack of inspiration on the part of performers are too much in evidence. They are not poor, just redundant, superfluous, otiose - choose your adjective. As much as I love Bruckner (sorry, Mikeh - but any reviews of recordings of his symphonies continue to attract as many hits from readers as almost anything else...) I increasingly wonder whether the inexorable and exponential growth of issues of every conceivable version and edition is desirable or sustainable.
And in the end, we are the paying public and are allowed to say if we think stuff is boring.
Thanks for that, Lee. There are one or two points I'd like to express an opinion on which might be of interest to yourself and some others. While it's largely true that -as has been said - Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, I believe there are a number of individuals naturally gifted (however that might come about and under what circumstances is a mystery to me) where the ratio is of a far more equal proportion. How else can you explain the fact that Saint-Saens could play all the Beethoven sonatas long before he reached puberty and that Mozart wrote a pretty-good symphony at an age when most children would be scrawling not-very-pretty pictures with crayons in an exercise book? I have it -on hearsay evidence admittedly- that Heifetz would be outside playing with a bat and ball when most of his less-gifted contemporaries were struggling to master the scales and exercises that he could just sail through. Shura Cherkassky is on record as having as his mantra "If you can't do it in four hours a day, you can't do it" and obsessively timed his practice-periods down to the second. I could treble (in theory ! ) the specified number of hours of practice per day but never be able to equal anything that Cherkassky did (although I didn't like the way he played the Gershwin Concerto ! ).
I am glad that you qualified your last sentence with the word "Sometimes." I have a Black Museum of recordings , largely of pianists, which I keep to give me encouragement about my own playing in the knowledge that the "Greats" can occasionally make a real Pig's ear of things. Some of the exhibits I can mention are,
A much-recorded artist in both the solo and concerto repertoire, Orazio Frugoni (perhaps not such a great pianist after all) who affords me a sizeable collection of examples of technical inadequacy, wrong notes, misreadings and lack of stylishness; to be fair, he did a few good things on record.
John Ogdon coming close-to grief in the Scherzo (the least problematical movement of the four, both technically and musically ) of Chopin's B minor Sonata. Ogdon, maybe taking a break from his exploration of composers like Cyril Scott, Sorabji, Peter Mennin etc., thought the scherzo would be allright on the night; it wasn't.
Alexander Brailowsky , struggling with every technical demand (especially rapid octaves) in the Saint-Saens 4th. Concerto.
I might be accused of flippancy in some of my remarks but I can't take seriously recordings that really should never have been passed for issue to the public. I recall that Stravinsky was asked to compare three recordings of "The Rite of Spring" and came to the conclusion that none of them were worthy of preservation. I seem to remember that one of them was by Karajan...Tempo di Hoochie Coochie !
Thank you for for this Jeffrey - thought-provoking stuff indeed.
It reminds me of the story of the great pianist Michelangeli who decided once as an encore to perform a set of scales. No doubt the audience were left slightly disappointed by his choice of repertoire, but beyond a shadow of doubt they were probably the finest scale exercises they had ever heard in their lives. This of course then begs the question of whether a listener would much rather hear a great artist do anything, rather than a worthy-but-dull, albeit fully prepared, lesser mortal 'do their best' with more substantial fare. As you say yourself: ". .. performers of the stature of Sgouros, Ogdon, Harrison and Rubinstein could probably absorb more from a score at a glance than most mere mortals can after weeks and months of study ", but the reason for this surely, is that they have dedicated their lives to mastering their craft in a way that those " mere mortals.... after weeks and months of study " clearly have not? Recollections may indeed vary, but sometimes the busking of the greats is more interesting than the earnest endeavours of the not-so-great.
One would like to think that what Nick Barnard writes in relation to performers' responsibilities towards the music they play and record can be taken as a rule but I tend to believe there may be many exceptions to it. I know of many criticisms that have been made about actors "Walking through" their parts (Indeed it was said that George Sanders often had his lines posted up at strategic points around the film set so that he could read them during the filming of scenes because he hadn't bothered to study his part) and I have no reason to believe that every musician, to a man, is invariably more conscientious than such actors whose films reach a much larger audience than many cd performances do.
There are some musicians who are incredibly quick "Learners." It has been reported that Dmitri Sgouros sight-read through the Brahms F minor Piano Sonata twice and declared that he had now memorised it and that he was ready to perform it in public.
Another prodigious sight-reader was John Ogdon and it's said that when he arrived at a recording session it was often suspected that he was sight-reading the score.
I had it from a very reliable source (a BBC conductor and producer) that an unpleasant incident occurred between Artur Rubinstein and Fritz Reiner at the recording-sessions of a concerto when Rubinstein held up the session in order to practice sections in his part which he hadn't sufficiently prepared beforehand. Reiner-quite rightly really-said to Rubinstein words to the effect that "If you think the rest of us are going to sit around waiting while you learn your part, you're mistaken." Frosty atmosphere ensued.
Back in the 1960s the first time I heard Gershwin's Second Rhapsody was in a radio broadcast in which the soloist was Eric Harrison. When I was a student in London I prepared the Rhapsody for performances at College with the student orchestra and had occasion to speak to Harrison about it. Although he hadn't played it for several years he sat down and sight-read it right through for me. He also told me that he'd turned up to the rehearsal for the broadcast believing that he'd been booked to play the Rhapsody in Blue and was surprised to find a copy of the Second Rhapsody -which he didnt know- on the music stand but managed to learn it in time for the concert which took place two days later.
There is no question that performers of the stature of Sgouros, Ogdon, Harrison and Rubinstein could probably absorb more from a score at a glance than most mere mortals can after weeks and months of study. However the notion that all their performances were the result of weeks, months, years of study probably doesn't hold up in fact.
The fairly recent phenomenon of the "Box set performer" where a single artist is contracted to perform every single piece - great, good, so-so and hastily-written potboiler - that a composer wrote seems to preclude detailed study of every single piece that he or she wrote.
Taking note of the fact that this thread concerns one of Bruckner's symphonies the purchaser of the cds of major works in the repertoire has every right to expect that the artists involved in recording them haven't done so in any spirit of flippancy. Nevertheless there are gazillions of recordings out there of all sorts of repertoire and I cannot believe it's all been done in the spirit of respect and reverence that Nick Barnard seems to be suggesting. I can't accept that a review on the MWI pages is always a guarantee of quality either. I know of a reviewed recording of some seldom-played piano music where the artist concerned appears to have taken little notice of anything in the scores other than the position of the notes on the staves . I would say that this particular performer walked-through his task by relying on his highly-developed digital facility to achieve it.
It has been said that recollections may vary and so too may personal experiences. One person's personal experience does not necessarily mean that it invariably reflect the wider picture.
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