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bruckner 6
Posted by dieter barkhoff on May 16, 2023, 1:55 am
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Chris Howell on May 16, 2023, 6:37 am, in reply to "bruckner 6"
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Ralph Moore on May 16, 2023, 10:15 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
In what has always been a more problematic symphony as far as recommendable recordings are concerned, I have increasingly gravitated towards what might be considered more "wild card" accounts, such as Mena (https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Aug/Bruckner-sy6-CHAN20221.htm) Schaller, Stein and Haitink, rather than the traditional favourites. It's a tricky one to pull off, but I note that I often don't mind about tempi so much - Mena is comparatively slow, Sawallisch fast, yet I love both; it's more about cohesion and sustaining tension.
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by dieter barkhoff on May 16, 2023, 11:03 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I liked the Sawallish as well until I heard the dudes I mentioned above: it's too fast and misses the many magical moments.
Previous Message
In what has always been a more problematic symphony as far as recommendable recordings are concerned, I have increasingly gravitated towards what might be considered more "wild card" accounts, such as Mena (https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Aug/Bruckner-sy6-CHAN20221.htm) Schaller, Stein and Haitink, rather than the traditional favourites. It's a tricky one to pull off, but I note that I often don't mind about tempi so much - Mena is comparatively slow, Sawallisch fast, yet I love both; it's more about cohesion and sustaining tension.
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 16, 2023, 10:49 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6" Edited by board administrator May 16, 2023, 11:01 am
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by dieter barkhoff on May 16, 2023, 11:09 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on May 16, 2023, 12:11 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Previous Message
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by John Proffitt on May 16, 2023, 4:16 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
The two late surviving Keilberth recordings on Telefunken, B6 and B9, are genuine stereo.
Kurt Masur's 1 - 9 cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orch, originally recorded by a Eurodisc and VEB Deutsche Schallplatten co-production in the 1970s, is quite fine IMO - very middle of the road interpretations excellently performed by the Orchestra. It was also the first such cycle recorded and released in 4.0 channel quadraphonic sound, on SQ-encoded discs. The current incarnation in a Sony boxed set is stereo only, but does show just how good Masur's compendium is - certainly not to be dismissed.
Previous Message
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Previous Message
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Des Hutchinson on May 17, 2023, 2:39 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Strangely, Masur's Beethoven and Brahms symphony cycles were reissued in their original quadraphonic format on Pentatone SACD, but not his Bruckner cycle. Was this perhaps a judgement on the significance and likely commercial success of the latter?
Previous Message
The two late surviving Keilberth recordings on Telefunken, B6 and B9, are genuine stereo.
Kurt Masur's 1 - 9 cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orch, originally recorded by a Eurodisc and VEB Deutsche Schallplatten co-production in the 1970s, is quite fine IMO - very middle of the road interpretations excellently performed by the Orchestra. It was also the first such cycle recorded and released in 4.0 channel quadraphonic sound, on SQ-encoded discs. The current incarnation in a Sony boxed set is stereo only, but does show just how good Masur's compendium is - certainly not to be dismissed.
Previous Message
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Previous Message
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by dieter barkhoff on May 18, 2023, 1:34 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I have the Masur cycle. Played it once and not once since. Am revisiting. The first movement of the 6th is just too fast and glib for my taste.
Previous Message
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Previous Message
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on May 18, 2023, 10:11 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
It could be a matter of taste. The movement has an Alla Breve tempo marking which suggests something moving more swiftly than if the bar-lines are thought of as governing the tempo ( I have addressed the issue of Alla Breve in another thread). Bruckner strikes me (again a matter of taste) as a rather "Sectional" composer. I would have thought one of the problems of a Bruckner interpreter is how to manage the transition from one section to another convincingly. I listened to the Masur 6th. after posting on this topic and I felt that his way of handling the transitions was perfunctory. It might have been his intention to try to give cohesion to the movement by proceeding in a literal manner, but for me it doesn't work. It sounds like it doesn't work for you either.
Previous Message
I have the Masur cycle. Played it once and not once since. Am revisiting. The first movement of the 6th is just too fast and glib for my taste.
Previous Message
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Previous Message
Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Previous Message
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Previous Message
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 19, 2023, 9:37 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Readers may be intrigued to learn that the editor of the new Bruckner scores that Rattle is currently recording, Benjamin Gunnar Cohrs has written to me about this recording and I thought you may be interested our exchanges. It has to be noted that Ben is far from the dry academic you may imagine him to be, very down-to-earth and self-deprecating:
I have now read also your piece on the Sixth, and I am sorry to say if you would only base your judgements on the scores and not on your listening experience, comparing with other recordings all the time. :-( There is a long tradition that most of the Bruckner priests do almost all the same way of slow sostenuto, pseudo-religious pathos, and as soon as somebody tries to realise the scores as Bruckner had written them guys like you just can't cope with it, maybe because they cannot read scores at all, or maybe just because a conductor does something unexpected. I agree to your observation on the booklet notes (only for the Seventh finally the label asked me to provide the notes for the first time), but I can assure you the string bowing of the beginning is exactly what Bruckner wrote, he wanted it to be played at the string, and Simon almost paintakingly observes Bruckner's own tempo indications and relationships. And please note the metronome markings in the autograph score, giving minims = 72 for the first theme instead of the ourday's usual 58 or even slower... You my also note that the coda of the first movement now starts with pizzicato of the string basses - the arco was an error by earlier editions...I shall send you some proper information later. Warm regards Ben
Hi Ben
Always good to hear from you.
Yes, I know - if only my house was stuffed full of scores, then my poor long-suffering wife would have kicked me out many years ago !
Remember, my job is to guide the listener to the versions I feel are the best and most convincing performances of the piece in question, taking into account the listener's preferences - so with Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, that would be Sawallisch/Bavarian State Orchestra, if you like things fast and fiery, or the polar opposite, Celibidache/Munich PO if you want to be on bended knees in rapt contemplation in front of an altar.
The problem we have with you guys (!) is that sometimes it appears as if you cannot see the woods from the trees ! A topical example of this would be the recent fad by the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna who, overridding some seventy years of recorded evidence to the contrary, announced that the opening measures of the Huntsman's Funeral in the First Symphony should be played by entire double bass section, not just a soloist. This neither sounded convincing, nor logical in light that nobody (including many who had worked with Mahler) had raised the issue before. I could go on .....
With regards to the Bruckner Sixth, I think as an interpreter you have to ensure that the basic tempo in the opening bars has to be supported as the theme is developed further on within the piece. As I indicated in my review, Rattle just about gets away with the tempo taken in the opening bars, but when the same melody reappears for full orchestra further on, it sounds garbled and too fast. Therefore in order to play that part of the music correctly, the tempo at that point needs to be slowed down, which then means the opening bars likewise have to be taken slower to match it. I know this from bitter experience with my fingers not being fast enough on the piano keyboard.
Of course you are absolutely correct, after listening to one way a piece of music has been done for many decades can make it difficult to accept something different - this would explain why so many Bruckner listeners prefer the completion of Bruckner's Ninth by Peter Jan Marthé over your own Ben, even if that contains 80% speculation and 20% Bruckner, whereas your own is 80% Bruckner and 20% blood and sweat !
With Simon, a musician and man I admire tremendously, I have always thought that he was intuitively more in tune with the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than Robert Schumann. This isn't to say he should be ignored and he can always be relied upon these days to a terrific Bruckner 9th, whether in the the three movement format or otherwise.
That said, very pleased to learn that you are getting to write the notes now - and hope you have included the cymbal crash in the Adagio of the Seventh, as it never sounds as good without it !
Warmest regards,
lee
Dear Lee, I've been lucky enough to hear Celi in Munich at precisely that concert which was later released by EMI on CD, and it WAS to bend knees (after the slow movement the 3000 audience was so quiet one could hear a needle drop down). Nevertheless it was too slow and not entirely coherent. (The only Sixth Celi ever did!!) I don't like in general Bruckner to be fast and fiery, but please read the tempo markings in the first mvt. of the sixth correctly. The beginning tempo is only limited to the first theme group with the peculiar rhythm, its recap and the last 14 mm of the Coda. The basic tempo is actually that of the second group, and the "Langsamer" needs to enter with the straight crotchets equalling the triplet crotchets (ca. minims = 50-52). And no ritardando, otherwise the effect is spoiled. In the mm. providing the link to the third group, it maintains this tempo (minim = minim, or crotchets ca. 100-104). If the initial tempo is too slow, the entire architecture of the movement collapses... as in most peformances I have heard. Note also Bruckner's own metronome marking in the Finale of the Eighth, a "solemn, not fast" as minims = 69.
And listen perhaps also to Roger Norringtons Bruckner Six from Stuttgart. Also note how in the Finale the initial rhythm of the first movement reappeaars shortly before the coda, and then the principal theme itself crowning the Finale coda; hence the Finale must have the same basic speed as the beginning of the entire Symphony...
Most of the mess which seem to be caused by "wrong tempo" is caused in fact by inppropriate style of playing. Too much sostenuto, too much vibrato, no speech-like phrasing, no heavy and light measures which were so incredibly important to Bruckner that he even checked heavy (= odd) and light (= even) measures by inserting his famous metrical numbers, which significance for performance are widely overlooked.
The real problem with "us guys" is that we take the directions of the composers perhaps more serious than many conductors (and in my special case I can claim to be one of the rare "scholars" who has also conducted more than one Bruckner Symphony); I' ve been trained as a conductor AND scholar, and precisely for this reason my publisher has chosen me to run his new Bruckner Urtext Complete Edition.
You don't see the woods from the trees if you don't acknowledge the existance not only of various versions of Mahler's First -- Titan in the Hamburg and Budapest scores, the revised autograph scores, and the printed editions which were revised over and over by Mahler until 1911. Impossible to say what was his "last word" on this; we only now his choice for his own last performance he conducted... It is not "evidence from recordings" that counts; it is evidence from the sources of the composer himself!
Also the Cymbal Crash in itself is not the point of editing the Seventh, its point is to show the conductor the circumstances and evidence we have, include options in the score, and let HIM decide what he wants to do - and not the editor for him (like Nowak or Haas or others).
Your job may be to guide the listener, but the better you are informed the better you can serve that noble purpose...
Best, Ben PS: Wait until you hear my own new completion of the Finale of the Ninth - which I shall publish only if I get a chance to first perform it... even more blood and sweat. and 90% Bruckner now...
pps: Sorry for the typos; sitting in the train from Vienna back to Bremen typing with an old keyboard.
Hi Ben
I hope you had a pleasant journey and please don't worry about the typos as I didn't see (m)any. It's just a pity that you are not travelling from Prague to Linz today on the Bruckner Intercity train as that would have made my day !
That said, I hear everything you say about the Bruckner VI, but the plain truth of the matter is that the orchestral tutti which starts at the end of bar 24 in movement 1) cannot be cleanly articulated at the tempo you are suggesting and that tells me that the composer has made a miscalculation and so it needs to be slower. If such expert practitioners as Rattle/LSO cannot pull it off at that tempo, what hope the rest ?!
So yes, I know the various editions of the First Symphony - I prefer to refer to the Budapest and Hamburg editions as the five movement tone poem, 'Titan', respecting that the composer from 1896 referred to the four movement work as 'Symphony No 1' from 1896 onwards, shorn of the nickname and programme. You may/may not (care) be aware that i have published an essay on this (see pp13-15 here: Mahler-sy1-survey-LD.pdf (musicweb-international.com) ) where it is noted that it was originally the solo cello used for the Huntsman's Funeral and there were possibly thoughts at one point by Mahler of placing the discarded 'Blumine' movement third within the overall work, which I think works rather well and, in turn, would then be a kind of homage to Schumann's Rhenish Symphony. which we know influenced Mahler so much.
As for the performing history on record, I diverge slightly from you by pointing out that it is often the closest we can get to knowing what the composer wanted. If we take Mahler as being an example, Walter, Mengelberg and Klemperer all knew and worked with the composer, yet achieved different results, but surely they would have been aware of the solo double bass/full section issue? Even if there is no recorded evidence of the latter two, there is of someone like Paul van Kempen, who began life as a violinist in Mengelberg's Concertgebouw, so would almost certainly have performed Mahler's First Symphony under him. So this is why I think recording history is important and makes me puzzled when certain conductors decide to perform the 'Titan' with minimal/no vibrato and claiming 'authenticity' when we have Nikisch conducting a Beethoven symphony in 1913 with loads of it! However, I do accept that recording history has its limitations,especially since there appeared to have been a significant sea-change with interpretations as a result of Mendelssohn and thereafter Wagner's influence on podium craft, the likes of which would be impossible to imagine.
I am looking forward to hearing your own version of the completed Bruckner IX.
lee
Hi Lee
Maybe you simply misunderstand the notation of the rhythmic pattern at the beginning of the movement? Basically the semiquaver has to be executed inegale, and in falls more or less together with another triplet quaver; this notation has been choosen by Bruckner only to emphase the heavy and short first note of the phrase. It is not intended to be played precisely as it stands, which is in whatever slow tempo impossible. This case parallels, for example, the notation of Schubert or Schumann, where, say, dotted quaver plus semiquaver occurs along triplet quavers, the dotted rhythm has to be executed accordingly. There is no miscalculation of the composer; it is a miscalculation of the interpreter. One may I ask if Bruckner wanted that note to sound a triplet quaver too, why did he not write triplets througout? The answer is: that upbeat note would become over-emphasized by too much broadening. (Compare the two notations and sing...) I have examined this issue thoroughly for a paper I read on a Bruckner conference in 2018.
Another sad truth is: There is no truth in performance of classical music - as an editor of music all I can do is present my editions as undogmatic as I can, offer choices and variants where possible and let the conductor decide.
"Authenticity" in performance is also a wrong concept to me - we first would have to ask "in which sense authentic"...?
Best, Ben
Ben is also a very passionate advocate of his work and craft !
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It could be a matter of taste. The movement has an Alla Breve tempo marking which suggests something moving more swiftly than if the bar-lines are thought of as governing the tempo ( I have addressed the issue of Alla Breve in another thread). Bruckner strikes me (again a matter of taste) as a rather "Sectional" composer. I would have thought one of the problems of a Bruckner interpreter is how to manage the transition from one section to another convincingly. I listened to the Masur 6th. after posting on this topic and I felt that his way of handling the transitions was perfunctory. It might have been his intention to try to give cohesion to the movement by proceeding in a literal manner, but for me it doesn't work. It sounds like it doesn't work for you either.
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I have the Masur cycle. Played it once and not once since. Am revisiting. The first movement of the 6th is just too fast and glib for my taste.
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The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
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Hi Lee I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire. Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
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Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
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Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it. Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
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Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Chris Howell on May 20, 2023, 6:59 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
While I would refer readers to this article for a fuller discussion, there are a few points I would reiterate here: 1. The metronome marks in the MS score (downloadable from IMSLP) are clearly in a different hand from the rest. Scholars seem to agree that they were added posthumously by Cyrill Hinais, who claimed Bruckner's authority for them. 2. At the time Hinais added these markings, this movement had not yet been performed, so Hinais himself (or Bruckner himself), faced with the practical facts of life, may have had to recognize that the opening tempo was optimistically fast, though it may stand as a warning not to take it too slow. 3. Hinais' marking for the slower second theme, which is not contradicted by any accelerando or "a tempo" marking until the first theme reappears in the middle of the movement, and then at the end, produces the effect that the triplet crotchets (fourth notes) underlying this new tempo go at about the same speed as the previous "normal" crotchets. My contention is that, whatever speed you start at, you should respect this relationship when the change of tempo arrives. Keilberth and Horenstein signally do this. No doubt they are not alone, my article was not intended as a complete guide to recordings of the symphony. One famous performance that signally does not is Klemperer's. I haven't investigated the Rattle.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 20, 2023, 9:13 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Many thanks Chris for your comments, as well as reference to your most excellent article. I have taken the liberty of quoting you directly "as a wise old friend" to Ben and so let's see what he comes back with !
That said, totally endorse Nick's wise words of wisdom. The only thing I can claim that I am "better" at with regards to all things musical when compared to Dr Cohrs and Simon Rattle, is that I have almost certainly (but not completely sure) listened to more recordings of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony than they have which, to be blunt, anyone can do really. What is coming across loud and clear from all of my correspondence with Ben (and there's previous) is that he is as passionate about Anton Bruckner's music as the next person, with a particular fascination with the all the head-scratching that his legacy, with its copious revisions and contradictions, gives interpreters. In some respects it says much for MWI that we allow editors, conductors, composers and recording executives a platform upon which they can state their points of view.
While I would refer readers to this article for a fuller discussion, there are a few points I would reiterate here: 1. The metronome marks in the MS score (downloadable from IMSLP) are clearly in a different hand from the rest. Scholars seem to agree that they were added posthumously by Cyrill Hinais, who claimed Bruckner's authority for them. 2. At the time Hinais added these markings, this movement had not yet been performed, so Hinais himself (or Bruckner himself), faced with the practical facts of life, may have had to recognize that the opening tempo was optimistically fast, though it may stand as a warning not to take it too slow. 3. Hinais' marking for the slower second theme, which is not contradicted by any accelerando or "a tempo" marking until the first theme reappears in the middle of the movement, and then at the end, produces the effect that the triplet crotchets (fourth notes) underlying this new tempo go at about the same speed as the previous "normal" crotchets. My contention is that, whatever speed you start at, you should respect this relationship when the change of tempo arrives. Keilberth and Horenstein signally do this. No doubt they are not alone, my article was not intended as a complete guide to recordings of the symphony. One famous performance that signally does not is Klemperer's. I haven't investigated the Rattle.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Mikeh on May 16, 2023, 2:17 pm, in reply to "bruckner 6"
I can’t comment on Bruckner but my general opinion of Rattle is similar to Dieter’s. I first met Simon Rattle – as he then was – way back in 1974/5 when he won a conductor’s competition of which part of the prize was an internship with the BSO. Berglund was the principal conductor and he and Rattle did not get along, he also was unloved by the orchestra who thought him arrogant. It was an unhappy 2 years for both parties although he did build a mentor relationship with Rudi Schwarz. Even in those days he nit-picked the detail and missed the long view. Plus ca change…..
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Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Nick Barnard on May 19, 2023, 10:47 pm, in reply to "bruckner 6"
Thankyou for sharing that correspondance Lee. What this reminds me is that all serious musicians (which tends to include everyone who gets as far as producing a disc worthy of a MWI review) has spent hours if not weeks if not YEARS considering the music they wish to enshrine on disc. So of course it is our right as listeners/reviewers not to like the result but it is quite WRONG to think that this result is not the end of a great deal of thought, consideration and musical soul-searching. When reviews are dismissive of a performance I often worry that there is a subtext that infers a kind of flippant indifference on behalf of the interpreter. I know from personal experience this is never the case.
Previous Message
Hi Lee Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate. Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th. As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on May 20, 2023, 10:10 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Nick Barnard on May 21, 2023, 9:32 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Of course Jeffrey is quite right that there are circumstances and situations where the music business relies on the phenomenal ability of performers to give decent performances of unfamilair repertoire pretty much at sight - the whole read/record aspect of the industry relies on just such a thing. However, even the great sight-readers would agree that their interpretations will deepen over time and familiarity. Just because you've memorised a work in 2 days doesn't mean you have worked out every nuance and musical implication - that only comes with time.
However, my point in relation to this specific debate is that just because "I" (insert name of critic/commentator as you wish) dislike a particular artist or one of their performances because it does not conform to my understanding of the work in question it is quite wrong to assume that this "poor" version is based on superficial ill-considered choices. You would have to be a spectacularly foolish - especially with a composer as revered and complex as Bruckner - to "bash out" a performance on the fly. The accusation often levelled at Rattle is that he over-thinks/micro-manages performances - not a characterisitic of a hastily-conceived interpretation.
Likewise with musicologists who produce new editions of major works; there is so much accessibility to manuscripts/associated documentation now that to produce something wholly speculative would be foolish in the extreme. My belief is that the vast majority of such musicologists believe passionately in their chosen subject /specialist field and have devoted hours if not years of work to produce versions that they believe enhances the reputation of the composer/work they are studying.
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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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 21, 2023, 9:48 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
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.
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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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on May 21, 2023, 12:52 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 21, 2023, 2:13 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I appreciate your clarification, Jeffrey.
I too keep a pandora's box of music reviews (mainly written by myself) as encouragement that I am not quite as bad as I think I am.
That said, I do accept your points, albeit to a degree. What is far more damaging, in my view, is the recent trend of issuing live performances, warts and all, of famous musicians who may be having a bad or indifferent night in the concert hall, just on the strength of the name and purely for commercial gain. These releases do nobody any favours.
On the other hand, if we take the recorded legacy of Neeme Jarvi, for example, we have a conductor with a huge recorded repertoire that would have been impossible to have devoted years of study towards yet, nearly always, all his recordings are unfailingly well-played and in good sound of repertoire we the listeners would not have had the chance to explore otherwise.
I think it was Hélène Grimaud who said it is not how long you practice, but you how you practice that counts. It's a lesson I personally could do well to heed.
As for your Stravinsky example, we are straying off the track slightly. Yet it is a topic worth investigating where, not unlike the conductor, the late Gunther Schuller, who wrote a treatise criticising conductors for not following the exact instructions of the score properly, then went on to record the same works committing the same cardinal sins, so did Stravinsky when he recorded the Rite. That said, the phrase "tempo di hoochie coochie" is often picked up by anti-Karajan folk for a bit of conductor-bashing themselves, who then ignore the wider context, where Stravinsky questioned whether the musical tradition of the Berlin Philharmonic was intuitively aligned to the kind of music making he felt his ballet was striving to achieve. In this respect, Stravinsky is(was) absolutely correct - Karajan had to overcome some considerable anti-Stravinsky feeling amongst the Berliners by programming the Firebird Suite several times in the late 1950's, a work you would have thought they would have done well but one where unfortunately no recording, live or in the studio exists, in preparation for his planned recording of the Rite. That the eventual results provoked such ire from Stravinsky is as much to do that it sounds more like the crushing mechanical power of Alexander Mosolov's Iron Foundry, or Prokofiev in more militant mode, as opposed to the pagan abandon of his ballet, than with its execution or lack of preparation, both of which were admirable, even if the results so displeased the composer.
Best,
lee
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by dieter barkhoff on May 22, 2023, 11:12 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I love the dialogue which has ensued from my opening of the thread. Every contribution has been enlightening for me. I'm also glad Ralph Moore likes the Blomsdedt cycle - his Denon 4 and 7, after the Kertesz 4, the Reichardt 2 and 6 on Turnabout, were the recordings that lit my investigation of one of my three favorite composers: Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner closely followed by Brahms. I had been dead-ended on my Bruckner voyage after I bought the dreadful Knapertsbusch 8 on Westminster and it was only rekindled when I walked into the best Classical record shop in Melbourne in the 70's - I had managed the Classical section for nearly 2 years in the early 70s after the legendary Peter Mladenov - the Vulgar Bulgar, a true music lover moved to Discurio, another of my former workplaces. Anyway, I walked in and this fabulous music was 'trumpeting' through the joint. I asked Francis, What the F is this? he held up the cover: Bruckner 8, Dresen Staskapelle, Eugen Jochum. I became addicted from that point on. I have over 70 versions of this great work. In the meantime, like many who have responded, though Otto K, along with Kurt S and Bill F one of the holy trinity for me, Klemperers 6 never made sense to me.
Previous Message
I appreciate your clarification, Jeffrey.
I too keep a pandora's box of music reviews (mainly written by myself) as encouragement that I am not quite as bad as I think I am.
That said, I do accept your points, albeit to a degree. What is far more damaging, in my view, is the recent trend of issuing live performances, warts and all, of famous musicians who may be having a bad or indifferent night in the concert hall, just on the strength of the name and purely for commercial gain. These releases do nobody any favours.
On the other hand, if we take the recorded legacy of Neeme Jarvi, for example, we have a conductor with a huge recorded repertoire that would have been impossible to have devoted years of study towards yet, nearly always, all his recordings are unfailingly well-played and in good sound of repertoire we the listeners would not have had the chance to explore otherwise.
I think it was Hélène Grimaud who said it is not how long you practice, but you how you practice that counts. It's a lesson I personally could do well to heed.
As for your Stravinsky example, we are straying off the track slightly. Yet it is a topic worth investigating where, not unlike the conductor, the late Gunther Schuller, who wrote a treatise criticising conductors for not following the exact instructions of the score properly, then went on to record the same works committing the same cardinal sins, so did Stravinsky when he recorded the Rite . That said, the phrase " tempo di hoochie coochie " is often picked up by anti-Karajan folk for a bit of conductor-bashing themselves, who then ignore the wider context, where Stravinsky questioned whether the musical tradition of the Berlin Philharmonic was intuitively aligned to the kind of music making he felt his ballet was striving to achieve. In this respect, Stravinsky is(was) absolutely correct - Karajan had to overcome some considerable anti-Stravinsky feeling amongst the Berliners by programming the Firebird Suit e several times in the late 1950's, a work you would have thought they would have done well but one where unfortunately no recording, live or in the studio exists, in preparation for his planned recording of the Rite . That the eventual results provoked such ire from Stravinsky is as much to do that it sounds more like the crushing mechanical power of Alexander Mosolov's Iron Foundry , or Prokofiev in more militant mode, as opposed to the pagan abandon of his ballet, than with its execution or lack of preparation, both of which were admirable, even if the results so displeased the composer.
Best,
lee
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Ralph Moore on May 21, 2023, 3:50 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6" Edited by board administrator May 21, 2023, 5:11 pm
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrrey Lague on May 21, 2023, 6:04 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
In most regards I agree, in some I disagree.
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.
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Des Hutchinson on May 22, 2023, 6:08 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can. That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
Previous Message
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Ralph Moore on May 22, 2023, 9:56 am, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I, too, have over the years encountered this phenomenon whereby gifted, professional musicians have almost no knowledge of repertoire and no appreciation of what are for me seminal composers in the classical music tradition. This particularly applies to musicians trained in our two greatest universities; choral and organ scholars of extraordinary technical competence and the most pitifully limited exposure to great music. As often as not, they are willing to learn and then express surprise and even outrage that they have not previously been acquainted with the canon of European classical music; hence Mahler, Bruckner and - especially - opera have been a closed book. I find it ironic that I might have been instrumental in introducing them to such music when I haven't an iota of their talent and acumen - just experience and enthusiasm. Of course this does not apply universally - but it has occurred often enough for me to note it.
Previous Message
Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can . That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
Previous Message
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Jeffrey Lague on May 22, 2023, 12:40 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
I agree pretty much entirely with what you say, Des. I've known plenty of able musicians who have surprised me in their almost complete lack of interest of the repertoire (even of their own instruments) other than the standard fare that the profession expects them to know. I suppose I was motivated to post on this topic on another contribution which seemed to be suggesting that musicians went into the recording-studio almost in a spirit of reverence towards the music having spent many hours of contemplation on the task in hand before doing so. While I absolutely accept that this might well be the case in many, many instances I can't accept that there aren't also a considerable number whose agents have got them the job and who are doing it in order to advance their careers and/or because there is a large fee attached to it. I mentioned the actor George Sanders in another post. This debonair character was good enough at his profession to get an academy award but in his amusing "Memoirs of a professional cad" he made no secret of the fact that he had no great committment to the work that afforded him his success. He recounts how he would go into a producer's office to discuss work on a forthcoming film and the producer would ask him "What do you think of the script?" Sanders would have to resort to all his histrionic skills to reply "What did I think of the SCRIPT?!!" in a tone of overwhelming enthusiasm in order to disguise the fact that he'd never even looked at it. Sanders also admitted that he had absolutely no recollection of many of the films he'd been in...."The Scarlet Coat.....what was that about? Who wore the coat? Was it I ?" Many much-employed jobbing-actors could say the same thing because they had no real commitment to the production in hand but got through using their professional skills. I've been around music long enough to know that there are plenty of professional jobbing musicians out there too.
Previous Message
Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can . That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
Previous Message
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Lee Denham on May 23, 2023, 12:20 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
A wise old friend sent me this today and on receipt I realised, Jeffrey, that in spite of my valiant attempts to the contrary, it appears that you have been proven to be irrevocable and indisputably correct with your argumentsall along: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9482482--verdi-otello
For once, I genuinely am at lost for words ....
Previous Message
I agree pretty much entirely with what you say, Des. I've known plenty of able musicians who have surprised me in their almost complete lack of interest of the repertoire (even of their own instruments) other than the standard fare that the profession expects them to know. I suppose I was motivated to post on this topic on another contribution which seemed to be suggesting that musicians went into the recording-studio almost in a spirit of reverence towards the music having spent many hours of contemplation on the task in hand before doing so. While I absolutely accept that this might well be the case in many, many instances I can't accept that there aren't also a considerable number whose agents have got them the job and who are doing it in order to advance their careers and/or because there is a large fee attached to it. I mentioned the actor George Sanders in another post. This debonair character was good enough at his profession to get an academy award but in his amusing "Memoirs of a professional cad" he made no secret of the fact that he had no great committment to the work that afforded him his success. He recounts how he would go into a producer's office to discuss work on a forthcoming film and the producer would ask him "What do you think of the script?" Sanders would have to resort to all his histrionic skills to reply "What did I think of the SCRIPT?!!" in a tone of overwhelming enthusiasm in order to disguise the fact that he'd never even looked at it. Sanders also admitted that he had absolutely no recollection of many of the films he'd been in...."The Scarlet Coat.....what was that about? Who wore the coat? Was it I ?" Many much-employed jobbing-actors could say the same thing because they had no real commitment to the production in hand but got through using their professional skills. I've been around music long enough to know that there are plenty of professional jobbing musicians out there too.
Previous Message
Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can . That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
Previous Message
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Mikeh on May 23, 2023, 1:04 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Very interesting. I read "Murakami Absolutely Music in conversation with Ozawa" with mounting dismay and astonishment. How can a conductor of major orchestras have such a total disregard and interest in composer's lives and their compositions? His lack of knowledge of, for instance, Mahler's symphonies defies imagination. Perhaps that explains why I find much of Ozawa's conducting so bland?
Previous Message
I agree pretty much entirely with what you say, Des. I've known plenty of able musicians who have surprised me in their almost complete lack of interest of the repertoire (even of their own instruments) other than the standard fare that the profession expects them to know. I suppose I was motivated to post on this topic on another contribution which seemed to be suggesting that musicians went into the recording-studio almost in a spirit of reverence towards the music having spent many hours of contemplation on the task in hand before doing so. While I absolutely accept that this might well be the case in many, many instances I can't accept that there aren't also a considerable number whose agents have got them the job and who are doing it in order to advance their careers and/or because there is a large fee attached to it. I mentioned the actor George Sanders in another post. This debonair character was good enough at his profession to get an academy award but in his amusing "Memoirs of a professional cad" he made no secret of the fact that he had no great committment to the work that afforded him his success. He recounts how he would go into a producer's office to discuss work on a forthcoming film and the producer would ask him "What do you think of the script?" Sanders would have to resort to all his histrionic skills to reply "What did I think of the SCRIPT?!!" in a tone of overwhelming enthusiasm in order to disguise the fact that he'd never even looked at it. Sanders also admitted that he had absolutely no recollection of many of the films he'd been in...."The Scarlet Coat.....what was that about? Who wore the coat? Was it I ?" Many much-employed jobbing-actors could say the same thing because they had no real commitment to the production in hand but got through using their professional skills. I've been around music long enough to know that there are plenty of professional jobbing musicians out there too.
Previous Message
Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can . That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
Previous Message
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 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.
Previous Message
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 !
Previous Message
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.
Previous Message
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.
Re: bruckner 6
Posted by Ralph Moore on May 23, 2023, 7:02 pm, in reply to "Re: bruckner 6"
Yet Ozawa more than has his moments; he is wonderful in Berlioz - a composer still routinely derided in some quarters - likewise he recorded a lovely Mendelssohn MSND, a great Gurrelieder, an excellent Rite of Spring and a surprisingly fine Bruckner First Symphony (sorry!) - but I grant you that he has had his flops and made some bland recordings, especially in opera (but there's a good Pique Dame and a terrible Heldenleben. He has been around so long I suppose some inconsistency is inevitable but I value the best of his work. About his Mahler I am certainly less enthused.
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Very interesting. I read "Murakami Absolutely Music in conversation with Ozawa" with mounting dismay and astonishment. How can a conductor of major orchestras have such a total disregard and interest in composer's lives and their compositions? His lack of knowledge of, for instance, Mahler's symphonies defies imagination. Perhaps that explains why I find much of Ozawa's conducting so bland?
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I agree pretty much entirely with what you say, Des. I've known plenty of able musicians who have surprised me in their almost complete lack of interest of the repertoire (even of their own instruments) other than the standard fare that the profession expects them to know. I suppose I was motivated to post on this topic on another contribution which seemed to be suggesting that musicians went into the recording-studio almost in a spirit of reverence towards the music having spent many hours of contemplation on the task in hand before doing so. While I absolutely accept that this might well be the case in many, many instances I can't accept that there aren't also a considerable number whose agents have got them the job and who are doing it in order to advance their careers and/or because there is a large fee attached to it. I mentioned the actor George Sanders in another post. This debonair character was good enough at his profession to get an academy award but in his amusing "Memoirs of a professional cad" he made no secret of the fact that he had no great committment to the work that afforded him his success. He recounts how he would go into a producer's office to discuss work on a forthcoming film and the producer would ask him "What do you think of the script?" Sanders would have to resort to all his histrionic skills to reply "What did I think of the SCRIPT?!!" in a tone of overwhelming enthusiasm in order to disguise the fact that he'd never even looked at it. Sanders also admitted that he had absolutely no recollection of many of the films he'd been in...."The Scarlet Coat.....what was that about? Who wore the coat? Was it I ?" Many much-employed jobbing-actors could say the same thing because they had no real commitment to the production in hand but got through using their professional skills. I've been around music long enough to know that there are plenty of professional jobbing musicians out there too.
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Being a music lover but non-musician, and having spent considerable periods around professional musicians and music students, it's always struck me that those who are the most successful are not necessarily the most engaged or passionate: they simply do it because they can . That is, they have the fine motor skills and kind of intelligence that can easily decode music scores. So often in conversation with them I've been dismayed by how little they know, or care, about their chosen profession. This of course applies not only to music: in my cricketing youth, fellow players far better than I wouldn't dream of attending a Test match; and later in my science career, I became aware of a palaeontologist who dated fossils in the millions of years during business hours, but then preached Creationism at lunchtime!
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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 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.
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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 !
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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.
Previous Message
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.