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In Reply to: RE: Is good interpretation the birthright of 19th century musicians? posted by Brian Cheney on April 07, 2008 at 10:40:24
Brian Cheney,
I think the difference is in the degree of immersion in a musical tradition, which changed dramtically in the early 20th C..
Until the 20th Century, playing music from another era was a novelty- Mendellsohn had Bach concerts in 1850 that sparked a reviaval, but not until the era of Dolmetsch in the 1880's were Renaissance and Baroque pieces performed, and on historical instruments. And the traditions in music were evolving, but the strong strains of the unwritten rules pervaded the scene were insistent. Rememeber Haydn "asking" Beetoheven to add "Student of Haydn" on the quartets tital page,..
And, just note the arguments about the proper instruments, pitch, tempi, vibrato, ornamentation, and interpretation that still rage today. In my view, this happened because there was a break in continuity with the Baroque- everything had to be reconstructed remotely- we can guarantee that no one who played at Mendellsohn's concerts had heard Bach perform Bach.
In the 19th C., as music moved to more expressive styles and larger forms, even if something was novel and needed new techniques, the composer was present to impart his intentions to the performers. Plus, the instruments, notation and typical interpretations were usually not fully novel, so mucisicans, immersed in that style and with the composer or his direct students often close at hand could have a better chance of being true to the original ideas. It's interesting that even today, there are piansists who still trace a connection-a teaching lineage back to Franz Liszt as a status symbol.
But, the 20th C. did it's best to deliberatly break all kinds of traditions- throw away all the rules, and we have Stravinsky, Surrealism, Cubism, and Gropius trying to start from zero. Read Stravinsky's, "Pootics of Music" lectures for the story of how Stravinsky invented modern music all by himself. Simialrly, Frank Lloyd Wright describes how he completely reinvented architecture.
With traditions out the window, and the scramble for novelty and signature styles- plus wars and the rise of recording, I think there were deliberate breaks with the 19th C. interpretations. The novelty aspect and differentiation- "name branding" and advertising has lead to unfortunate situations like Lang Lang, but when there is real musicality behind it, the abbrogation of the 19th C. rules lead also to Willam Kapell and Glenn Gould- who I feel were the great liberators of the piano from the Lisztian tradition. Would Leif Ove Andnes or Olli Mustonen be possible without Kapell and Gould?
So, yes, those great older performers and conductors do sound great- on the music they were immersed in, or who had a lineage to the composer- we can trust Walter for Mahler as he knew him, and Cortot for Chopin as he was also from within that tradition. Today, the traditions are broken, so we have imitators- Volodos doing Horowitz, innovators - for better or wrose such as Il Giardino Armonico and Roger Norrington, and hollow shells simply with effective PR like Lang Lang, and truly musical people who pluck the best from the past and apply musciality in a fresh and liberated way like Schiff and Perhia. Someone who I feel takes the bect of the romantic 19th C in piano and applies a rational 20th poetic attitude for great effect is Ivan Moravec.
In a sense, it seems that the 20th C. era of experimentation and reconnection and reconstruction of earlier music is still in progress and while we enjoy hearing from those who in an earlier time continued 19th traditions in a kind of academic sense, the modern crop of performers and conductors are creating a new tradition of individualism and open-mindedness. This is a dangerous time as it is artistically choatic- no repsonsibility to structure, form, traditional interpretation- after Duchamp and Nietsche everything is now possible. But, transistional eras when eveyone is scrambling to settle on an approach to art can be hard to take, and there's always a lament at the loss of traditions in favour of chaos and the new will always seem to be missing something. Whenever I see a building by Fank Gehry, I have that feeling- sculpture yes, but actually anti-architecture and conceptually as hollow as possible.
There are a lot of mis-steps to be made, but I should love to hear the concerts in 2050 for the 300th anniversary of Bach's death.
Well, I suppose I'd be pleased to just be around to hear anything in 2050,..
Cheers,
Bambi B
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