Schubert 9 and all the repeats

[Bryn]

Worth a read.

http://www.dersnah-fee.com/Essays%20...at%20Signs.pdf

Well worth a read, indeed.

[Petrushka]

Just because we've become used to exposition (and sometimes second-half) repeats being observed in many HIPPs classical recordings and performances doesn't make them intrinsically superior on the level of artistic achievement: the musical and inspirational impact upon the listener comes from what they do, creatively, with the instructions constituting a score, not their fidelity to the letter of it.

**
As this debate has occurred in the context of Schubert's Great C Major, what about that final-chord diminuendo? Should performers always faithfully observe that?

JLW has expressed my own thoughts here far more eloquently than I could have done.

The final chord diminuendo in the Schubert 9 is utterly ruinous and totally anti-climactic and mars (along with the finale repeat) the otherwise excellent VPO/Solti recording. This is where we miss our friend Roehre who would no doubt have given us the score's full detail on all of these matters. Is the original score in Schubert's own hand still in existence? If it is then all questions are answered and if it includes both finale repeat and final chord diminuendo then one must accept that that is what Schubert wanted.

My own preferred performance is the one that Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe gave at the 2015 Proms: relatively swift moving, all repeats observed apart from the finale exposition and no final chord diminuendo. Ideal!

[Pabmusic]

The problem as I see it is that if a performer thinks they can improve on a composer's work by cutting out repeats, why stop there? Why think (presumably something like): this composer got everything exactly right - apart from the repeat marks? Of course, performers are free to do anything they want. But if a performer is at odds with what a composer wrote (assuming it's known what that is) they might perhaps play something else instead.

Oh dear! I never meant to imply that "anything goes". This is not s dichotomy.

[Hornspieler]

In tracking down the review of Barbirolli 's EMI Schubert 9 the other day I came across a very appreciative review of the mid 1970s recording by the LPO and Sir John Pritchard on CFP . Copies are to be had as it was re released when EMI resurrected the label at the turn of the millennium .

The big thing noted as well as the fact it is an excellent performance is that it was the first recording to include all the repeats . As such it weighs in at 54 minutes and 25 seconds .

Listening to it in this form Bruckner's debt to Schubert has never seemed clearer to me . Is it still uncommon to play all the repeats in this work ?

My first encounter with this work was when we played the second movement in our school orchestra.

Yes, there was one massive repeat, removed by our Music Master and I, for one, was not disappointed.

My next encounter was in the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth, where a school party was taken to see and hear the real thing.

Rudolf Schwarz conducting the opening concert of the newly re-formed Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra.

A programme to thrill and delight we schoolboy enthusiasts.

In the first half, we heard Vaughan Williams' "Wasps" overture and then Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, played by Iso Elison.

The second half was devoted entirely to a performance of Schubert's Great C Major symphony.

I don't know whether Schwarz took all the repeats, but on subsequently learning that this was his favourite symphony, I suspect that he did.

I move forward now to 1965 and the BSO's long tour of East and West Germany.

Actually, we started in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw where Silvestri conducted his current favourite, Tchaikowsky's Manfred Symphony.
On to Hamlyn, Hoxter and Bad Godesburg, where the main offering was Brahms' 4th Symphony and with the late Peter Katin playing Rachmaninoff.

We crossed the Iron Curtain, but not with Silvestri - he did not dare to risk being retained there as a fugitive from the communist controlled Eastern Bloc.

So it was Rudolf Schwarz who was given the baton for performances In Leipzig (2), Potsdam, then by train from East Berlin to the Polish cities of Poznam, Warsaw, Wroclau and Into Czechslovakia to Ostrava, BRNO and finally Prague;.


Nine consecutive Performances - one of Schumann No 4, and EIGHT Consecutively of the Great C Major.
Then home to 8 days off to recover.

In the Schubert, Rudy took every repeat.

The last performance was at "Dum Umelcu" that lovely concert hall on the banks of the River Moldeau in Prague,
Those poor string players' arms were practically falling off.

(The late Peter Katin was involved in all of those thirteen concerts - playing the Rachmaninoff Paganini or 3rd Piano Concertos)

Play what the composer wrote?

I prefer the advice given to me by my great friend and mentor, the late Francis Bradley ....

"Nobody can play everything that's put in front of them if they want to survive in this profession, but you've got to know what you can afford to leave out."

(Good advice from one of the famous Borsdoff family who was still playing Principal Horn in Covent Garden when he was in his seventies!

I leave those last words for any of the talented youngsters who have replaced myself and others of my generation.

Hornspieler

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The nature of Schubert's handwriting of hairpin diminuendo markings or elongated accents is one that causes much discussion (of varying degrees of temperature) amongst Musicologists - there is no straightforward way of reading some of these symbols, as Schubert's handwriting alters in different works and at different points in those works. It is an entirely different matter with the repeats, of course - they are there, clearly and unambiguously written into the manuscript of the work, and with a three-and-a-half bar "first time" bar. There is no question but that for Schubert's expressive intentions to be communicated to the listener, the repeat has to be played.

So - do we follow Schubert's ingredients, or do we miss out the carrots from the stew? Whom do we trust - the conductor or the composer? The choice of the accent/diminuendo is a matter of choice, once the arguments have been weighed - personally, I favour the diminuendo: it's the last, silent, bar that is the clue for me - a fading al niente (or al dente for the "Recipe" simile enthusiasts): it is so shocking and disturbing, completely different from the sort of ending that any other composer has produced. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries saw much work in giving Schubert's works into the sort of performance that Wagner thought should be given to Beethoven - so much is lost from this approach; and what replaces it seems so superfluous, given that so many other composers gave (unambiguously) those kinds of ending. It takes away from Schubert's originality of thought; his fatalistic realism; his "you think it's that straightforward?" Turning the Symphony into something more conventional, more consoling is what "ruins" the work. For me.

Yes - Music is for people; if performers and listeners want something that is contradicted by the score, they are free to move away from what's written. It is much, much easier to "interpret" Music (to substitute white pepper for the composer's chilis in the "recipe", for example). For all my bafflement as to why anyone would want to do that to Schubert, I don't seek to impose on their listening - fat chance, thank god, of success, even if I did want to! But having faith in the composer, seeing what happens when the Music is played as the composer wrote it (and with knowledge of the conventions and expectations of the time) and working towards an accurate sonic realization of the composer's markings on the page - that is both much more difficult, and (for me) much, much more rewarding, because so often it changes my ideas of how Music can/should "go"; going counter to my expectations, preconceptions and preferences has so often taken me to areas of thought and experience that otherwise I would never have dreamt of.

Some conductors have merely interpreted Music. The point is that some composers have changed it - and, with a Musical imagination such as Schubert's, and a work of such importance as the last C major Symphony, I cannot but feel short-changed when a lesser imagination (which is all the recorded conductors of the work) presents the work as something different from what Schubert thought.

[vinteuil]

... many thanks, ferney, for this apposite and thoughtful piece.

So - do we follow Schubert's ingredients, or do we miss out the carrots from the stew? Whom do we trust - the conductor or the composer? .

... we trust the composer rather than the conductor - and we certainly don't trust performers who say things such as -

.
..

"Nobody can play everything that's put in front of them if they want to survive in this profession, but you've got to know what you can afford to leave out."

... music is for the composer and the ultimate listener. The performer shouldn't have the power to think they know best.
.

The choice of the accent/diminuendo is a matter of choice, once the arguments have been weighed - personally, I favour the diminuendo: it's the last, silent, bar that is the clue for me - a fading al niente (or al dente for the "Recipe" simile enthusiasts): it is so shocking and disturbing, completely different from the sort of ending that any other composer has produced.
.

... yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_difficilior_potior

[Alison]

I love this work so much that issues of repeats and final bars offer no hindrance to pleasure.

Interesting discussion nonetheless.

Good post Barbs and I have ordered the Pritchard.

Glad you're still posting Mr Hornspieler.

[EdgeleyRob]

I love this work so much that issues of repeats and final bars offer no hindrance to pleasure.

Same here,fascinating posts from those in the know too,many thanks

[Richard Barrett]

Oh dear! I never meant to imply that "anything goes".

I know - but what you did seem to be implying is something more like "nothing goes, apart from repeat marks". So my question is: why are repeat marks (presumably) the only aspect of a score where it's reasonable to improve on the thoughts of a composer who "hadn't thought them through"?

[cloughie]

I love this work so much that issues of repeats and final bars offer no hindrance to pleasure.

Interesting discussion nonetheless.

Good post Barbs and I have ordered the Pritchard.

Glad you're still posting Mr Hornspieler.

Well said Alison. I still love both the Krips recordings, CAO and LSO which have few repeats and the Loughran which has loads of them. One of the first long symphonies I learned to love along with Eroica and Sym Fant way back!

[Pabmusic]

I know - but what you did seem to be implying is something more like "nothing goes, apart from repeat marks". So my question is: why are repeat marks (presumably) the only aspect of a score where it's reasonable to improve on the thoughts of a composer who "hadn't thought them through"?

Well of course they're not, but the thread was about repeats.

[Barbirollians]

Going back to my original post - I must put a word in for the EMI Barbirolli which is marvellous and available on a Barbirolli Society disc from Dutton on Amazon very recently at a very low price .

I must listen to the Solti again have not heard it for ages to hear this "ruinous diminuendo " .

As for repeat markings in a score surely Pabs has a point - were they always intended by composers of the late 17th and 18th century to be always followed religiously ? Did publishers sometimes insert them in compliance with convention ? Do we know when performance history saw conductors omitting them ?

[jayne lee wilson]

As I tried to say in #27, I can't imagine Toscanini or Mengelberg or many other conductors conceived of their performance practices or decisions as "improving on" or "knowing better than" any given composer. Their love for the music is self-evident from the sounds and shapes they so obsessively drew from their orchestras. There is a long and surely honest and honourable performance tradition of not playing various repeats in a classical form. Call this as fashion if you like, just as the fashion today is generally to observe more of them, more often. (Yet the 2nd-half sonata-form repeat is still relatively rare even in HIPPS performances; that the performers conceive its omission as an "improvement" on the "composer's thoughts" seems an odd idea to me; aren't they simply making practical performing choices, which may change over time?).

Consider: one reason why Harnoncourt's CMW Haydn Paris Symphonies made such an impact was precisely because they included the second-half 1st-movement repeat; it wasn't expected, still less predictable. But if most such performances included them...how might we respond?

Are we so sure, so clever, that we think we've got it right now, unlike those strange old beasts of the 1930s, 40s and 50s who knew no better? Why shouldn't tendencies in performance practices shift again, if players or listeners begin to crave something more subjective and expressive, or simply different from contemporary, "historically-aware" classical performances? Repeats omitted, rubato used more freely, or whatever else?

To invariably observe all repeats seems to me more like servility to a cause, and our view of the relationship between composer & performer, of what a performer does when they play music is always evolving. Why do some listeners or performers find the idea of classical performance as a creative or recreative act so unacceptable, even threatening?
I'm reminded of the Barthesian concept of the author-god: the composer (especially a dead classical composer) is seen as untouchable, unquestionable; her masterpieces treated as perfectly finished, polished artefacts, handed down from above. There's so much evidence to the contrary: miscopies, misprints, dubious editions, later revisions, vacillation over movement-order, scores changed in rehearsal (or after early performances), often on conductors' or soloists' advice, etc etc...

[Richard Barrett]

the composer (especially a dead classical composer) is seen as untouchable, unquestionable; her masterpieces treated as perfectly finished, polished artefacts, handed down from above.

This is really missing the point completely in my opinion. It isn't to do with anything being sacrosanct, certainly not "the composer's intentions" in so far as those can be divined, nothing to do with following anything "religiously", nothing to do with being "so clever" (although performers these days are indeed much more likely than in previous times to be aware of historical practices and documentation - would you rather they weren't?); it's to do with what happened at the time the music was written, with all the contingency around it, because taking notice of that is a way of appreciating the music in its historical context, a way of enabling listeners to hear more of what the music was when it was written, when it was new, which I think facilitates a deeper understanding of it. I'm in favour of stripping away as much intervening performance tradition as possible for that reason, not because "this is what the composer wrote and therefore it's perfect", that's a very shallow reason for playing repeats. Any composer will tell you that if they'd written some passage or other on a different day they might well have written it differently, or included or omitted a repeat perhaps, for reasons that could possibly seem arbitrary, but nevertheless that was what happened which I think gives it a different status from a performer for whatever reason deciding to do things another way.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It may well have been "what happened", but are we obliged to blindly follow (sorry - split infinitive) everything as it happened 200 years ago? By all means give it a go, but don't then adopt a sanctimonious moral high ground when others decide/prefer to do things differently.

When I bought my first miniature score at the age of 11 (Mozart 40) I discovered that Furtwangler omitted the repeats in the 2nd and 4th movements, and I wondered why this was. When I did eventually hear it played with every repeat observed, my curiosity was satisfied, but it helped me to understand why it was not often performed in this way.


W