Furtwangler recordings of Richard Strauss

[cloughie]

Very little I think .

The analogy I would choose is with a great chef who can do dazzling things with humdrum ingredients .

Are you referring to Mahler, RSt, Furtwangler, Bernstein or Walter?

[Beef Oven!]

Very little I think .

The analogy I would choose is with a great chef who can do dazzling things with humdrum ingredients .

Which just goes to prove that analogies, whilst useful, do not bear close examination

Standards of critical reasoning have plummeted recently on this forum.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The chef is the composer (think of all the "humdrum ingredients" that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven etc used to "dazzling" effect) - the conductor is just a waiter.

[Beef Oven!]

The chef is the composer (think of all the "humdrum ingredients" that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven etc used to "dazzling" effect) - the conductor is just a waiter.

C'mon ferney! Stay away from these silly analogies!

The chef is the conductor. In dark distant foreign lands where no Englishman should tread, they call their conductors chefs!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The chef is the composer (think of all the "humdrum ingredients" that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven etc used to "dazzling" effect) - the conductor is just a waiter.

I would suggest that the composer is the writer of the recipe. The conductor is the chef.

I recall a television interview with Haitink, who was questioned on the unevenness of some Shostakovitch symphonies. The conductor's response was interesting. He agreed with the suggestion, and said it was up to performers to endeavour to work harder, in order make those weaker parts more interesting. BH wasn't in any way dismissing the composer, but did accept that levels of inspiration might vary.

[Barbirollians]

[Beef Oven!]

[Beef Oven!]

I would suggest that the composer is the writer of the recipe. The conductor is the chef.

I recall a television interview with Haitink, who was questioned on the unevenness of some Shostakovitch symphonies. The conductor's response was interesting. He agreed with the suggestion, and said it was up to performers to endeavour to work harder, in order make those weaker parts more interesting. BH wasn't in any way dismissing the composer, but did accept that levels of inspiration might vary.

I think you've misunderstood uncle Bernie's meaning, or just heard what you wanted to hear

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

C'mon ferney! Stay away from these silly analogies!

Not that silly - conductors and waiters wear the same uniforms!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would suggest that the composer is the writer of the recipe. The conductor is the chef.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The "Composer provides the recipe, the performer is the chef" suggestion has been made before - I suppose that the amin objection I have to it is that the "meal" is as sustaining and delicious when reading a score as it might be in performance - whereas you won't get your five-a-day just reading a recipe book.

So, I suppose that I regard the performer as the equivalent of someone describing a painting to somebody who can't see it - points for including as many details as there are in the work, but the description can never be "better" than the painting. And, of course, some Art commentators can draw your attention to details that a viewer who has seen the painting dozens of times hadn't noticed. They don't need to add details that aren't there, or miss out features, or say that an image has a different shape or colour than the original (on the grounds that they think it would be better this way) or suggest that it's desirable to go over a section in enamels/felt tips because surely the Artist would have preferred it that way if they had had access to such "advances" in equipment.

[edashtav]

Conductor and waiter exemplify Newton’s Third Law : Action (conductor) and Reaction (waiter) are equal and opposite.

[aeolium]

The "Composer provides the recipe, the performer is the chef" suggestion has been made before - I suppose that the amin objection I have to it is that the "meal" is as sustaining and delicious when reading a score as it might be in performance - whereas you won't get your five-a-day just reading a recipe book.

So, I suppose that I regard the performer as the equivalent as someone describing a painting to somebody who can't see it - points for including as many details as there are in the work, but the description can never be "better" than the painting. And, of course, some Art commentators can draw your attention to details that a viewer who has seen the painting dozens of times hadn't noticed. They don't need to add details that aren't there, or miss out features, or say that an image has a different shape or colour than the original (on the grounds that they think it would be better this way) or suggest that it's desirable to go over a section in enamels/felt tips because surely the Artist would have preferred it that way if they had had access to such "advances" in equipment.

I could not disagree more with this view of the role of the performer in relation to a musical score. The score is surely intended by the composer to be experienced in performance, not read (except by the performers) and almost always contains much that is undefined, that has to be interpreted, which is why there is an almost infinite range of possible performances of any work. In earlier ages the performer was even encouraged by the composer to demonstrate skills in improvisation and virtuosity, with cadenzas and ornamentation. How could you ever expect to experience the great range of different, yet wonderful performances simply by reading the score (which probably 90% even of most classical music audiences could not do)?

And the analogy with the description of the painting is quite false, for me. The experience of someone listening to a description of a work of art is immensely impoverished compared with that of someone who is able to look at it closely. Whereas the score is intended to be performed, so the listener is experiencing it in a way that the author of the work was intending. And I would go further and say that performance is absolutely intrinsic to the life of a musical composition (even if it has not yet been performed) - it only fully comes to life in performance.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, my use of "the equivalent of" (let alone "as"! ) is too literal for the simile I wished to make. And I certainly agree that "[a] score is intended to be performed ... in a way that the author of the work was intending". (Some Forumistas dispute that such a thing is even possible - perhaps "in a manner that the composers would have recognised" might be better?) But, as you yourself say, many listeners cannot read a score - or play the piano to the standard required for the Hammerklavier, or the Violin to that required for the Bach BWV 1004 Chaconne - it is incumbent on the performer to serve the written texts to an audience in such a way as you suggest.

I believe that it is an error to talk of "simply reading the score": there is nothing "simple" about this, any more than one "simply reads" a poem, or a novel, or the script of a play. With literary texts, different aspects of craft and meaning become apparent to a reader each time they read, even if they use the same copy/edition of these texts. Music scores are no less rich in possibilities, and I resent performers who cheat their audiences by distorting these texts because they think they know better than their composers. From this, I hope it's clear that, again, I agree with you that with any score there is a huge range of possible ways of communicating the text in performance - Historically Informed Performance Practice demonstrates this very, very clearly: the different conventions that composers took for granted need to be made known and incorporated in performance. But this is true also of the armchair score-reader, just as, for example, knowledge of the pronunciation of Middle English is essential to reading Chaucer.

From the many and various gushing posts about a performers that I've contributed over the years, I think it's clear that I'm as much a "fan" of certain practitioners as anyone. But my enthusiasm is in direct proportion to the amount of insight arising from detailed fidelity to the score that their performances offer me. And even ... oh, this has gone on long enough.

[Barbirollians]

Meanwhile what do other forumites think of Furtwangler's recordings of these works ?