Originally posted by Bryn
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Top speed and weird opening of RR 8.1.22
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Originally posted by silvestrione View PostI think RO's point, rather, is that there is a danger of privileging Beethoven's attempts to apply a recently developed little machine to living breathing music
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Originally posted by RichardB View Post- which again hardly respects Beethoven's compositional skills. Composers often embrace new technology without it compromising the life and breath of their work. He had been using metronome markings since about 1815 and is reasonably consistent in the relation of verbal indications to beats-per-minute. The onus is really on performers who see fit to ignore these suggestions to explain why they do so.
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Originally posted by cloughie View PostI guess no-one ever told Otto Klemperer!
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Originally posted by rauschwerk View PostOf course, but surely only a fool would perform every bar of a movement at the speed which Beethoven meant for the opening bars?
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Originally posted by RichardB View PostI don't think he'd have recognised the concept of playing Beethoven's own tempi as valid, any more than he did the idea of playing the instruments Beethoven knew, having subscribed to the later 19th century image of Beethoven and his music, as many people still do of course. As I've remarked before, it's no coincidence that the high point of colonialism in the world coincided with a parallel compulsion to also foist on (for example) Beethoven's music the benefit of a supposedly more enlightened "civilisation" than existed in the 1820s - hence the HUPP (historically uninformed performance practice) movement represented by Klemperer et al.
I suppose there’s room for many approaches in this highly tolerant century!
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I feel it is a pity - though a vital point of the musical execution - we tend to get hung up on tempi. As I implied in #120, the 9th Symphony has some extreme formal innovations in every movement, most particularly in the 1st and last. As we discussed recently, this was an essential part of late-Beethoven, as evinced by the Missa Solemnis and the Late String Quartets.
Whether relatively fast or slow tempi make such structural inventiveness more or less clear is yet another point of debate; personally I do find faster tempi help me apprehend the larger structural vision in the act of listening... especially in the 9th Symphony.
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Originally posted by cloughie View Post…and similarly HIPP for what it has become!
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Originally posted by gradus View PostKlemperer was born in 1885 and would I imagine have heard, as a young man, artists performing who were near contemporaries of Beethoven or at the least, who began performing within a generation of Beethoven's death. Isn't that being historically informed?
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Originally posted by RichardB View PostI don't think he'd have recognised the concept of playing Beethoven's own tempi as valid, any more than he did the idea of playing the instruments Beethoven knew, having subscribed to the later 19th century image of Beethoven and his music, as many people still do of course. As I've remarked before, it's no coincidence that the high point of colonialism in the world coincided with a parallel compulsion to also foist on (for example) Beethoven's music the benefit of a supposedly more enlightened "civilisation" than existed in the 1820s - hence the HUPP (historically uninformed performance practice) movement represented by Klemperer et al.
Another speedy Beethoven conductor - Toscanini - though , to your point , he was a bit of a score tinkerer.
I suspect things have got slower because of the demands for perfection In the recording process and, as a consequence in live performance. There is worryingly little risk taking these days..
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Originally posted by Ein Heldenleben View PostDifficult to generalise but I think some in the twenties and thirties were attempting to perform Beethoven at something like his metronome markings - despite prevalent colonialism ! Schnabel for example - way faster than say Barenboim or Pollini. He could claim to be , in some ways , more historically informed than any contemporary (forte) or non forte pianist having been in the Beethoven Czerny , Liszt , Leischtisky tuition line.
Another speedy Beethoven conductor - Toscanini - though , to your point , he was a bit of a score tinkerer.
I suspect things have got slower because of the demands for perfection In the recording process and, as a consequence in live performance. There is worryingly little risk taking these days..
But what about those cycles recorded in the lead-up to the 2020 celebrations? Haselbock with the OWA, not only live but taped in the halls Beethoven knew; lean and stark, quick and up-and-at-you (tip: avoid 3 and 9). Or Adam Fischer with the DCO on Naxos, as daringly idiosyncratic as we've had since Mengelberg's 1940s Amsterdam set?
Or HM's own continuing Beethoven 20/27 series, with a stunning succession of symphonies and concertos from such as the AAMB or Freiburg Baroque, waking us all up - sharp - with their fresh ideas and S-O-T-A recorded sound... Jacobs' Missa Solemnis....wow.
The 4th Piano Concerto, so freely and creatively realised (inspired by LvB's own unpublished score variants, probably used (as described by Czerny) in his own performances) by Cascioli and Minasi on HM?
C/w op.61a, performances like no other! Start with this one if you really want new Beethovenian ears...!
Plenty of risktaking in Beethoven right now, you just need to keep up with the newsfeed somewhere......(and get listening!)...Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 17-01-22, 21:12.
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