Conducting Beethoven from the piano

[RichardB]

Thinking about yet another argument about historically informed performances as opposed to "modern" arrangements, I wonder why it seems to be the music of Beethoven rather than anyone else that sets them off. I think it's a question of two histories, one of the music itself and one of the way it's performed. There was a time when people would talk about HIPP recordings of Bach the way they now do about Beethoven. The matter of how most people who have an opinion in the matter prefer to hear Bach in the 21st century seems to have been more or less resolved, with Mozart somewhat less so, and Beethoven seems to be where the storm front is at the moment. But this too will pass I think, regardless of what my or anyone else's opinion might be. Then we'll be having the same arguments about Brahms and Wagner. It's a matter of different ways of hearing, and of wanting either to hear things played the way one is used to, or being open to unfamiliar and possibly challenging ways, and this applies as much to composition as to performance of music of the past. HIPP is primarily a phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st century, like electronic music. It's no coincidence that people who object to one often object to the other as well.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The advantage of conducting Beethoven from the piano is that you are unlikely to have the rows over tempi that affected the Karajan / Richter Tschaikovsky Bflat minor or Gould / Bernstein Brahms 1. I think Beethoven 1 or 2 can just about be done conductorless . But I think you run into cueing problems in the latter works . There are several notorious short cadenzas in the final movement of 4 which I think need a strong downbeat to get the band in . One tutti comes in on the final note of a long semiquaver run . Yes the pianist can nod or use his left hand but that’s a distraction from playing the notes . I think this movement was actually used in a BBC conducting competition once.
On the other hand you could avoid this - a famous incident from a Toscanini Myra Hess rehearsal for a performance of Beethoven 3 in New York in 1946

“At the second rehearsal, Toscanini – conducting from memory – brought the orchestra in four measures too early during the piano’s solo introduction in the slow movement. Hess wasn’t sure how to broach the subject with the fiery maestro but was her usual charming self. The melody played by the piano in two of the measures accidentally cut by Toscanini is very similar to a song sung by the title character in Gounod’s Faust, so she asked the conductor in a sweet tone of voice, “Maestro, when we play tomorrow night you will let me sing my ‘Salve! Dimora caste e pura,’ won’t you?” The conductor looked stunned and then burst out laughing … but then went into a nervous state as he realized his error and how he did not meet his own standards (“I say terrible things about other conductors but I cannot conduct myself!”).

During the concert itself, Toscanini adopted Hess’s tempo for this movement, slower than the one in his performance 2 years earlier with Arthur Rubinstein – a true sign of the esteem in which he held Dame Hess.”

From the Piano Files - also recounted in Hess’s biography

[Bryn]

Thinking about yet another argument about historically informed performances as opposed to "modern" arrangements, I wonder why it seems to be the music of Beethoven rather than anyone else that sets them off. I think it's a question of two histories, one of the music itself and one of the way it's performed. There was a time when people would talk about HIPP recordings of Bach the way they now do about Beethoven. The matter of how most people who have an opinion in the matter prefer to hear Bach in the 21st century seems to have been more or less resolved, with Mozart somewhat less so, and Beethoven seems to be where the storm front is at the moment. But this too will pass I think, regardless of what my or anyone else's opinion might be. Then we'll be having the same arguments about Brahms and Wagner. It's a matter of different ways of hearing, and of wanting either to hear things played the way one is used to, or being open to unfamiliar and possibly challenging ways, and this applies as much to composition as to performance of music of the past. HIPP is primarily a phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st century, like electronic music. It's no coincidence that people who object to one often object to the other as well.

The two might be said to have met in W Carlos's Bach et al arrangement for Moog synthesiser, where Carlos was pretty HIPP in her approach. With Beethoven, there are often rather more specific indications of dynamics, tempo, etc. which all too often came to be ignored by 'interpreters'. The enduring debate regarding his Metronome markings and orchestral complement suitable for the performance of his symphonies and concertos is likely to go on and on, I think.

[Braunschlag]

The two might be said to have met in W Carlos's Bach et al arrangement for Moog synthesiser, where Carlos was pretty HIPP in her approach.

Ooh - please continue! I hadn’t really thought about the Carlos on those lines. It’s still my go to version of the Brandenburgs, mostly because it seems to side-step all the modern/HIPP arguments and exists in its own stylistic vacuum.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The advantage of conducting Beethoven from the piano is that you are unlikely to have the rows over tempi that affected the Karajan / Richter Tschaikovsky Bflat minor or Gould / Bernstein Brahms 1. I think Beethoven 1 or 2 can just about be done conductorless . But I think you run into cueing problems in the latter works . There are several notorious short cadenzas in the final movement of 4 which I think need a strong downbeat to get the band in . One tutti comes in on the final note of a long semiquaver run . Yes the pianist can nod or use his left hand but that’s a distraction from playing the notes . I think this movement was actually used in a BBC conducting competition once.

I suppose many later concertos could be directed from the piano/other solo instruments. Bernstein did the Ravel Piano Concerto in G (the one you need to play with both hands) with the Vienna Philharmonic in the RAH. The orchestra seemed to relish the idea of playing "on their own" but they had to make a few compromises of general decorum, in that there was visible foot-tapping in the more complex sections.

I once played an oboe concerto in concert, directing it myself only because I didn't trust the conductor to do a decent job. In the performance, there was a certain David Hockney sitting on the second row.

But with Beethoven on record, surely the only thing that matters is the end result.

[Bryn]

Ooh - please continue! I hadn’t really thought about the Carlos on those lines. It’s still my go to version of the Brandenburgs, mostly because it seems to side-step all the modern/HIPP arguments and exists in its own stylistic vacuum.

I was thinking in terms of the overall ensemble sound created and the tempi adopted. Closer in aura impact to modern HIPP performances than, say, to Boult.

[RichardB]

The two might be said to have met in W Carlos's Bach et al arrangement for Moog synthesiser, where Carlos was pretty HIPP in her approach.

It's a while since I listened to those recordings but I seem to recall that they more closely resembled the sort of performances Bach's music normally received in the late 1960s when they were made, in terms of aspects like dynamics, phrasing, tempo flexibility and so on.

With Beethoven, there are often rather more specific indications of dynamics, tempo, etc. which all too often came to be ignored by 'interpreters'. The enduring debate regarding his Metronome markings and orchestral complement suitable for the performance of his symphonies and concertos is likely to go on and on, I think.

Maybe. Of course the fact that Beethoven was hard of hearing in later life can always be used as an excuse for ignoring his tempo indications and other inconvenient things!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I take a similar view to Jorge Bolet when it comes to interpreting the dots on the page:-

“As a pianist, I am not a purist. I mean, don't consider a composer's score as sacrosanct. To me, all that is so much hogwash. And Liszt is a perfect case in point. Liszt must be played with great freedom, great abandon. When I play Liszt, I take a great many liberties. I alter the text ad libitum. Because I'm sure that Liszt was, himself, the kind of pianist who would never hesitate to take liberties, not only with his own music, but also With the music of others.

"You see, Liszt was not the kind of Romantic that Chopin was—or Schubert or Schumann or Mendelssohn. In Liszt the romantic style is carried to its extreme—and that is how I play him. The point is, the moment you take a composer's score as gospel, that's the moment the music comes out sounding sterile. To me, music is something that lives—that is alive. When you play, you must bring a composition to life. For the past five years, have been professor of piano at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington, and I instill this in all pupils. I tellthem that a score is merely a negative. It is a piece of paper with signs and symbols on it, conveying only a poor approximation of what composer really had in mind. I mean, a written piece of music is the deadest thing in the world!

“And so, the trick is to turn those dead scribbles and squiggles into a living experience. Pianists who consider the score as being the Bible, turn out to be excellent craftsmen. They wiggle their fingers very well, and they play all the notes, and follow all the markings and play all the fortes and pianos. They consider these things as absolutes. But I oan tell you only this: From the vantage point of my 58 years—from learning and growing and investigating and searching—I have found only one absolute in music, and that is that there is no absolute. Everything in music is relative. Everything in music must be sifted through one's musical mind and personality. That's what music‐making is allabout.”

I also note that composers were not always fixed on their final views on their works. Beethoven was a good example. He composed one opera, but later gave it a massive rewrite, and left us with 4 (four) different overtures for it.

More recent composers, who left us duplicate recordings of their works, often changed the tempi, sometimes slowing down, sometime speeding up.

And Bruckner... well.

[CallMePaul]

I don't know that one - is it good? I have a vague memory of it receiving somewhat lukewarm reviews ?

I enjoy Buchbinder's Beethoven (and also his Mozart on both period and modern pianos) but accept that his somewhat dispassionate, classical style may not be to everyone's taste. Judging by the applause, the viennese concert-going public also enjoyed the performances; the same is true of the Salzburg audience in his recently-issued sonata cycle. I wish he would play in this country more frequently.

[RichardB]

composers were not always fixed on their final views on their works

Of course not, but at a certain moment they ceased to be able to revise them any further, leaving behind a finite amount of material on which future interpretations might be based. Nobody else, for example, is going to put together a third version of Beethoven's opera as different from the second as the second is from the first.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Of course not, but at a certain moment they ceased to be able to revise them any further, leaving behind a finite amount of material on which future interpretations might be based. Nobody else, for example, is going to put together a third version of Beethoven's opera as different from the second as the second is from the first.

Agreed, but my point is that perhaps we can be too precious about recreating the dots on the page as a museum piece, rather than creating a living event.

[Bryn]

I take a similar view to Jorge Bolet when it comes to interpreting the dots on the page:-

“As a pianist, I am not a purist. I mean, don't consider a composer's score as sacrosanct. To me, all that is so much hogwash. And Liszt is a perfect case in point. Liszt must be played with great freedom, great abandon. When I play Liszt, I take a great many liberties. I alter the text ad libitum. Because I'm sure that Liszt was, himself, the kind of pianist who would never hesitate to take liberties, not only with his own music, but also With the music of others.

"You see, Liszt was not the kind of Romantic that Chopin was—or Schubert or Schumann or Mendelssohn. In Liszt the romantic style is carried to its extreme—and that is how I play him. The point is, the moment you take a composer's score as gospel, that's the moment the music comes out sounding sterile. To me, music is something that lives—that is alive. When you play, you must bring a composition to life. For the past five years, have been professor of piano at the University of Indiana, in Bloomington, and I instill this in all pupils. I tellthem that a score is merely a negative. It is a piece of paper with signs and symbols on it, conveying only a poor approximation of what composer really had in mind. I mean, a written piece of music is the deadest thing in the world!

“And so, the trick is to turn those dead scribbles and squiggles into a living experience. Pianists who consider the score as being the Bible, turn out to be excellent craftsmen. They wiggle their fingers very well, and they play all the notes, and follow all the markings and play all the fortes and pianos. They consider these things as absolutes. But I oan tell you only this: From the vantage point of my 58 years—from learning and growing and investigating and searching—I have found only one absolute in music, and that is that there is no absolute. Everything in music is relative. Everything in music must be sifted through one's musical mind and personality. That's what music‐making is allabout.”

I also note that composers were not always fixed on their final views on their works. Beethoven was a good example. He composed one opera, but later gave it a massive rewrite, and left us with 4 (four) different overtures for it.

More recent composers, who left us duplicate recordings of their works, often changed the tempi, sometimes slowing down, sometime speeding up.

And Bruckner... well.

Though with a conductor, Brautigam's recording of the Barry Cooper edition of the G major concerto, with Beethoven's later revisions, (played on a lidless Steinway) is worth hearing. However, when it came to his including Metronome markings, Beethoven was pretty certainly trying to dissuade performers from playing more slowly than he intended. That is what the likes of Ries suggested, anyway. As to Leonora/Fidelio, were there not three versions of the opera and four of the overture?

[RichardB]

Agreed, but my point is that perhaps we can be too precious about recreating the dots on the page as a museum piece, rather than creating a living event.

Of course. But which is the museum piece, a performance that takes as a starting point how the music sounded when it was new, or one that preserves a performing tradition based on the tastes of a hundred years ago? The relation between tradition and innovation is more complex than it might initially seem: I'm not an admirer of Adorno but he was on to something when he said that there's more tradition in Webern's op.9 than in Prokofiev's "Classical" Symphony. By the same token I would say that (for example) JEG's Beethoven is more of a "living event" than Klemperer's.

[jayne lee wilson]

This has a separate conductor, but freedom of intepretation in the moment of performance as indeed a "living event", based on intensive research into Beethoven's own sketches and compositional variants, is exactly what it is about....

It is important to study the booklet notes any way you can. Having said that, this, (one of my records of the year 2021) is by any standards an outstanding G Major (and Op.61a)...

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/beethoven-piano-concertos-nos-4-op-58-6-op-61a-gianluca-cascioli-ensemble-resonanz-riccardo-minasi/sddr417cebljb

[Bryn]

This has a separate conductor, but freedom of intepretation in the moment of performance as indeed a "living event", based on intensive research into Beethoven's own sketches and compositional variants, is exactly what it is about....

It is important to study the booklet notes any way you can. Having said that, this, (one of my records of the year 2021) is by any standards an outstanding G Major (and Op.61a)...

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/be.../sddr417cebljb

An interesting alternative edition to that prepared by Barry Cooper from the same materials and used by Brautigam for his Steinway recording it seems. Agreed, the programme notes are well worth reading.