BaL 27.12.14 - Schubert: Symphony no. 8 in B minor

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Taking extreme examples does not really enhance your argument (Allegro - Adagio), but more subtle ones do, I think, back mine. Dynamics can never be precise, so the score can only be an approximation; it is up to performers to make what they can of what it written. Stokowski-style rewritings are not the issue here.

I don't think either of us knows what the other is going on about - it's probably fruitless to pursue our discussion.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I am sorry. That does not make it a good performance. Then it is perceived as a good performance.

So what do you say makes 'a good performance' if it isn't linked to individual perceptions/ evaluations? Perhaps you are saying that to you, the only thing that matters is your own perception and you care not a jot if nobody agrees with you or if everyone does. I can see that as a tenable position, and maybe it links to your frequently stated position on record collecting, that you rarely go beyond one 'decent-ish' version of each work. But that would surely mean that you do not enter into discussions of great/ good performances (other than discussions of how closely they follow the score) because the concept seems to be otherwise meaningless for you.

Most of us here seem to believe there is a canon of great performances, which doesn't necessarily mean they are our own favourites, or even that we like them at all personally. Examples may be inflammatory but would surely include Callas as Tosca at CG in the (50s?), and on record Furtwangler in Beethoven 9, the Barbirolli/ Du Pre Elgar cello concerto, the Elgar/ Menuhin E. vln conc etc etc. Their status as 'great' is thus some aggregation of many individuals' views they are good/ great. Reference to the score isn't very much to the point, particularly if it's the composer conducting

Of course, something like the HIPP movement may alter this canon. Perhaps we're seeing this on this thread re the Unfinished: for some people Furtwangler has fallen out of the chariot largely because he's too far from the score and HIPP.

I don't know this recording but would like to hear it, as I would the Norrington or any other HIPP performance. Incidentally, I do think this work may be something of a test case. My own view, thoroughly uneducated as it may be, is that there is a real divide between it and the 6th. The latter links clearly to Haydn and Mozart and IMV is very likely to benefit from 'classicist' HIPP performance. But the 8th has gone off somewhere else, there's a decisive change in style and effect, to do with reaction against classicism and objectivity (score as simple set of performance instructions, whole roughly equal to sum of parts) towards deliberate unclarity, subjectivity, the 'meaning' of the whole work less defined by the marks in the score, greater necessity (oops!) for the conductor to have a view of the whole before getting down to the parts (the separate mov'ts, the balance of parts, emergence/ near-disappearance of themes). In short, Romanticism instead of Classicism. The 8th and even more clearly the 9th point to to the symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler etc in a way that 1-6 just don't at all. There really is a massive change here, and over-devotion to the score I feel is more likely to link the 8th to the past than the future and thereby hamstring it.

a) what is wrong with an objective or ultra-objective approach?
It's just another way of interpretation, one which btw goes back to the sources and the scores as nearly as possble to the ones produced by the composer

I'm not saying in advance of the results that there is anything wrong with this approach. HIPP has opened my ears to a great deal of music and there's plenty I wouldn't rush to hear any other way. But even so I would not say that a good non-HIPP performance is necessarily going to be less 'good' than another HIPP one. HIPP and ultra-close adherence to the composer's marking is in my book not a necessary, let alone a sufficient, condition for enjoyment.

b) thank you for calling musicology a pseudo-science - now we safely can bin approximately everything from before Bach and all the Gesamtausgaben, for instance all the Bruckner symphonies as edited by the Nowak team, as these are all based on pseudo-science.....

I didn't say musicology is a pseudo-science! but it is necessary to be aware of its limitations both as regards objective truth, and its results in performance, as stated above in relation to your a).

In my opinion the only point FHG insists to make is that it might be not a bad idea to listen (and listen, and listen again) to strongly diverging performances/recordings, before deciding that HIP, or traditional, or historic, or how one could classify a type of performance otherwise, is below (one's own) par.

Yes, I, too, am worried by the tempting simplicity of fhg's identity theorem, but that doesn't worry me as much as your blind popularism, LMP! What does the crowd understand by "good" ? Is it rating "effectiveness" ? A performance can be affecting and/or effective, yet miles away from being true to the composer's score.

Um, sorry edashtav for worrying you - rarely have I been accused of blind populism! An appeal to the widest populist vote of course means that our Roger was dead right to do all he did to R3 and even so all classical music is crap and we shouldn't waste any resources on it All I was trying to say was that once we go beyond our own personal views, if the terms 'good performance' and 'great performance' have any meaning at all it must surely lie in some sort of consensus, even if you like some public mythology, probably existing over a longish period of time.

[Roehre]

So what do you say makes 'a good performance' if it isn't linked to individual perceptions/ evaluations? Perhaps you are saying that to you, the only thing that matters is your own perception and you care not a jot if nobody agrees with you or if everyone does. I can see that as a tenable position, and maybe it links to your frequently stated position on record collecting, that you rarely go beyond one 'decent-ish' version of each work. But that would surely mean that you do not enter into discussions of great/ good performances (other than discussions of how closely they follow the score) because the concept seems to be otherwise meaningless for you.

what is considered a "good performance" is time (fashion ) and place defined and how good (or bad) a performance/recording is, seems in many (most?) cases not to be confirmed during sessions of completely "blind listening" .
Time: how great the muscianship of Karajan/BPO may be, how good the recording may be, for some reason his interpretation of the Bach Mass in b is not considered a "good performance", though it is very similar to recordings of say Mengelberg's Concertgebouw St.Matthew from 1940, considered to be such a great performance.
Place: blind listening gives other results whether you have got a British, a German or a French team of listeners.

As far as recordings in my collection are concerned, whenever possible I go for a recording which is available, preferably a technically as well as an in terms of interpretation solid one [one of the "canon" if you like] , plus -if available- an interpretation at the other side of the spectrum: massive vs chamber like, romantic vs "dry", HIP vs "old-fashioned".
Certainly with the present availibility of many performances/recordings of the Warhorses two recordings suffice for me.

Most of us here seem to believe there is a canon of great performances, which doesn't necessarily mean they are our own favourites, or even that we like them at all personally. Examples may be inflammatory but would surely include Callas as Tosca at CG in the (50s?), and on record Furtwangler in Beethoven 9, the Barbirolli/ Du Pre Elgar cello concerto, the Elgar/ Menuhin E. vln conc etc etc. Their status as 'great' is thus some aggregation of many individuals' views they are good/ great. Reference to the score isn't very much to the point, particularly if it's the composer conducting

Of course there exist "great" performances, but any of the examples one mentions (and those mentioned here are no exception) are defined by a geographically not universal area, and not of "all times", as I mentioned earlier.
A composer playing/conducting his own music is a bonus in terms of authenticiy - but doesn't automatically make a recording a great one, though here Elgar/Menuhin is such a great performance.

...
... My own view, thoroughly uneducated as it may be, is that there is a real divide between it and the 6th. The latter links clearly to Haydn and Mozart and IMV is very likely to benefit from 'classicist' HIPP performance. But the 8th has gone off somewhere else, there's a decisive change in style and effect, to do with reaction against classicism and objectivity (score as simple set of performance instructions, whole roughly equal to sum of parts) towards deliberate unclarity, subjectivity, the 'meaning' of the whole work less defined by the marks in the score, greater necessity (oops!) for the conductor to have a view of the whole before getting down to the parts (the separate mov'ts, the balance of parts, emergence/ near-disappearance of themes). In short, Romanticism instead odd Classicism. The 8th and even more clearly the 9th point to to the symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler etc in a way that 1-6 just don't at all. There really is a massive change here, and over-devotion to the score I feel is more likely to link the 8th to the past than the future and thereby hamstring it.

I agree fully that the Symphony [no.8] in b is differring greatly from the Symphony [no.6] in C, but there is another Symphony ["no.7" D.729] in E in between, which apart from approximately half of the instrumentation exists in its entirety.
This is a kind of missing link between the b-minor and the C.

However, the b-minor still needs to be approached from the composer's past, not from a musical future which was literally out of his reach. Schubert has influenced Bruckner and Brahms and Mahler, not the other way around.
Hence a Bruckner symphony approached as an advanced Schubert is more to the point than vice versa.
Therefore rethinking the "romantic" approach e.g. à la Furtwängler back to Schubert's score is here IMO the right thing to do - historically informed indeed.

I'm not saying in advance of the results that there is anything wrong with this approach. HIPP has opened my ears to a great deal of music and there's plenty I wouldn't rush to hear any other way. But even so I would not say that a good non-HIPP performance is necessarily going to be less 'good' than another HIPP one. HIPP and ultra-close adherence to the composer's marking is in my book not a necessary, let alone a sufficient, condition for enjoyment.

that makes two of us - HIP often is just another interpretation, though it makes a difference where more versions of a work (especially corrupted ones) exist (Bruckner a good example)

[LeMartinPecheur]

Roehre: we're in great danger of agreeing so I've now stood down my nuclear squadron set to attack N. Wales

But...

However, the b-minor still needs to be approached from the composer's past, not from a musical future which was literally out of his reach. Schubert has influenced Bruckner and Brahms and Mahler, not the other way around.
Hence a Bruckner symphony approached as an advanced Schubert is more to the point than vice versa.
Therefore rethinking the "romantic" approach e.g. à la Furtwängler back to Schubert's score is the right thing to do - historically informed indeed.

...as per my previous posting I do feel that this more-or-less exclusive focus on what precedes the work may risk minimising what is new and revolutionary in it.

[Roehre]

Roehre: we're in great danger of agreeing so I've now stood down my nuclear squadron set to attack N. Wales

...as per my previous posting I do feel that this more-or-less exclusive focus on what precedes the work may risk minimising what is new and revolutionary in it.

LMP, may be you should try to get hold of one of the completions (i.e. orchestrations -as the short score is essentially complete in melodic as well as harmonic sense) of Schubert's Tenth, D.936a, an excellent recording exists with Mackerras on Hyperion (IIRC). Listen especially to the second mvt.
After that i think you will amend your vision of the b-minor winkeye:

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Some of us may appear to be poles apart in this fascinating discussion, but I'm reasonably certain that if were all thrown together in the same room, comparing recordings of this symphony, we'd get along like a house on fire with minimal differences.

[LeMartinPecheur]

LMP, may be you should try to get hold of one of the completions (i.e. orchestrations -as the short score is essentially complete in melodic as well as harmonic sense) of Schubert's Tenth, D.936a, an excellent recording exists with Mackerras on Hyperion (IIRC). Listen especially to the second mvt.
After that i think you will amend your vision of the b-minor winkeye:

OK, playing that disc now Roehre: it was in serious need of respinning

[vibratoforever]

"I believe that there are certain composers whose Musical imaginations and intelligence(s) stretched far beyond what the rest of us could begin to conceive - that is why they are referred to as "great"; because time and again they wrote things that redefine what sound can do in time, works that stun the mind and stir the passions far more than other Musicians. I don't think that there is anything controversial in making such a statement. I also believe that there are individual works of Music that also reveal insights into Music that surpass other works."

This mystical nonsense has little connection to the discussion about the score and the choices that face a musician performing the work. They are not seeking as claimed to "improve " the work but merely to do it and the composer justice!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This mystical nonsense has little connection to the discussion about the score and the choices that face a musician performing the work. They are not seeking as claimed to "improve " the work but merely to do it and the composer justice!

[Nick Armstrong]

Some of us may appear to be poles apart in this fascinating discussion, but I'm reasonably certain that if were all thrown together in the same room, comparing recordings of this symphony, we'd get along like a house on fire with minimal differences.

I'm sure that's right but it seems to me that it would speed the and improve the quality of the debate to avoid unnecessary phrases like

This mystical nonsense

[BBMmk2]

Some of us may appear to be poles apart in this fascinating discussion, but I'm reasonably certain that if were all thrown together in the same room, comparing recordings of this symphony, we'd get along like a house on fire with minimal differences.

I am sure this would sound like a great idea to do sometime EA?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I am sure this would sound like a great idea to do sometime EA?

I look forward to it.

[BBMmk2]

I look forward to it.

Cool! I have only a two double bed apartment so not enough room.

[P. G. Tipps]

Cool! I have only a two double bed apartment so not enough room.

Just as well as you presumably wouldn't wish to end up finding it 'on fire', Bbm ... ?

Interesting discussion, I agree ...

Am I the only member who finds himself in broad agreement with both sides of the argument here?

Great music is often quite beyond human logic, imo!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Rather than disturb the sensitivities of the permanently wobbly with further outpourings of "mystical nonsense" (and Happy New Year to you, too, Ari - wherever you are) I shall instead recount a lovely true story (sort-of against myself):

A member of the Skipton Brass Band was preparing for a National Brass Band competition, and noticed that one of the test pieces was Arthur Butterworth's Caliban, and as a friend of Arthur's, he 'phoned him to clarify some points about tempo which seemed a bit ambiguous. He was told to listen to the performance given by the Brighouse & Rastrick under the composer's supervision that was going to be broadcast later in the week. (This was a long time ago!)

The player listened very carefully, and made detailed notes of anything he thought might be useful. Skipton reached the final, and discovered that one of the judges was Mr Butterworth himself, so they all felt very smug.

They came last.

And were further astonished to read in the adjudicators' comments "FAR TOO SLOW!!!" in the composer's block capitals. A further 'phone call a couple of days later asking about his comments when they'd paid such close attention to the broadcast - "Oh, well, you see - after the first five performances, I changed my mind about how fast it should go."

Composers, eh?!