BaL 16.12.17 - Schubert: Piano Sonata no. 21 in B flat D960

[MickyD]

Much earlier in this thread, I mentioned having a CD in which the booklet contained a conversation between Brendel and Staier. After much searching in my collection, I find that they weren't discussing Schubert at all but two Mozart piano concertos. Sorry, blame it on my memory and my far too large collection.

[Alison]

I love a BAL thread that really takes off before broadcast.

This time last year it was Bruckner 3.

[Richard Barrett]

Please don't put words into my mouth: I LOVE Schubert's late works, but surely that doesn't preclude a little discrimination, does it?

I'm sorry if I misunderstood, when people call a piece of music "ugly", "weak", lacking in balance, structure and impact - in the form very clearly envisaged by the composer - that generally means they don't like it. What you seem to be saying is that you like it if some parts of it are removed. I don't feel one gets to make those decisions: interesting that you use the word "LOVE" and earlier on you anthropomorphised the "artwork" - surely a love for Schubert's compositions would involve understanding why they're as they are and learning to love those things that one doesn't initially relate to, rather than demanding that they be changed to accord with one's previously held preferences - just as with another human being, one might say.

The scale of Schubert's first movement is one of the features that make it what it is (like it or not!), just like the intrusive passage before the exposition repeat which gains part of its structural/poetic significance precisely through its intrusiveness, and through its proportion to the movement as a whole, neither of which feature is unique to this work in Schubert's late music so it really isn't good enough to suggest he really didn't know what he was doing.

I'm sorry too if I seem to be dragging this discussion out beyond its useful life, but in fact it's really not just about this Schubert sonata but concerns relationships in general between compositions, interpreters and listeners!

[Keraulophone]

I'm not sure but I have the impression Caliban was using what is generally known as a figure of speech.

I’m sure he was, but since I’d just been listening intensively to Pires’s very rewarding recording of D960, the very idea that anyone could ever achieve ‘perfection’ in a performance or recording of such a complex work needled me just a little bit! Maybe it’s easier to achieve near-perfection in D664?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Brendel thinks he knows better than Schubert.

This reminds me of a broadcast interview with Jorge Bolet. This same topic was being discussed. Bolet insisted that he had the utmost respect for the composer's written score in general, but went on to say that generally a composer composed a work in a relatively short time and then moved on. Performers might spend a lifetime revisiting the same work, and eventually would know the music better than the composer ever did, and with that in mind, would occasionally make small adjustments.

This seems quite a powerful argument.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This seems quite a powerful argument.

Until you think about it more carefully. No matter how long a performer spends with a work, they do not have the intensity of association with it that comes from the process of composing it. Nor is the composer distracted from their work by having to prepare works by other composers (often from completely diverse periods of Music History) for public performance as are jobbing performers such as Bolet. Nor are such performers familiar with the daily "exercise" of writing Music and/or of thinking about how Music can be composed.

But the clincher - particularly apposite in Bolet's case - is that if these "small adjustments" are really so much better than the composer's original (or even "just a teenie weenie bit better"), how come they aren't taken up by other performers? Why is it that only Bolet played Bolet's "small adjustments"? (And why didn't every listener agree that the "adjustments" were necessary.

All Bolet was really saying was that he couldn't get the written text to fit the way he wanted to play it. Which is perhaps why his recordings of those works aren't greatly impressive on listeners who weren't around when he was performing. That's my point - performers come and go; but the works they play stay. Even without the "small adjustments".

[Richard Barrett]

This seems quite a powerful argument.

It is certainly true that performers might spend a lot more time with a composer's work than the composer did, but there's a distinction to be made here: a performer's long-term involvement will increase their knowledge about what the composer wrote, but not necessarily their insight into why the composer wrote it that way at the time it was written. Making the kind of changes that Brendel does is a bit like saying "if Schubert had lived long enough to spend another ten or twenty or thirty years thinking about that issue he would probably agree with me", which is pure speculation - the Schubert of 1860 could just as easily have been far more radical in his structural thinking than the Schubert of 1828, and would have regarded Brendel's opinion as spineless and misguided! In the absence of any countervailing evidence in this matter, why not either play the music Schubert wrote, or be honest that one "just doesn't like" the music Schubert wrote and prefers to bowdlerise it.

[silvestrione]

I'm sorry if I misunderstood, when people call a piece of music "ugly", "weak", lacking in balance, structure and impact - in the form very clearly envisaged by the composer - that generally means they don't like it. What you seem to be saying is that you like it if some parts of it are removed. I don't feel one gets to make those decisions: interesting that you use the word "LOVE" and earlier on you anthropomorphised the "artwork" - surely a love for Schubert's compositions would involve understanding why they're as they are and learning to love those things that one doesn't initially relate to, rather than demanding that they be changed to accord with one's previously held preferences - just as with another human being, one might say.

The scale of Schubert's first movement is one of the features that make it what it is (like it or not!), just like the intrusive passage before the exposition repeat which gains part of its structural/poetic significance precisely through its intrusiveness, and through its proportion to the movement as a whole, neither of which feature is unique to this work in Schubert's late music so it really isn't good enough to suggest he really didn't know what he was doing.

I'm sorry too if I seem to be dragging this discussion out beyond its useful life, but in fact it's really not just about this Schubert sonata but concerns relationships in general between compositions, interpreters and listeners!

Well, you just repeat the points under discussion as if they facts, on your side. 'rather than demanding that they be changed to accord with one's previously held preferences'...is another misrepresentation. I've being trying to learn why Brendel's performance (and views) are as they are, and seeing if I can love them, to adapt your language. You want to reduce everything to preferences, likes, dislikes, but I guess that is the Zeitgeist.

I certainly thought I was trying to develop, what I thought might be quite subtle, arguments that concern 'relationships in general between compositions, interpreters and listeners'. 'Anthropomorphising'...clumsy word. It's common for artists of all kinds to talk about the emerging work taking on a life of its own, and seeming to dictate to the artist how it should continue. Or the artist might find him/herself waiting for the art work to suggest how it should finish or reach a satisfying shape...i know an acomplished poet who talks like that, and lots of novelists do. I was making an extension of the idea to the recreative artist, and more questionably, bringing in the Lawrence idea of the artwork knowing better than its creator. All exploratory thinking really...

Anyway, it's the season of goodwill: thanks for your thoughts and insights.

[gurnemanz]

Re repeats: I've just been reading Brendel's "Music, Sense and Nonsense" where he quotes Edwin Fischer, who quotes Brahms (p149):

"When asked after a performance of the Second Symphony why the exposition was not repeated, Brahms replied: Formerly, when the piece was new to the audience, the repeat was necessary; today, the work is so well known that I can go on without it."

If Brahms thought like that, I suppose it is possible that Schubert might also have.

[BBMmk2]

Re repeats: I've just been reading Brendel's "Music, Sense and Nonsense" where he quotes Edwin Fischer, who quotes Brahms (p149):

"When asked after a performance of the Second Symphony why the exposition was not repeated, Brahms replied: Formerly, when the piece was new to the audience, the repeat was necessary; today, the work is so well known that I can go on without it."

If Brahms thought like that, I suppose it is possible that Schubert might also have.

I always think that if the interpreter feels as though the repeat is necessary, then they should have the artistice licience to do so, whether the composer wrote it or not.

[HighlandDougie]

I hesitate to contribute to this lofty ding-dong but this blog post (which echoes what Richard B has been saying) made sense to me:

https://crosseyedpianist.com/2012/12/14/to-repeat-or-not-to-repeat-thoughts-on-schuberts-d960/

[Richard Barrett]

If Brahms thought like that, I suppose it is possible that Schubert might also have.

Except (a) that the first-time passage in the first movement of Brahms 2 is composed so as to emphasise continuity, whereas that in D960 does the opposite, so that the poetic identity of the movement is rather deeply changed by omitting it, (b) that Brahms was of a different generation from Schubert during a period when music was rapidly evolving, (c) that a more appropriate comparison might be with Bruckner, whose music is much more strongly influenced by Schubert even though he belonged to the same generation as Brahms, and one aspect of this influence is indeed in an openness to structural repetition, and I don't think he would have justified this in terms of reacquainting the audience with unfamiliar music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If Brahms thought like that

If.

You're quoting Brendel quoting Fischer quoting Brahms (in translation). A little more consideration of what exactly Brahms said, when, and to whom is necessary before we can make any conclusions ... and then go on to ask why, then, around a quarter of Brahms' Sonata structures scattered throughout his career don't have Exposition repeats - didn't the "newness" of those works matter?

[gurnemanz]

If.

You're quoting Brendel quoting Fischer quoting Brahms (in translation). A little more consideration of what exactly Brahms said, when, and to whom is necessary before we can make any conclusions ... and then go on to ask why, then, around a quarter of Brahms' Sonata structures scattered throughout his career don't have Exposition repeats - didn't the "newness" of those works matter?

Getting beyond my job description here - neither pianist nor musicologist but mere punter. I'm just lobbing stuff in from the sidelines. Personally, I would prefer to hear the repeat, but I respect Brendel's argumentation. I am a Germanist, however, and would have been very interested to scrutinise the original quotes and their context. I did google around a bit but could not find anything.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Getting beyond my job description here - neither pianist nor musicologist but mere punter. I'm just lobbing stuff in from the sidelines. Personally, I would prefer to hear the repeat, but I respect Brendel's argumentation. I am a Germanist, however, and would have been very interested to scrutinise the original quotes and their context. I did google around a bit but could not find anything.

Sorry - re-reading my #133 I realize it sounds a lot "crosser" than I heard when I wrote it.

Alison's comment in #122 is perceptive; and IIRC the "taking off" in the Bruckner #3 Thread had the same ignition as this one - the "division" between those who trust the composer's ideas, and those who consider that the performer has a right to alter what the composer wrote in the interests of "interpretation". The arguments will arise again, no doubt.