Forgive my reprise of this (I came late to the thread after enforced, prolonged absence) but....
….As for exposition repeats themselves, I often wonder why, given its ubiquity in the classical concerto, the “double exposition” with varied repeat never caught on in sonatas or symphonies. I heard Hans Keller making this point on R3 once, commenting on the Beethoven Op.59/1 and Brahms 4th Symphony where the music seems about to repeat but dives off into the development, that it was as if a potential evolution or possibility of sonata form within a symphonic context had been bypassed.
And why do 20th Century Symphonists largely do without repeats? (Not to mention Bruckner, who, after following the sonata-rules in some juvenilia, never seems to have even remotely considered them… there are some fascinating, unanswered questions about this structural principle.)
Similarly, why do so few performers make anything creative of that exposition repeat anyway?
So they give us their faithful reading of the score in the exposition itself - OK, we get that… and then…. give us the same thing all over again - usually with scarcely any variation in their interpretative approach.
Why not use this opportunity to offer some creative or critical insights, some novel slant or higher entertainment, via their performance into the music they’ve just played? Is that such an outrageous suggestion?
***
Schubert’s Piano Music had a visionary, compelling character for me from early on. It often seemed as, or more, important than any other. I carried it everywhere in my head, a constant companion and accompaniment.
But once I’d heard Richter in Schubert, nothing else would do. Early or late, sonatas or moments musicaux; Kempff intégrale, Brendel, Uchida, Lewis…. all stayed on the shelves, save for…. Michelangeli in the single d537 sonata he deigned to perform. (Reflecting again now, Sofronitsky might have a place somewhere in my pantheon too - now there's an obscure d960 worth close attention…).
I was actually recording Richter live from the RFH when he played the d.894. I was stunned - devastated - by the first movement, nearly half an hour long. I’d heard nothing like it, but such was its length it overshot my SAX-90 by a few seconds of the finale (which stunned me again by ending softly!).
Of course, the pain of that failure-to-record only made the experience the more intense. How could I bear to be without it? I kept the tape and listened to it, agonisingly, poignantly, incomplete….
It was some 10 years later before I had a CD player, and Richter’s recordings of d.894 on Philips, and Brilliant Classics. (I thought BBC Legends carried that RFH recital, but I can’t find it now…)
And I feel just the same about his various d960s (and perhaps even more so of his extraordinary Reliquie, or the 575, 664 and 784 sonatas - that sense of the visionary, the deeply withdrawn and serene, the sharp-pricking instant of cognition or recognition) if without the lighting-bolt sense of revelation that d894 had wrought - the first Schubert I ever heard Richter play.
….As for exposition repeats themselves, I often wonder why, given its ubiquity in the classical concerto, the “double exposition” with varied repeat never caught on in sonatas or symphonies. I heard Hans Keller making this point on R3 once, commenting on the Beethoven Op.59/1 and Brahms 4th Symphony where the music seems about to repeat but dives off into the development, that it was as if a potential evolution or possibility of sonata form within a symphonic context had been bypassed.
And why do 20th Century Symphonists largely do without repeats? (Not to mention Bruckner, who, after following the sonata-rules in some juvenilia, never seems to have even remotely considered them… there are some fascinating, unanswered questions about this structural principle.)
Similarly, why do so few performers make anything creative of that exposition repeat anyway?
So they give us their faithful reading of the score in the exposition itself - OK, we get that… and then…. give us the same thing all over again - usually with scarcely any variation in their interpretative approach.
Why not use this opportunity to offer some creative or critical insights, some novel slant or higher entertainment, via their performance into the music they’ve just played? Is that such an outrageous suggestion?
***
Schubert’s Piano Music had a visionary, compelling character for me from early on. It often seemed as, or more, important than any other. I carried it everywhere in my head, a constant companion and accompaniment.
But once I’d heard Richter in Schubert, nothing else would do. Early or late, sonatas or moments musicaux; Kempff intégrale, Brendel, Uchida, Lewis…. all stayed on the shelves, save for…. Michelangeli in the single d537 sonata he deigned to perform. (Reflecting again now, Sofronitsky might have a place somewhere in my pantheon too - now there's an obscure d960 worth close attention…).
I was actually recording Richter live from the RFH when he played the d.894. I was stunned - devastated - by the first movement, nearly half an hour long. I’d heard nothing like it, but such was its length it overshot my SAX-90 by a few seconds of the finale (which stunned me again by ending softly!).
Of course, the pain of that failure-to-record only made the experience the more intense. How could I bear to be without it? I kept the tape and listened to it, agonisingly, poignantly, incomplete….
It was some 10 years later before I had a CD player, and Richter’s recordings of d.894 on Philips, and Brilliant Classics. (I thought BBC Legends carried that RFH recital, but I can’t find it now…)
And I feel just the same about his various d960s (and perhaps even more so of his extraordinary Reliquie, or the 575, 664 and 784 sonatas - that sense of the visionary, the deeply withdrawn and serene, the sharp-pricking instant of cognition or recognition) if without the lighting-bolt sense of revelation that d894 had wrought - the first Schubert I ever heard Richter play.
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