BaL 23.06.18 - Debussy: Sonata for Violin and Piano

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Nick Armstrong]

Schmaltz

Gesundheit!

[Nick Armstrong]

RVW made the remark about "just wanting to write a piece of music" relative to his 4th Symphony, even before the 6th (where in response to reviews by Frank Howes and others about post-nuclear holocausts he certainly made similarly exasperated remarks).

Wasn't it in relation to the 6th that he said that as far as he recalled, when writing the piece, he was pissed off about the construction of the Dorking By-Pass more than anything else...?

I'm enjoying your and ferney's discussion about the Debussy BAL and beyond - thank you both!

[ardcarp]

Schmaltz

Thonks.

[Master Jacques]

Wasn't it in relation to the 6th that he said that as far as he recalled, when writing the piece, he was pissed off about the construction of the Dorking By-Pass more than anything else...?

Ha, I like that. Nothing would surprise me about marvellous Uncle Ralph, a veritable tun of good sense!

[richardfinegold]

and not really a term that I would apply to either the fastidious Oistrakh or Heifetz, hard to imagine two figures less open to such excess. Yes period arrangements but that's neither a new phenomenon nor an extinct one.

Compared to the likes of Mischa Elman or Fritz Kreisler, I would agree with you about Oistrakh and Heifetz. Elman and Zimbalist, et. Al schmaltzed up everything they touched, but Heifetz made a few recordings where he would dab it in here and there. After all, he was an Auer pupil as well. And Oistrakh ‘s Debussy transcriptions can be a guilty high caloric indulgence, both for him and for us.
Not that any one asked or that it is relevant to this thread, but Oistrakh Beethoven VC recording with Cluytens is the greatest Violin recording ever made, imho

[Richard Barrett]

Wasn't it in relation to the 6th that he said that as far as he recalled, when writing the piece, he was pissed off about the construction of the Dorking By-Pass more than anything else...?

I often wonder (going right off topic here) when reading comments like that made by RVW whether he was just saying woteva to get rid of a silly line of questioning (composers get asked silly questions all the time you know) whereas actually the end of the 6th (for example) really is "about" what people say it is, or whether it's really true that he didn't think in such terms and he really just "wanted to write a piece of music", or whether he thought he just wanted to etc. but really he was doing something more than that, or (continue ad lib.) - I guess we will never know.

[jayne lee wilson]

Writing a piece like VW 6, in 1946-7, premiered in 1948...

Of course listeners are going to reference recent history against it. The work is - violent, lamenting, demonic, sardonic, tragic... and ends with the sound of... nothingness, empty musical space, musical eventlessness.... it disappears into silence. He did say this about it:

"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep." (Prospero, From The Tempest...)

It doesn't have to be read as a postwar tone-poem - but it is hard to escape the feeling of humanity overwhelmed by destruction beyond control, of dreams crashing into reality, followed inescapably by death.

If the Pastoral Symphony seems a lament for the young men who died on the killing fields of Paschendale and the Somme, then No.6 feels more universal still: as if depicting a sense of irrecoverable hopelessness - the mass of the dead beneath the rubble of bombed-out European cities. Here at the End of All Things, in the labour camps.

But it doesn't have to be any of these. It awakes such suggestions in the minds of its listeners as it will, which changes through time.
I suspect VW was irritated by an attempt to limit such a powerfully ambiguous, richly suggestive work of art to any specific meaning. Perhaps there was some fear of what he had created: some self- or emotional-denial, in there too.

But his comments aren't a license to hear it as some species of "pure music" without external reference, still less a tone-poem on the subject of the Dorking by-pass. That is only another type of limitation. It is an audibly and inescapably a very dark, even bleak creation.
No work of Art can be entirely free of the time in which it was created, whether a reflection, a protest, a denial, or an escape. Its meanings inhere in the echo-chambers of our culture - our performances, our endless reproductions, our data-retrieval, our associative minds...

[BBMmk2]

My paternal grandfather fought at The Somme.

[Richard Barrett]

I suspect VW was irritated by an attempt to limit such a powerfully ambiguous, richly suggestive work of art to any specific meaning. Perhaps there was some fear of what he had created: some self- or emotional-denial, in there too.
But his comments aren't a license to hear it as some species of "pure music" without external reference, still less a tone-poem on the subject of the Dorking by-pass. That is only another type of limitation. It is an audibly and inescapably a very dark, even bleak creation.
No work of Art can be entirely free of the time in which it was created, whether a reflection, a protest, a denial, or an escape. Its meanings inhere in the echo-chambers of our culture - our performances, our endless reproductions, our data-retrieval, our associative minds...

That is pretty much what I was saying. An important point of reference here is discussion of "meaning" in the music of Shostakovich, about which there are numerous conflicting opinions (some of which claim not necessarily convincingly to come from the composer). The beautiful thing about music is that they can all be true... as in one of my favourite points for focusing my thinking, Paul Dirac's "The opposite of a simple truth is a simple falsehood. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth." I tend to resist any one-directional interpretation of any matter of musical expression, and that certainly applies to the piece we're supposed to be talking about in this thread. The kind of performance I would gravitate towards is one that creates space for the listener's interpretation (which doesn't of course mean being noncommittal).

[aeolium]

The beautiful thing about music is that they can all be true...

Yes, indeed, and I would go even further to suggest that not even the composer's expressed intentions in relation to a piece of his own music are necessarily exclusive of other interpretations and meanings. We know from literature that there are many examples of works where the writer reveals more of his own psychology than he consciously intends, and the same is surely true of music. To mention just one example here I'd cite Jon Vickers' interpretation of the role of Peter Grimes, which the composer apparently loathed as being the polar opposite of what he had intended in creating the role for the very different Peter Pears - yet to me Vickers brings out something that is contained within the score but which perhaps Britten was uncomfortable about.

[Beresford]

I was intrigued by the piano playing of Huw Watkins (in the BAL) - showing how the chords were put together - and of Radu Lupu, who seems to reach things that other pianists do not. But I am not sure that either of them, with their respective partners, found that joyful chamber music quality of phrases and changes being passed around. It is present in some of the performances by less famous musicians.

Nor do I think Pike and Roscoe were on exactly the same wavelength in this regard, and on second listening I found her interpretation "magical", to quote the reviewer, but rather sad. But Poulet & Lee were very jolly, with no schmalz.

Dying Debussy witnessed German military might coming near to Paris, putting an end to his dream of a "French" music.
I wished I could have convinced him that all periods of domination come to an end (even in football), and that his music was a new beginning that would outlast all wars.

[Master Jacques]

But it doesn't have to be any of these. It awakes such suggestions in the minds of its listeners as it will, which changes through time. I suspect VW was irritated by an attempt to limit such a powerfully ambiguous, richly suggestive work of art to any specific meaning. Perhaps there was some fear of what he had created: some self- or emotional-denial, in there too.

A fine post, and an interesting psychological suggestion. RVW certainly had some such fear about the (equally contentious, as far as "meaning" was concerned) 4th Symphony, when he said "I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant".

I agree with you very strongly, that it is the ambiguity inherent in these symphonies which makes them universal, and renewable. And (coming back to BaL) I feel the same is true for the Debussy Violin and Piano Sonata: a performance which fails to convey its many-sided - even contradictory - nature, sells it short.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

the Debussy Violin and Piano Sonata: a performance which fails to convey its many-sided - even contradictory - nature, sells it short.

But a performer can only achieve this if s/he pays close (and, yes, "strict") attention to what Debussy wrote. Substituting his ideas with the performers' own takes listeners further away from "its many-sided - even contradictory - nature".

[Master Jacques]

But a performer can only achieve this if s/he pays close (and, yes, "strict") attention to what Debussy wrote. Substituting his ideas with the performers' own takes listeners further away from "its many-sided - even contradictory - nature".

"Close attention", yes of course. It is no good having, Morecombe-like, "all the right notes though not necessarily in the right order".

But much depends on how you would define "strict" ...

Let's take the first movement, with the winning Pike/Roscoe runner from Saturday's BaL:

Now as I ditched this from my library some while ago, I must confine myself to a close listen to the 30 second preview of that first movement on Amazon (18 bars before Fig 1 to 4 bars before 2). During this stretch, the basic tempo played (dotted minim=65 or so) is considerably faster than Debussy marks (dotted minim=55), and at the Appassionato marking the players accelerate further, which is not what Debussy asks for. Most markedly, I can't hear the marked diminuendo to "p" at Fig.1 bars 9-10: instead we get an interesting, acerbic tightening of tone and crescendo, neither of which are asked for.

So if we're being "strict" with Pike and Roscoe, do we have to consign them to the bin, for these thirty seconds of relative freedom? Actually this moment at Fig. 1, 9-10, provides us with a rather neat, imaginative interpretative touch from Pike - in the spirit of the piece, I would say, though undoubtedly straying from the letter of what Debussy marked.

I would actually be with you, I think, in having a problem with their fast basic tempo, which seems to me to risk skating over the surface, producing a breathless uniformity which seems to me not to get the most out of the fast violin figuration. It sounds too "virtuoso" for my tastes. Debussy might be trusted to know what he was after with his dotted minim=55, and Pike/Roscoe demonstrate the perils of going faster than that.

So I'm not sure where that leaves us, except to question exactly what Dr Rae meant about "just sticking to the score", or however she put it. If these 30 seconds are anything to go by, her own library choice doesn't do that with any particular fidelity!