BaL 29.06.19 - Mozart: Piano Quartets 1 & 2

[edashtav]

Jayne writes,"With all the aforementioned effects on performances themselves... but - paradoxically perhaps.....
There's no going back...."

A truth since Adam and Eve's and as true of musical truths as of nuclear bombs.

We need to find a more tolerant, pluralist view: great performances come in all shapes and forms whether they're as hippy as Kim Kardashian or straight up and down like Twiggy.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

"Before HIPPs gets a bad name"? My God DS, I think you'll find that already pertains around here!

That's interesting, because from my perspective, the opposite is true.

As I've said many time before, HIPP does interest me, but the superior tone adopted by quite a few HIPPsters can be most irritating, and sometimes this leads to polarisation of views. We become like football supporters, over-egging the merits of our own team at the expense of the other.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The idea that Mozart or Beethoven would have preferred a modern concert grand could they only have heard one, is to say the least wildly speculative, and belongs to that old simplistic view of historical progress, where newer is inherently better. Anyone relishing the sounds of baroque woodwinds in Telemann, Zelenka, Rameau etc. already knows how false this is.

I suggest we are not comparing like with like here. Baroque woodwinds are indeed very fine, but the pianoforte of the 18th century was still very basic. I've played on a one-keyed flute, and it's capable of great expression - in fact I could convince most of the population that it's a modern instrument by the sound alone. Not so with a Clementi piano, which is fascinating to play, but not so much fun to listen to.

[edashtav]

I suggest we are not comparing like with like here. Baroque woodwinds are indeed very fine, but the pianoforte of the 18th century was still very basic. I've played on a one-keyed flute, and it's capable of great expression - in fact I could convince most of the population that it's a modern instrument by the sound alone. Not so with a Clementi piano, which is fascinating to play, but not so much fun to listen to.

This board , Alpie, contains a Rainbow coalition, including folk, like me, who can and do, enjoy listening to Clementi pianos and earlier but can, occasionally, recognise that performances on bully boy modern grands can transcend their over-sufficiencies.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This board , Alpie, contains a Rainbow coalition, including folk, like me, who can and do, enjoy listening to Clementi pianos and earlier but can, occasionally, recognise that performances on bully boy modern grands can transcend their over-sufficiencies.

That statement could be viewed as containing bullying overtones.

[jayne lee wilson]

I suggest we are not comparing like with like here. Baroque woodwinds are indeed very fine, but the pianoforte of the 18th century was still very basic. I've played on a one-keyed flute, and it's capable of great expression - in fact I could convince most of the population that it's a modern instrument by the sound alone. Not so with a Clementi piano, which is fascinating to play, but not so much fun to listen to.

I wasn't going to come back on this - I feel I've said all I have to say, really - but if only you would immerse yourself in the sound of the "Johann Schantz pianoforte ca. 1790" Paul Badura-Skoda plays on his recording of k478/493 with the Festetics. A lovely instrument with especially fine mellow resonance in the lower registers, I can't see how anyone could say it is inadequate to fully articulating and expressing all Mozart's music has to tell us. That especial gift of a well-fettled 18th C. piano, that its articulacy blends better with that of the strings, the meld of their musical voices, is very striking here.

Always telling to return to less-favoured recordings after a few days' grace, I was newly impressed with these performances. Intending to call up the Kuijkens (after the Beaux Arts) I miscued and this began instead... thinking I'd underrated dear Sigiswald....(the innocent ear!)... then I saw who it was.... I was so gripped by the first movement (compellingly urgent and dramatic here, from the start) I played through k478 immediately. Liquidity of timbre, volatility of mood.
How playful is the finale of k493! After all the joyful surprises of the coda I was convinced there is no finer account on record.

It's like the difference between visiting a foreign city as a tourist, or living and working there, learning the language etc. Visiting Schantz County briefly from Steinway City, you've not time to accustom yourself to the voices, the accents, you end up with comic book associations about HonkyTonk and Rocky Racoon....(essentially a fear-based response to novelty or unfamiliarity).
But - live there, steep in the culture, find affection for the new voices, grow new ears....you might not to want to go home to the city just yet...

Lovely record anyway .....for adventurers and connoisseurs to seek out...

[richardfinegold]

Anna Bylsma once remarked that with his cello, it was "harder to sing, but easier to speak..."
This was during a Radio 3 concert of Bach Cello Suites in .... IIRC the mid-90s... many more songful restorations out there now...

(I would, subjectively, take articulacy over legato in Mozart (almost) every time...not sure why legato should be deemed "crucial" (rather than a sometimes desirable option); it wouldn't necessarily help e.g.the development of k478 (i) to have its most telling impact...)

“Articulacy”? Will have to look that one up.
Mozart is reputed to have said that his music should “flow like oil”. If that isn’t an endorsement of the importance of legato in his music, then I don’t know what is. And I rarely get this feeling from a fortepiano. Just listen to Klein in the final bars of the slow movement of the second Piano Quartet. He sounds like an elegant figure skater gliding smoothly across a a frozen lake. A fortepiano trying to sustain the same line resembles someone walking in wet concrete in galoshes by comparison

[jayne lee wilson]

I dunno Richard, concrete?.... more of these fearful trivialising comparisons....you really feel that wild, volatile k493 finale could ever evoke a smooth figure-skater's glide...?

See directly above re. Badura-Skoda and the Festetics I've just been revelling in.... in that very finale, the stunning virtuosity & dynamic excitement would be more aptly described as Mozart plays Kitten on the Keys....

Wolfie's own bar-room improvisations might not have been too far from Zez Confrey anyway.... (come on, get in my time machine...)...

[Tony Halstead]

That statement could be viewed as containing bullying overtones.

[cloughie]

I dunno Richard, concrete?.... more of these fearful trivialising comparisons....you really feel that wild, volatile k493 finale could ever evoke a smooth figure-skater's glide...?

See directly above re. Badura-Skoda and the Festetics I've just been revelling in.... in that very finale, the stunning virtuosity & dynamic excitement would be more aptly described as Mozart plays Kitten on the Keys....

Wolfie's own bar-room improvisations might not have been too far from Zez Confrey anyway.... (come on, get in my time machine...)...

Isn’t there KAnh239 Variatons on a Kitten scampering over the fp! As for Confrey - don’t see much WAM on his list of piano rolls! It’s a shame Les Dawson died before HIPP was really established!

[doversoul1]

if only you would immerse yourself in the sound of the "Johann Schantz pianoforte ca. 1790"

Do you not think that this is more than a little out of place to say to someone who learned, performed, studied and taught music all his life until his retirement and is still active in the various fields of musical activities (guessing from his posts)? We can recommend what we like as much as we want but to insist that any different responses from our own are the result of lack of attention or understanding is, I think, plain wrong where listening to music is concerned.

[Goon525]

I've just listened to the winning versions, and they strike me as a perfectly sane, justifiable choice, well recorded and played with an echt-Mozartian pianist. Modern instruments but with a lightness of touch. Recommended.

(Just en-passant I for one welcome the absence of second-half repeats in the first movements of the Faure Quartett. Where they are included, as in the Lewis/Leopold version that I own, they make the first movements absurdly long with the material struggling to carry the weight of this length. This isn't Bruckner! For the same reason (amongst many others), my preferred version of the Haydn London symphonies is the Marc Minkowski, thrilling performances which last an appropriate 22 minutes or so, rather than half an hour if all the sonata form movements are lumbered with second half repeats. I suspect, though, that I'm in a minority here!)

[LeMartinPecheur]

....you might not to want to go home to the city just yet...

Slightly OT but I hope relevant to the wider issues here. Jayne, are you acquainted with the new Schiff ECM set of Schubert sonatas D958/ 959 etc on an 1826 Brodmann? What grabbed my attention most in Michael Church's review in the latest BBC MM is his closing comment: 'His single achievement is to make me feel I never want to hear this music on a Steinway again.'

Well, I'm all for new perspectives on familiar music - I already own Badura-Skoda's set of the complete Schubert sonatas on a variety of contemporary Viennese pianos - but the prospect of throwing away all my many performances on later pianos does not thrill Nor having to avoid all live performances since they haven't really invented the fortepiano in Cornwall yet

(Not sure incidentally what he meant by 'single achievement ': he is mightily impressed by instrument, performance and recording, rating it double-5-star. Perhaps he meant 'singular'?)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

(Just en-passant I for one welcome the absence of second-half repeats in the first movements of the Faure Quartett. Where they are included, as in the Lewis/Leopold version that I own, they make the first movements absurdly long with the material struggling to carry the weight of this length. This isn't Bruckner! For the same reason (amongst many others), my preferred version of the Haydn London symphonies is the Marc Minkowski, thrilling performances which last an appropriate 22 minutes or so, rather than half an hour if all the sonata form movements are lumbered with second half repeats. I suspect, though, that I'm in a minority here!)

I’m happy to join you in the perceived minority who don’t like like this structural nightmare - one that composers eventually overcame.

[Master Jacques]

Mozart is reputed to have said that his music should “flow like oil”.

Mozart said a lot of things, Richard - and presumably this particular statement wasn't made in English, or American. I'd be curious to know what your source (or sauce!) is for this one?

He also got cheesed off if audiences failed to applaud, not just at the end of movements, but also during movements - often providing musical "hooks" specially to encourage them to do just that. So times and manners change, in the listening as much as the playing.