BaL 29.06.19 - Mozart: Piano Quartets 1 & 2

[ardcarp]

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

I agree...sort of. It's horses for courses. In the less exalted world of amateur and semi-pro music making, sometimes aimed at a 'general' public or even youngsters, second-half repeats will often make a classical symphony tedious. And we want to switch people on, not off.

[jayne lee wilson]

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'?)

Yes those Schiff Schubert ECM releases are wondrous indeed..... but like yourself, I still return often to (say) Richter in the same repertoire, on his various Bösendorfers and Yahamas...

(From the extensive very detailed ECM note about the Brodmann "A fortepiano of this time deliberately has no unified sound covering the entire keyboard, but different timbres for the bass, middle and treble compasses. The comparatively thin bass strings produce a quite transparent sound that avoids the danger of covering the treble.")
They also have four pedals...(soft, bassoon, moderator, sustain).

(Badura-Skoda uses a modern Bösendorfer when it seems apt....“What I like about Bösendorfer is the singing sound as well as the evenness in all registers. The balance between the reverberation and the attack—this is unique.”)
Brodmann's apprentice was..... one Ignaz Bösendorfer, who took over his workshop in1828.

A rich tradition....So much fun, so much beauty, to choose from... why deprive yourself...

***
As for second-half movement repeats.... a surprising number of recent Haydn recordings do include them (Fey, Antonini's 2032 etc, not to mention Harnoncourt's vast epic Paris set with the WCM)....
Much to reflect upon... but I guess that really is another story...

[makropulos]

Oh dear. The disc turned out to have been sold with a large 30mm x 1mm scuff curving from the centre towards the rim. This has rendered it unreadable, let alone playable. Return request initiated.

Not one of my proudest moments, Bryn –I seem to remember that it had to be written at breakneck speed to an impossible deadline. But for some reason I don't think I ever got a copy of the disc.

[cloughie]

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.

He probably wouldn't have liked Bolero?

[Master Jacques]

He probably wouldn't have liked Bolero?

I'm not so sure. The man who adored Allegri's almost equally repetitive Miserere at first (and only) hearing enough to memorise the thing in his head - and write it down later, contrary to Papal rules - would surely have been fascinated by Ravel's new take on variation form, through instrumentation rather than rhythmic or melodic variants.

Mind you, he would have expected audiences to applaud each individual, instrumental "riff", rather than sitting through the whole work quietly, like stuffed shirts!

[visualnickmos]

....sitting through the whole work quietly, like stuffed shirts!

I love the vision of total incongruity you conjure up, of sitting through the Bolero, like stuffed shirts!

[cloughie]

I'm not so sure. The man who adored Allegri's almost equally repetitive Miserere at first (and only) hearing enough to memorise the thing in his head - and write it down later, contrary to Papal rules - would surely have been fascinated by Ravel's new take on variation form, through instrumentation rather than rhythmic or melodic variants.

Mind you, he would have expected audiences to applaud each individual, instrumental "riff", rather than sitting through the whole work quietly, like stuffed shirts!

No he wouldn’t he’d say what’s this ... and when does the tune start!

[Mal]

He probably wouldn't have liked Bolero?

Yes, not enough notes :)

[richardfinegold]

I'm not so sure. The man who adored Allegri's almost equally repetitive Miserere at first (and only) hearing enough to memorise the thing in his head - and write it down later, contrary to Papal rules - would surely have been fascinated by Ravel's new take on variation form, through instrumentation rather than rhythmic or melodic variants.

Mind you, he would have expected audiences to applaud each individual, instrumental "riff", rather than sitting through the whole work quietly, like stuffed shirts!

Except that he wasn’t a man when he did his Miserere thievery, more like a young adolescent. As he matured, his music abounded in development and modulations. One of the joys of WAM is when the listener is set up for what appears to be a simple repetition of previously stated themes are the tangents that he spins off and then second degree tangents before finally bring a movement to a resolution. I again reference II from the second Piano Quartet; those closing bars remind me of a butterfly doing endless unexpected turns before finally landing. The mature Mozart is the last Composer that I would cite as someone who favored mere repetition.

[Master Jacques]

The mature Mozart is the last Composer that I would cite as someone who favored mere repetition.

Quite right: and he would never have been so deaf as to hear Bolero as "mere repetition". It is, as I hope I've indicated, anything but.

(And was Mozart ever at heart anything other than an adolescent, "mere" or otherwise? Are any of us? Perish the idea of "growing up". His very last works acquire a new simplicity and refinement of thought, working away from the kind of rococo "butterfly" imagery you nicely define. Another twenty years, and he'd probably have been writing Bolero himself - he did get as far as a rather good fandango, as opera fans will know!)

[gurnemanz]

Rifling though some old Proms progs looking for something else, I discovered that I actually heard the G minor Quartet at an Albert Hall Prom in 1972. Barenboim with Kenneth Sillito, Cecil Aronowitz and Douglas Cummings. A busy evening for him. He went on to play and conduct the K456 Concerto with the ECO and then take on Mozart's Requiem after the interval.

[pastoralguy]

Rifling though some old Proms progs looking for something else, I discovered that I actually heard the G minor Quartet at an Albert Hall Prom in 1972. Barenboim with Kenneth Sillito, Cecil Aronowitz and Douglas Cummings. A busy evening for him. He went on to play and conduct the K456 Concerto with the ECO and then take on Mozart's Requiem after the interval.

A very fine trio of string players M

[LeMartinPecheur]

Rifling though some old Proms progs looking for something else, I discovered that I actually heard the G minor Quartet at an Albert Hall Prom in 1972. Barenboim with Kenneth Sillito, Cecil Aronowitz and Douglas Cummings. A busy evening for him. He went on to play and conduct the K456 Concerto with the ECO and then take on Mozart's Requiem after the interval.

I was there too! Just finished school, the pleasures of youth left behind and looking forward to the pleasures of adultery, as someone once put it Stayed with relatives in London and went to the next night also, Elgar Violin Concerto (Menuhin) and RVW Symph 6, BBCSO/ Boult (plus Priaulx Rainier's Requiem from the BBC Chorus).

My first experience of a top-rank concert on paper that proved very disappointing on the night

[Tony Halstead]

I was there too! Just finished school, the pleasures of youth left behind and looking forward to the pleasures of adultery, as someone once put it Stayed with relatives in London and went to the next night also, Elgar Violin Concerto (Menuhin) and RVW Symph 6, BBCSO/ Boult (plus Priaulx Rainier's Requiem from the BBC Chorus).

My first experience of a top-rank concert on paper that proved very disappointing on the night

Errr... sorry to be stupid, but which one was disappointing? The ECO/ Barenboim or the BBCSO/ Boult?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Errr... sorry to be stupid, but which one was disappointing? The ECO/ Barenboim or the BBCSO/ Boult?

The latter I'm afraid.