Bal 8.02.20/13.6.20 - Mozart: Symphony no. 39 in E flat K.543

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Oh God, no.....I can hear it in my head already...

How about elegance, grace, a bit of restraint and under-statement perhaps, songfulness and sweetness, vigour at times certainly, but every detail, not explicit please, but in place so you get a sense of the whole?

You mean played with a sense of good taste? Definitely worth a try.

[Pianoman]

So - Mozart 39.......
You want - modern, fast, sharply articulated, muscular, dynamic, upfront-immediate with every detail explicit....?
Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti....

Out in 2016 on ABC-CD as part of all the last three live ("Mozart's Last Symphonies"), I loved it straight away - so pleased to find it sounding just as good, if not better on this revisit...
Very exciting but tender where needed.... a great "modern choice".....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/mozarts-last-symphonies-richard-tognetti-australian-chamber-orchestra/0002894814038

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozarts-Las...0871485&sr=8-3

Thanks for the recommendation, I've just downloaded this, very impressive. I note some reviews found it 'aggressive' which I don't hear at all, just 'energised' i suppose (all I can think of at the mo...) but a really compulsive listen. In fact, I feel Mackerras being ousted...

[Master Jacques]

You mean played with a sense of good taste? Definitely worth a try.

Quite. The Tognetti approach is a bit like one of those over-enthusiastic dogs on the loose - more interested in rushing around, marking individual trees than in sniffing the subtle scents of the wood. Not to my taste at all, I'm afraid, in Mozart or anything much else. Phrase clipping is pervasive, to the point of mannerism. I find it affected, designer rococo, 'Mozart-lite'. But each to their own.

[jayne lee wilson]

But what is "taste", let alone "good taste", anyway...? Surely as individual as the person holding the spoon...

"Damn your taste! I want if possible to sharpen your perceptions, after which your taste can take care of itself . . ."
- Ezra Pound. (To Eliot, IIRC...)

[cloughie]

I do love a good Forty-Niner....

Me too - I married one!

[Master Jacques]

But what is "taste", let alone "good taste", anyway...? Surely as individual as the person holding the spoon...

"Damn your taste! I want if possible to sharpen your perceptions, after which your taste can take care of itself . . ."
- Ezra Pound. (To Eliot, IIRC...)

Taste is what T. S. Eliot had, and Ezra Pound didn't. It's a different quality from personal preference. If you don't have it, you don't know what it is. That was always Pound's problem as a man, and as a poet too.

When I say in my post that something (in this case the Togletti recording) is "not to my taste" I am not talking about "good taste", dear me no! I am politely saying "I think this is poor stuff", and my statement has nothing to do with "taste" at all. I tried to give reasons, as I always do, to help "sharpen perceptions", so this is not a question of indulging in subjectivity.

So it is not so much a question (ever) of "the person holding the spoon", but a question of the quality of the spoon itself. Some spoons are simply (in Lear's phrase) "runcible".

[jayne lee wilson]

Taste is what T. S. Eliot had, and Ezra Pound didn't. It's a different quality from personal preference. If you don't have it, you don't know what it is. That was always Pound's problem as a man, and as a poet too.

When I say in my post that something (in this case the Togletti recording) is "not to my taste" I am not talking about "good taste", dear me no! I am politely saying "I think this is poor stuff", and my statement has nothing to do with "taste" at all. I tried to give reasons, as I always do, to help "sharpen perceptions", so this is not a question of indulging in subjectivity.

So it is not so much a question (ever) of "the person holding the spoon", but a question of the quality of the spoon itself. Some spoons are simply (in Lear's phrase) "runcible".

Given I admire a great deal of Pound's poetry (including the earlier books like Personae and Cathay, which I love) do I lack taste, then? I've really no idea.....
His Literary Essays were important to me early on, they helped me to "learn how to read"... inspired me to try to get to University, rather late in the day...

Pound was poisoned by antisemitism, yes, but Eliot's poems reveal a similar dreadful affliction (he had a far easier critical ride for a long time) but Pound wrote some wonderful verse and was a great, encouraging and editing creator spiritus to other writers including Eliot himself....
Pound was heavily punished for his wartime sins, by his own conscience as well as by lengthy incarceration. Ended in a sad self-exile...but at least it was in his spiritual home of Italy. There is a tragic, distorted nobility about him.

So I'm not sure what it means to say he lacked taste, "as a man and as a poet"....
(Know the ending of "The Flame"?.....my personal, so ethereal, favourite...)

"Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands,
This thing that moves as man is no more mortal.
If thou hast seen my shade sans character,
If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments,
That glass to all things that o'ershadow it,
Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped
Your grasp, I have eluded."

[gradus]

Ever heard the extraordinary recording of Pound reciting, accompanying himself on tympani?

[Master Jacques]

Ever heard the extraordinary recording of Pound reciting, accompanying himself on tympani?

Most certainly - indeed that's the very thing I had in mind when saying that he didn't know the meaning of taste!

(But there's surely no point in getting enmeshed in off-topic diatribes about Pound the poet, whose work I admired greatly when I was younger, but certainly not for its tastefulness - or respond to special pleading about Pound the man, who is much harder to like.)

What's for sure, is that to conduct a recording of Mozart's 39th Symphony (at least for repeated listening) good taste is a "must". And that means not thinking it's all about the practitioner's ego.

[jayne lee wilson]

Most certainly - indeed that's the very thing I had in mind when saying that he didn't know the meaning of taste!

(But there's surely no point in getting enmeshed in off-topic diatribes about Pound the poet, whose work I admired greatly when I was younger, but certainly not for its tastefulness - or respond to special pleading about Pound the man, who is much harder to like.)

What's for sure, is that to conduct a recording of Mozart's 39th Symphony (at least for repeated listening) good taste is a "must". And that means not thinking it's all about the practitioner's ego.

But that accompanied Poundian recitation goes back to very ancient traditions, so what is taste then?
I don't see diatribes anywhere in this exchange.

You did say that you weren't talking about "good taste" .... but never mind.... could anyone conduct an orchestra without a certain egocentric input?
Could anyone draw a line...? So its back to "personal tastes and preferences", hardly controversial.

I've heard Bruggen 1988, will try to compare with Bruggen last-rites-last-things (2010, with the remarkable finale ending...) later....
Off-the-beaten, Peter Maag in Italy worth a revisit too....

[Master Jacques]

You did say that you weren't talking about "good taste" .... but never mind.... could anyone conduct an orchestra without a certain egocentric input?
Could anyone draw a line...? So its back to "personal tastes and preferences", hardly controversial.

You are quite right that I wasn't talking about taste - nor did I drag Old Ezra (probably kicking and screaming) into the debate about Mozart's 39th Symphony. What I was trying (imperfectly) to say, was based on the evidence of what I'm hearing, which is not the same thing as "personal taste" at all. Rather than getting bogged down in semantics, all we need do is listen - preferably with a score - to Togletti's phrasing, and we'll see and hear what I am talking about, i.e. a fact about a particular recorded performance, in this case the way he moulds phrases to tail them off into the ether.

Your point about ego and conducting is certainly worth examining. As we know, music of that time and place was generally written for players only, controlled by the orchestra leader - or the composer with violin in hand, or at a keyboard - and this "conducting" was such a subsidiary role as to be thought rarely worth comment. So audience praise and criticism was for the players, and possibly (at a subsidiary level) for the composer.

Thus as to where the line lies, I think we can say with certainly that it has been crossed, when a modern leader-conductor such as Tognetti gets too consistently busy, attending to micro-details of phrasing, dynamics and tempo which draw attention to themselves, at the expense of Mozart's narrative.

We know why this happens, and we can sympathise: when there are 150 alternative recordings out there, the Australian Chamber Orchestra needs to do something ear-catching to tickle our jaded palates. The trouble is, that after a couple of playings these effects wear thin, and we move on to consume the next new, shiny, fluffy offering. Meanwhile Mozart gets progressively lost in the ruck - that's the danger.

I'm sure none of this is controversial either - at least I hope and pray not!

[jayne lee wilson]

You are quite right that I wasn't talking about taste - nor did I drag Old Ezra (probably kicking and screaming) into the debate about Mozart's 39th Symphony. What I was trying (imperfectly) to say, was based on the evidence of what I'm hearing, which is not the same thing as "personal taste" at all. Rather than getting bogged down in semantics, all we need do is listen - preferably with a score - to Togletti's phrasing, and we'll see and hear what I am talking about, i.e. a fact about a particular recorded performance, in this case the way he moulds phrases to tail them off into the ether.

Your point about ego and conducting is certainly worth examining. As we know, music of that time and place was generally written for players only, controlled by the orchestra leader - or the composer with violin in hand, or at a keyboard - and this "conducting" was such a subsidiary role as to be thought rarely worth comment. So audience praise and criticism was for the players, and possibly (at a subsidiary level) for the composer.

Thus as to where the line lies, I think we can say with certainly that it has been crossed, when a modern leader-conductor such as Tognetti gets too consistently busy, attending to micro-details of phrasing, dynamics and tempo which draw attention to themselves, at the expense of Mozart's narrative.

We know why this happens, and we can sympathise: when there are 150 alternative recordings out there, the Australian Chamber Orchestra needs to do something ear-catching to tickle our jaded palates. The trouble is, that after a couple of playings these effects wear thin, and we move on to consume the next new, shiny, fluffy offering. Meanwhile Mozart gets progressively lost in the ruck - that's the danger.

I'm sure none of this is controversial either - at least I hope and pray not!

As is well known, Mozart and his contemporaries never wrote everything into the score though... leaving much leeway for creative interpretation, ornamentation and improvisation.....
Not sure what "tailing off into the ether" means, but I would welcome more views on the Tognetti 39.....FWIW it did review consistently well save for AF-C's carping in the Gramophone, which sounded to me like his system was poorly balanced & so coped badly with the lively dynamics.......

But for me, precisely through that "micro-attention" to dynamic and expressive detail, ACO/Tognetti brings the music to life, wonderfully well, irrespective of potentially jaded palates.....
Adam Fischer, in the notes to his recent DCO Beethoven Cycle, makes a similar point - that its a bit like an actor trying to find something new to say about one of the great Shakespearean roles....of course you can claim "fidelity".... "just playing the music" but this is often controversial in itself, let alone when you factor in the creative input of the performers....

Anyway.... anyone else for Tognetti...?

[Master Jacques]

Not sure what "tailing off into the ether" means

Listen to Tognetti's Mozart (telling phrase!), and you will hear what I mean Jayne, I am quite sure. Never mind "creative interpretation" (whatever that is). I am isolating an effect he works to excess. A musical score is useful to focus us completely on this sort of thing - i.e. patterns in what we're hearing, not (as you rightly remind us) as some sort of "bible" as to detail. If more reviewers used 'em, we'd get more worthwhile critiques than we do. But that's another debate!

[Master Jacques]

As is well known, Mozart and his contemporaries never wrote everything into the score though

As a matter of fact, when it comes to symphonic music they did provide a heck of a lot of information in their published scores, compared with (say) Handel or Gluck. And Boccherini, the King of Micro-management, provides an awful lot more - which is one reason his work doesn't get performed nearly as often as it deserves: modern performers tend to feel hemmed in by his notations as to tempi, dynamics and phrasing. No room for all that "creative interpretation", I suppose!

[jayne lee wilson]

Listen to Tognetti's Mozart (telling phrase!), and you will hear what I mean Jayne, I am quite sure. Never mind "creative interpretation" (whatever that is). I am isolating an effect he works to excess. A musical score is useful to focus us completely on this sort of thing - i.e. patterns in what we're hearing, not (as you rightly remind us) as some sort of "bible" as to detail. If more reviewers used 'em, we'd get more worthwhile critiques than we do. But that's another debate!

AS I've made clear in #70, this album has been a great favourite for a few years now, I know it well, off hi-res stream and CD.

Playing No.39 again, just now, off the CD (only a pleasure to do so), I simply can't hear this tailing off at all, let alone as an "excessive effect". I hear a very (I do mean "very") natural variation in tempi and/or dynamics to shape and shade the phrase, paragraph and structural points, but nothing remotely excessive - in fact rather less than many other 39s offer, and the sort of performance feature that the music would be too rigid without. Call it rubato if you like... it is very sensitively and subtly achieved; the more clearly revealed, given the sonic explicitness.

But what I mainly felt was: what lovely, affectionate, lively and responsive playing! Glorious. Hard to stop listening to once you start, given the quality of the sound as well - beautifully balanced top-to-bottom. If you want the orchestra there in your room not many will match this one.

But as I say, we really do need more views on this here now...