BaL 6.03.21 - Debussy: Études pour piano

[Richard Barrett]

I do find that almost shocking, Richard.

Maybe you think that in the 1970s (which is what I meant by "back in the day") the Gramophone's pages were a paradise of open-mindedness, but I don't remember it like that; much of the music I found most interesting, like contemporary composition or earlier music played on period instruments, was treated as a curiosity and marginal to an assumed mainstream canon (while much else of the music I found most interesting wasn't mentioned there at all), not to mention a certain British chauvinism where both recording artists and composers were concerned. My musical mind wasn't expanded by the pages of that magazine so much as by Radio 3 and my local library, and indeed by John Peel, the NME and the Old Grey Whistle Test etc. You yourself would have to admit that your preferences as far as late 20th and 21st century music are concerned could be described as somewhat conservative; I don't say that as a criticism, but just to suggest that this could well be explained by your tastes having been largely formed by publications like the Gramophone with their fairly obvious limitations.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Getting back on thread . Although I’ve got quite an extensive collection of piano music I don’t think I’ve once put on the Debussy Etudes and listened all the way through. I also think they are only rarely live performed as a complete set. That could because it makes for a musically unsatisfying experience or , more likely , it’s difficult to work all of them up to performance standard at the same time. It’s much more common to hear Images or the Preludes.

[gurnemanz]

I find your first words rather arrogant and brimming with superiority. The feeling I get from your posts generally, is one of - if someone disagrees with you, their views are somehow not valid, and you continually harp on about b*****y Gramaphone. You may think I have a narrow view. Quite what you mean specifically by that, is anyone's guess. Well, madam, my 'narrow view' has served me very well indeed, in my enjoyment of nearly fifty years of classical music being a major part of my life.

I am not musically trained. Listening to music and collecting recordings is my hobby. I found it useful and enlightening to be a Gramophone subscriber for 40 years and to come on here and share experience with others. I find Jayne's contributions especially stimulating and do not just disagree
with the views expressed above but was genuinely upset by the crudely venomous tone.

[Wolfram]

Despite all the attention on Uchida I think it was Garrick Ohlsson who won last time around when DON covered the Etudes for BaL. IIRC.

[MickyD]

Maybe you think that in the 1970s (which is what I meant by "back in the day") the Gramophone's pages were a paradise of open-mindedness, but I don't remember it like that; much of the music I found most interesting, like contemporary composition or earlier music played on period instruments, was treated as a curiosity and marginal to an assumed mainstream canon (while much else of the music I found most interesting wasn't mentioned there at all), not to mention a certain British chauvinism where both recording artists and composers were concerned. My musical mind wasn't expanded by the pages of that magazine so much as by Radio 3 and my local library, and indeed by John Peel, the NME and the Old Grey Whistle Test etc. You yourself would have to admit that your preferences as far as late 20th and 21st century music are concerned could be described as somewhat conservative; I don't say that as a criticism, but just to suggest that this could well be explained by your tastes having been largely formed by publications like the Gramophone with their fairly obvious limitations.

I was thrilled and excited from the 70s onwards by the work of various early music pioneers, and I well remember Gramophone often being very dismissive of their recorded efforts. Harnoncourt and his VCM came in for some particularly harsh criticism, Leonhardt's Bach harpsichord concertos being likened to a sewing machine, and a brave first attempt at a period instrument Beethoven Missa Solemnis by the Collegium Aureum being completely trashed, the reviewer (can't remember who) even asking what was the point of such a venture. How far we have come since then.

[Wolfram]

I too have had issues with the editorial direction that the Gramophone has taken over the years. But I have read it continuously since the early 1970s, and refuse to cut off my nose to spite my face over a few quibbles, and deny myself the pleasure of reading the most important and influential magazine on the subject of classical recordings.

But this is seriously off topic.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I wonder if the Gramophone / penguin guide debate - the latter Of which I put my hand up to starting - might in some way be detached from the Debussy Etudes debate (if there is one ) ....

[Roslynmuse]

Getting back on thread . Although I’ve got quite an extensive collection of piano music I don’t think I’ve once put on the Debussy Etudes and listened all the way through. I also think they are only rarely live performed as a complete set. That could because it makes for a musically unsatisfying experience or , more likely , it’s difficult to work all of them up to performance standard at the same time. It’s much more common to hear Images or the Preludes.

I don't think they are any more difficult than Chopin or Liszt Etudes (in the sense that if you are going to get up in public and play any of these the techniques required are going to be in your mind and muscles). They require different techniques at times but fewer than, say, required by Ligeti (or even Rachmaninov in the Etudes Tableaux. They do, however, require a different sort of musicianship, and one that is different even from earlier Debussy sets - audiences can find the Etudes more challenging to listen to than the Preludes (and even there, Book I is more popular than Book II - similarly the first set of Images gets more outings than the second). I don't think they are musically unsatisfying - far from it - but they do require some hard work from the listener and don't give up their secrets easily.

[Roslynmuse]

I wonder if the Gramophone / penguin guide debate - the latter Of which I put my hand up to starting - might in some way be detached from the Debussy Etudes debate (if there is one ) ....

Agreed.

I did want to comment though (and this can either be deleted or moved as is thought relevant).

What we have on the Forum is a wide range of knowledge and experience and there is no right or wrong way to have gained that knowledge. It serves no useful purpose to say that someone else's experience is 'narrow' or 'shocking' when it doesn't align with our own. It doesn't invalidate our own past - and nor does it mean that one experience is superior or inferior to any other. It's just different.

I don't know when I first heard of Gramophone - probably on Radio 3 - but I do remember buying my first copy (February 1978) and reading it cover to cover. It was, to my thirteen year old mind, a new world. It also appealed to the OCD side of me, and a lot of my record buying then was based on Gramophone recommendations and perusing the Gramophone Classical Catalogue (that was in itself a great education). We grow, though, and my first enthusiasm for it became modified as I found myself disagreeing more and more with the views therein (having access to a really good record library - as well as Radio 3 - taught me to read reviews with a pinch - if not sometimes a pillar - of salt, just as YouTube and streaming seems to do nowadays). As has already been mentioned, concentration on a particular 'canon', certain record labels, and therefore certain artists, all served to distort the picture of the world of recorded music - subtly, to be sure, but distorted it certainly was, as I discovered when my musical tastes started to grow and develop. The magazine reached a particular low point in the 1990s and 2000s but has picked up in the last few years with some good commentators and more wide-ranging features. I still read it but the reviews are largely an irrelevance; there are more important things to read if I want to find out about the music, and I have a pair of ears if I want to find out about a particular performance. And the whole idea of a 'library recommendation' now seems outdated anyway.

Edit: I missed the point of what I was trying to say - my reason for writing all that was to say that my memories and associations with Gramophone at the time of my first encounter with it are happy and positive, but (as with the Radio Times) the excitement of buying it was limited to a particular time in my development - and it bothers me not a jot whether others are Gramophone obsessives or have never read it in their lives.

[Bryn]

I wonder if the Gramophone / penguin guide debate - the latter Of which I put my hand up to starting - might in some way be detached from the Debussy Etudes debate (if there is one ) ....

Indeed. For me, however, the downward slope for The Gramophone started with the migration of advertisements from their own, easily removable pages to the editorial pages. I did not renew my subscription following that move.

[visualnickmos]

Maybe. But at least Jayne can spell Gramophone.

So can I FWIW - typos are sometimes unavoidable. Happy now?

[visualnickmos]

I am not musically trained. Listening to music and collecting recordings is my hobby. I found it useful and enlightening to be a Gramophone subscriber for 40 years and to come on here and share experience with others. I find Jayne's contributions especially stimulating and do not just disagree with the views expressed above but was genuinely upset by the crudely venomous tone.

Therefore, you will understand how I felt.

[MickyD]

Agreed.

I did want to comment though (and this can either be deleted or moved as is thought relevant).

What we have on the Forum is a wide range of knowledge and experience and there is no right or wrong way to have gained that knowledge. It serves no useful purpose to say that someone else's experience is 'narrow' or 'shocking' when it doesn't align with our own. It doesn't invalidate our own past - and nor does it mean that one experience is superior or inferior to any other. It's just different.

I don't know when I first heard of Gramophone - probably on Radio 3 - but I do remember buying my first copy (February 1978) and reading it cover to cover. It was, to my thirteen year old mind, a new world. It also appealed to the OCD side of me, and a lot of my record buying then was based on Gramophone recommendations and perusing the Gramophone Classical Catalogue (that was in itself a great education). We grow, though, and my first enthusiasm for it became modified as I found myself disagreeing more and more with the views therein (having access to a really good record library - as well as Radio 3 - taught me to read reviews with a pinch - if not sometimes a pillar - of salt, just as YouTube and streaming seems to do nowadays). As has already been mentioned, concentration on a particular 'canon', certain record labels, and therefore certain artists, all served to distort the picture of the world of recorded music - subtly, to be sure, but distorted it certainly was, as I discovered when my musical tastes started to grow and develop. The magazine reached a particular low point in the 1990s and 2000s but has picked up in the last few years with some good commentators and more wide-ranging features. I still read it but the reviews are largely an irrelevance; there are more important things to read if I want to find out about the music, and I have a pair of ears if I want to find out about a particular performance. And the whole idea of a 'library recommendation' now seems outdated anyway.

Edit: I missed the point of what I was trying to say - my reason for writing all that was to say that my memories and associations with Gramophone at the time of my first encounter with it are happy and positive, but (as with the Radio Times) the excitement of buying it was limited to a particular time in my development - and it bothers me not a jot whether others are Gramophone obsessives or have never read it in their lives.

I agree wholeheartedly with all of this!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Agreed.

I did want to comment though (and this can either be deleted or moved as is thought relevant).

What we have on the Forum is a wide range of knowledge and experience and there is no right or wrong way to have gained that knowledge. It serves no useful purpose to say that someone else's experience is 'narrow' or 'shocking' when it doesn't align with our own. It doesn't invalidate our own past - and nor does it mean that one experience is superior or inferior to any other. It's just different.

I don't know when I first heard of Gramophone - probably on Radio 3 - but I do remember buying my first copy (February 1978) and reading it cover to cover. It was, to my thirteen year old mind, a new world. It also appealed to the OCD side of me, and a lot of my record buying then was based on Gramophone recommendations and perusing the Gramophone Classical Catalogue (that was in itself a great education). We grow, though, and my first enthusiasm for it became modified as I found myself disagreeing more and more with the views therein (having access to a really good record library - as well as Radio 3 - taught me to read reviews with a pinch - if not sometimes a pillar - of salt, just as YouTube and streaming seems to do nowadays). As has already been mentioned, concentration on a particular 'canon', certain record labels, and therefore certain artists, all served to distort the picture of the world of recorded music - subtly, to be sure, but distorted it certainly was, as I discovered when my musical tastes started to grow and develop. The magazine reached a particular low point in the 1990s and 2000s but has picked up in the last few years with some good commentators and more wide-ranging features. I still read it but the reviews are largely an irrelevance; there are more important things to read if I want to find out about the music, and I have a pair of ears if I want to find out about a particular performance. And the whole idea of a 'library recommendation' now seems outdated anyway.

Edit: I missed the point of what I was trying to say - my reason for writing all that was to say that my memories and associations with Gramophone at the time of my first encounter with it are happy and positive, but (as with the Radio Times) the excitement of buying it was limited to a particular time in my development - and it bothers me not a jot whether others are Gramophone obsessives or have never read it in their lives.

Very well put. Just as with piano technique there is more than one route to Parnassus.

[jayne lee wilson]

Maybe you think that in the 1970s (which is what I meant by "back in the day") the Gramophone's pages were a paradise of open-mindedness, but I don't remember it like that; much of the music I found most interesting, like contemporary composition or earlier music played on period instruments, was treated as a curiosity and marginal to an assumed mainstream canon (while much else of the music I found most interesting wasn't mentioned there at all), not to mention a certain British chauvinism where both recording artists and composers were concerned. My musical mind wasn't expanded by the pages of that magazine so much as by Radio 3 and my local library, and indeed by John Peel, the NME and the Old Grey Whistle Test etc. You yourself would have to admit that your preferences as far as late 20th and 21st century music are concerned could be described as somewhat conservative; I don't say that as a criticism, but just to suggest that this could well be explained by your tastes having been largely formed by publications like the Gramophone with their fairly obvious limitations.

Just a slight problem with this....

For at least the last 5 or 6 years, the Gramophone has carried monthly features on a very wide range of New Music, including electronics (some of which you have recommended yourself) as I've often mentioned to you here, Richard. I try most of them using their shortlist and Qobuz, but only write about them if I feel I've something meaningful to say.
In any case, access to the archive will show a wider range of contemporary music reviews from the 60s and 70s than many presuppose or remember, but there was very limited opportunity to hear it. Nothing I could do about that, except listen weekly to Music in Our Time on Radio 3......no restriction of curiosity there.
Reviews of John Cage and Stockhausen go back to the 1950s; Eliane Radigue back to 2014; this could be a very long list.... see "Blurred Boundaries" 6/2017, a long feature on Radigue and many others...

***

With regard to your comments about earlier music played on period instruments, and other similarly erroneous and misleading posts above, this access to the archive provides effortless means of checking, for example, that Harnoncourt was getting glowing reviews from at least the mid-60s, e.g. Stanley Sadie on Biber and Muffat. (One can also find many ads within the editorial - Bryn must have cancelled pretty early on...).
Period Instruments were also welcomed very enthusiastically from that time on, including many of the earliest JEG and Hogwood releases, again often by Stanley and Julie Ann Sadie, when the wider world was still in denial ( many forum members still are).
(Incidentally, many Collegium Aureum releases appeared in 1979, and almost always very positively reviewed (By Robin Golding or Nichoas Anderson, for example). The Missa Solemnis review MickyD mentioned (by an obviously impatient and HIPPs-unsympathetic Trevor Harvey) was an exception.)

So I could make a very long list entirely disproving much of what has been said about the earlier or later 20thC Gramophone (which did have its share of boring issues, even in the supposedly reader-sacrosanct 1970s; and if you check out the 50s, many pages of ads for that newfangled hifi thing...)

The Gramophone has been around for nearly a century. So if you make a sweeping generalisation, better get into the archive and research it first.... ever-heard of fact-checking?

***
Sorry to keep pulling the Debussy thread offtrack; may it now return unhindered; but (as with Brucknerian matters - which also took a BaL thread off course for a bit...) my main concern has simply been to put the record straight, on my own behalf, and on behalf of the history of the publications concerned.