BaL 22.04.23 - Schubert: Symphony no. 5 in B flat D. 485

[Petrushka]

Excellent discography as ever Pet - trust you!
Do you have an especial favourite among them?

Did you ever get hold of that 4CD Andante Set of Bohm with the LSO? From the 1970s Salzburg Festival in the Brahms 2, Beethoven 7, Schumann 4, Mozart 28 & 35 etc....?
I enjoyed that, it was a very good sonic document of what seems to have been a warm relationship....

Yes I have that Andante box bought in HMV in Paris in 2007. My favourite Bohm Schubert 5 is the 1966 BPO recording.

[Opinionated Knowall]

"Interventionalist" is an ideal way of defining the Jacobs problem: the rits, acels and pauses sound self-consciously premeditated and rehearsed (as they have to be), so rather than promoting a sense of spontaneity - which more subtly varied repeats would do - they detract from it. For a recording designed - one assumes - for repeated listening, they are a fatal blemish.

Absolutely with you here, MJ; 'self-conscious' is how it sounds to me, putting the modern interpreter before the composer. I'm no expert in performance practice in the early part of the C19, but surely this piece pre-dates standard conductor practice, so all these distortions that you mention, MJ, would have been impossible if the orchestra was led from the first violin? Also, decorating repeats is surely applying performance practice from an earlier era (decorating da capo arias, for example) in an inappropriate way. One particularly egregious example is in bar 32 of the trio, when on the repeat, there a big pull up and a pause, when the second violin part is playing a continuous accompanying figure which has to be broken. When the score is clearly you telling you to do one thing and you deliberately contradict what the composer wrote...surely that's an 'intervention' too far!

[MickyD]

"Interventionalist" is an ideal way of defining the Jacobs problem: the rits, acels and pauses sound self-consciously premeditated and rehearsed (as they have to be), so rather than promoting a sense of spontaneity - which more subtly varied repeats would do - they detract from it. For a recording designed - one assumes - for repeated listening, they are a fatal blemish.

Yes, it's the repeated listening that's the snag - were it a one-off live performance, new ideas can be fun, but when you know what's coming on the CD and it irritates you, not so much! I seem to recall Mark Minkowski doing something a bit gimmicky (can't remember what exactly) at the end of one of his Haydn London symphony recordings. It was the reason I didn't acquire the discs.

[gurnemanz]

I'd have loved to have been in Otto Hatwig's flat in Vienna for the first performance (and last for the next 50 years), when a small orchestra, including various amateur players and the composer himself on viola, was directed from the violin by Josef Prohaska (an ancestor, I believe, of Anna).

I did actually nip along my shelves and do a BaL on the versions I have (as mentioned above). Bearing the circumstances of that premiere in mind, I definitely preferred chamber versions: Abbado, Mackerras down under and Barshai (on viola, like the composer) recorded in Paris with his Moscow Chamber Orchestra (coupled somwewhat randomly with a very good Shostakovich 14 on a BBC Legends disc). Norrington/LCP was rather too fast for my taste, and not in great sound. Goodman/Hannover band was enjoyable but too resonant, definitely not recorded in someone's flat.

I enjoyed the big beasts - Toscanini, Bernstein - much less, also Blomstedt/Staatskapelle seemed too big, but the same orchestra with Sawallisch is certainly a favourite - transparent, happy music-making from Cold War East Germany.

Beecham/LPO from 1938 is another I shall be returning to.

[RichardB]

I seem to recall Mark Minkowski doing something a bit gimmicky (can't remember what exactly) at the end of one of his Haydn London symphony recordings.

I generally steer clear of Minkowski for this kind of reason, added to which he seems always to be in a hurry to get to the end as soon as possible. I'm reminded of what Brüggen does in the second movement of no.94, which is to play the loud chord fractionally early. But - when I listen to it I know that's going to happen but it still wrongfoots me every time. Brüggen on the other hand was generally on the non-interventionist side - I have a couple of friends in the O18C who have told me that he would give the players much more agency and trust than most HIPP conductors (let alone HUPP conductors!).

[Maclintick]

I'd have loved to have been in Otto Hatwig's flat in Vienna for the first performance (and last for the next 50 years), when a small orchestra, including various amateur players and the composer himself on viola, was directed from the violin by Josef Prohaska (an ancestor, I believe, of Anna).

Yes, we're lucky that these twice-weekly musical evenings at Otto Hatwig's flat are documented in Leopold Von Sonnleithner's 1862 memoir, tracing the ever-enlarging group's membership and migration first from the Schubert family home, then to the gentleman merchant Franz Fischling's house, and finally to Hatwig's larger premises. According to Sonnleithner, Hatwig, the onetime leader of the Burgtheater Orchestra, directed the first performance of D.485 from the leader chair, with Prohaska leading the 2nds, & with FS himself, as you say, one of 3 violas. The nineteen-year-old composer must have been gratified to have his latest symphonies performed by an accomplished chamber orchestra with a core of gifted amateurs led by a top orchestral leader.

The Mozart influences on FS have been noted by generations of Schubert scholars, an interesting example in light of recent BAL discussions being Robert Winter's observation on the adagio molto opening of D.417 " the groping chromaticism of the slow introduction owes much to the opening of Mozart's "Dissonance" quartet". Susan Wollenberg has a fascinating chapter Schubert and Mozart in her 2011 volume Schubert's Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works.

[teamsaint]

"Interventionalist" is an ideal way of defining the Jacobs problem: the rits, acels and pauses sound self-consciously premeditated and rehearsed (as they have to be), so rather than promoting a sense of spontaneity - which more subtly varied repeats would do - they detract from it. For a recording designed - one assumes - for repeated listening, they are a fatal blemish.

I listened to the 5th last night, and that was more or less my feeling. There is a lot to enjoy, and some of the rhythmic flexibility works very well, but some of it just seemed to get in the way of overall flow, rather like the YNS Schumann 1.

[Master Jacques]

... [on Jacobs] ... One particularly egregious example is in bar 32 of the trio, when on the repeat, there a big pull up and a pause, when the second violin part is playing a continuous accompanying figure which has to be broken. When the score is clearly you telling you to do one thing and you deliberately contradict what the composer wrote...surely that's an 'intervention' too far!

Quite so. That all-but-rewrite in the trio was what cooked my Jacobs goose, at least!

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, it's the repeated listening that's the snag - were it a one-off live performance, new ideas can be fun, but when you know what's coming on the CD and it irritates you, not so much! I seem to recall Mark Minkowski doing something a bit gimmicky (can't remember what exactly) at the end of one of his Haydn London symphony recordings. It was the reason I didn't acquire the discs.

But isn't it true of any recording you play repeatedly that it ceases to surprise, so, new ideas or not, you know whats coming? If every recording toed the score-reverent line it would be a less interesting world, wouldn't it?

Shame I seem to be alone in reading Jacobs' notes, which offer insights into his interpretive choices. Too long to quote as they fill each CD booklet, but after his usual harmonic and structural analysis, about the end of the 5th's minuet he says: "the staccato laughter of the orchestra, even more hysterical than at the end of the A part, rounds off the movement".
Keener insights still about the trio. You may not like what he does but never doubt it as the product of prolonged, deep involvement and understanding.

*****
Remember my Bruckner quote earlier: "Many frequent, important tempo changes are not marked in the score" - to Arthur Nikisch when the 7th Symphony was being rehearsed.
Schubert often performed his own music. Surely he wouldn't just reproduce the same performance each time, any more than Mozart playing his own concerti. It seems unthinkable to me.

Fanny Davies described Brahms' manner of interpretation in his own music as "very free, elastic and expansive". There's plenty of evidence to support such creative approaches; it seems only in the 20thC that such freedoms became so proscribed by performers, critics and score-students, apparently for no better reason than - they weren't written in. But that's the point of playing music; the joy in creative freedom, to make something new, to defamiliarise the well-worn and much-repeated; performance as the last (always transient) stage of composition.

I never have any problem with repeated playback of unusual interpretive manoeuvres. They sharpen one's listening wits, but of course, once obsessed, I usually play several recordings of any well known Classical work anyway, even if focussing on a set for review. So the idea that strange twists in the playing tale would pall on repeat seems to me quite dated now, especially in the Streaming Era, we have so much choice.

[Pulcinella]

At what point would the piece become (or be more accurately described as) Schubert (arranged Jacobs), though?

[Ein Heldenleben]

But isn't it true of any recording you play repeatedly that it ceases to surprise, so, new ideas or not, you know whats coming? If every recording toed the score-reverent line it would be a less interesting world, wouldn't it?

Shame I seem to be alone in reading Jacobs' notes, which offer insights into his interpretive choices. Too long to quote as they fill each CD booklet, but after his usual harmonic and structural analysis, about the end of the 5th's minuet he says: "the staccato laughter of the orchestra, even more hysterical than at the end of the A part, rounds off the movement".
Keener insights still about the trio. You may not like what he does but never doubt it as the product of prolonged, deep involvement and understanding.

*****
Remember my Bruckner quote earlier: "Many frequent, important tempo changes are not marked in the score" - to Arthur Nikisch when the 7th Symphony was being rehearsed.
Schubert often performed his own music. Surely he wouldn't just reproduce the same performance each time, any more than Mozart playing his own concerti. It seems unthinkable to me.

Fanny Davies described Brahms' manner of interpretation in his own music as "very free, elastic and expansive". There's plenty of evidence to support such creative approaches; it seems only in the 20thC that such freedoms became so proscribed by performers, critics and score-students, apparently for no better reason than - they weren't written in. But that's the point of playing music; the joy in creative freedom, to make something new, to defamiliarise the well-worn and much-repeated; performance as the last (always transient) stage of composition.

I never have any problem with repeated playback of unusual interpretive manoeuvres. They sharpen one's listening wits, but of course, once obsessed, I usually play several recordings of any well known Classical work anyway, even if focussing on a set for review. So the idea that strange twists in the playing tale would pall on repeat seems to me quite dated now, especially in the Streaming Era, we have so much choice.

It’s only in the era of recording and to a lesser extent dictatorial modern scholarship that the idea of a settled score in this sort of work gained ground. 19th century musicians took enormous liberties . So to a lesser extent did giants like Toscanini. I listened to the Jacobs almost immediately after the Abbado performance and the scherzo didn’t jar with me at all. Interestingly they both took more or less the same time over it.

At least Jacobs actually plays the opening pianissimo which makes me think some of the larger modern bands just can’t do it or can’t be bothered.

[MickyD]

But isn't it true of any recording you play repeatedly that it ceases to surprise, so, new ideas or not, you know whats coming? If every recording toed the score-reverent line it would be a less interesting world, wouldn't it?

Shame I seem to be alone in reading Jacobs' notes, which offer insights into his interpretive choices. Too long to quote as they fill each CD booklet, but after his usual harmonic and structural analysis, about the end of the 5th's minuet he says: "the staccato laughter of the orchestra, even more hysterical than at the end of the A part, rounds off the movement".
Keener insights still about the trio. You may not like what he does but never doubt it as the product of prolonged, deep involvement and understanding.

*****
Remember my Bruckner quote earlier: "Many frequent, important tempo changes are not marked in the score" - to Arthur Nikisch when the 7th Symphony was being rehearsed.
Schubert often performed his own music. Surely he wouldn't just reproduce the same performance each time, any more than Mozart playing his own concerti. It seems unthinkable to me.

Fanny Davies described Brahms' manner of interpretation in his own music as "very free, elastic and expansive". There's plenty of evidence to support such creative approaches; it seems only in the 20thC that such freedoms became so proscribed by performers, critics and score-students, apparently for no better reason than - they weren't written in. But that's the point of playing music; the joy in creative freedom, to make something new, to defamiliarise the well-worn and much-repeated; performance as the last (always transient) stage of composition.

I never have any problem with repeated playback of unusual interpretive manoeuvres. They sharpen one's listening wits, but of course, once obsessed, I usually play several recordings of any well known Classical work anyway, even if focussing on a set for review. So the idea that strange twists in the playing tale would pall on repeat seems to me quite dated now, especially in the Streaming Era, we have so much choice.

Yes, of course, one always knows what is coming with a recording. I guess what I am saying is that as someone who for reasons of economy, space and time cannot avail themselves of each new recording of a work, I want to go for a version that I can live with repeatedly. That is not to say that I don't enjoy the idiosyncracies of someone such as Harnoncourt for example, but when Minkowski goes as far to get his players to cry out verbally during the surprise of the 94th symphony, then that is going too far for me and I wouldn't want to hear such a decision on a regular basis. I'm sorry you find that view "dated", but each to his or her own.

[Master Jacques]

Yes, of course, one always knows what is coming with a recording. I guess what I am saying is that as someone who for reasons of economy, space and time cannot avail themselves of each new recording of a work, I want to go for a version that I can live with repeatedly. That is not to say that I don't enjoy the idiosyncracies of someone such as Harnoncourt for example, but when Minkowski goes as far to get his players to cry out verbally during the surprise of the 94th symphony, then that is going too far for me and I wouldn't want to hear such a decision on a regular basis. I'm sorry you find that view "dated", but each to his or her own.

It does not seen dated to me. It also has the advantage of being precisely the view which lay behind the whole idea of the 'Building a Library' feature. The choice - at least historically - has tended to be a fairly straight, excellent benchmark version, without wacky and adorable quirks, and repaying multiple listening.

[RichardB]

Maybe that is all changing though. We don't have to "build a library" any more, we can go through life without ever listening to the same performance of Schubert 5 twice at no extra expenditure. Which means that there's a pressure on performers (or, more precisely, labels) to do something "refreshingly different" rather than something listeners can spend some of their hard earned cash on and enjoy repeatedly (in what I suppose is becoming a "dated" way). I'm glad I listened once to Jacobs's recording but I don't think I'll do so again.

[mikealdren]

One of the joys of the wide (and usually cheap) availability of recordings is that we can now listen to a variety of interpretations in a way that we couldn't when I started to listen to BaL in the late '60s. The idea of a library version is therefore rather less important and it's great to hear alternative ideas in the way that we do with live performances. Indeed recordings are now typically rather cheaper than concert tickets.

As I type, I'm listening to Mahler 4 in a thought provoking performance that is certainly not my 'library choice' but I'm very glad to have it on CD, thankyou Ebay!