BaL 9.03.13 - Mozart's Piano Concerto no.19 in F, K.459

[Julien Sorel]

I agree with you - especially with your very last point. I hadn't intended to come across in perhaps the heavy-handed way that my words suggest! For that I apologise.

No need to apologise! What you say I think identifies the difficulty with BAL now. I wonder how many listeners are in what I presume is the theoretical listener position for the programme: new to the music, just wanting a good recording. Apart from the sheer number of recordings of standard repertoire there's the issue of period instrument performances, modern instrument performances influenced by period instrument performance, performances that go against the period instrument aesthetic, older recordings when HIPP wasn't around. And it's easy to forget, now that Brüggen and Harnoncourt are in their 70s, that in the early stages of period instrument performance, ideas about tempo, phrasing, vibrato etc. were both intended to be recreative and also a rejection of established performance practice and aesthetic (I realise that conductors of Beethoven like Scherchen and René Leibowitz provided a sort of internal critique). So in a way there are recorded performances that are effectively incompatible: it's possible to be interested in interpretation, but it's almost not comparing like with like.

In the case of that Beethoven concerto review, Roy Goodman made his starting views very clear. That was criticised, but really he was making what is often implicit explicit. My sympathies are with how he hears the work and why he hears it like that so I wasn't infuriated . But if I heard the first movement as a steady, serene, lyrical unfolding I'd think he was pushing an agenda and not doing his job. But given the incompatibility of approaches, any reviewer is likely to finish up doing that. In the recorded past (say 60s / 70s) I guess most performances of standard repertoire shared a common interpretative set of assumptions. That's no longer true.

My sense, for someone new to a work, would be a version of Talking about Music with a variety of recorded versions to illustrate the music. There could be some explanation of why performances are so different, the reviewer could indicate her / his preference. Something like EA's excellent list of available versions could be put on the website, with links to perhaps BBC Music Magazine reviews if available. Don't know, but I wonder if that would be more useful.

And though it certainly wouldn't be to everyone's taste I do think CD Review should be offering a quarterly review of new music recordings, by someone with specialist knowledge who is sympathetic to the music (a range of music) and enthusiastic. The last I can remember was the excellent John Fallas on Italian avant-garde music in 2008 (but I'm not that regular a listener to the programme) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f7z93

[gurnemanz]

Off-topic but how good it would be if CD Review had a quarterly round up of contemporary music issues.

I have been mucking about with the excellent Tunein app on my TV which brings in hundreds of classical stations wifi direct from my router. The sound is good played through my amp. Amongst others, I discovered a German channel called "radio neue-musik.fm" which plays 20th/21st century music 24/7. Also available online and via iTunes.

[Nick Armstrong]

Now there speaks the experienced BaL listener, in my view. There's nothing wrong with "I Know What I Like"

Thanks Ammy.

I tuned into the complete Goode performance earlier, and shall listen again. I have more of an idea of why it leaves me cold - it's to do with touch and phrasing, I think and it's quite subtle.

It's like meeting someone who talks just a bit too fast and too earnestly, who's just a bit unsmiling, whose voice is just a bit grating on the ear rather than being the sort of voice one could listen to for hours... They're perfectly clear in what they're saying, intelligent... but they don't seem to have much soul, much empathy.

It's very subjective, but you can realise within seconds that you're not going to warm to such a person, and may even find them (irrationally) annoying. That's how I feel with Goode's performance.

[Julien Sorel]

I have been mucking about with the excellent Tunein app on my TV which brings in hundreds of classical stations wifi direct from my router. The sound is good played through my amp. Amongst others, I discovered a German channel called "radio neue-musik.fm" which plays 20th/21st century music 24/7. Also available online and via iTunes.

Thanks very much, gurnemanz - that looks very interesting .

[silvestrione]

Thanks Ammy.

I tuned into the complete Goode performance earlier, and shall listen again. I have more of an idea of why it leaves me cold - it's to do with touch and phrasing, I think and it's quite subtle.

It's like meeting someone who talks just a bit too fast and too earnestly, who's just a bit unsmiling, whose voice is just a bit grating on the ear rather than being the sort of voice one could listen to for hours... They're perfectly clear in what they're saying, intelligent... but they don't seem to have much soul, much empathy.

It's very subjective, but you can realise within seconds that you're not going to warm to such a person, and may even find them (irrationally) annoying. That's how I feel with Goode's performance.

Yes! That puts a finger on it....just how I feel, in a puzzled sort of way, about Goode (but also Perahia!)

[amateur51]

Thanks Ammy.

I tuned into the complete Goode performance earlier, and shall listen again. I have more of an idea of why it leaves me cold - it's to do with touch and phrasing, I think and it's quite subtle.

It's like meeting someone who talks just a bit too fast and too earnestly, who's just a bit unsmiling, whose voice is just a bit grating on the ear rather than being the sort of voice one could listen to for hours... They're perfectly clear in what they're saying, intelligent... but they don't seem to have much soul, much empathy.

It's very subjective, but you can realise within seconds that you're not going to warm to such a person, and may even find them (irrationally) annoying. That's how I feel with Goode's performance.

I think Goode performed a full set of Beethoven piano sonatas in the QEH in London in the 1980s and I went them. I developed this creeping sensation that his performances were built-up in parts in his brain so that he'd play one passage getting around some technical problems very nicely ("see how I turned that corner?!"), then there'd be a bridging passage which was bit ho hum and the tension dropped and then there'd be another passage which was played in this 'problem solved' way, and so there was a rather lurchy effect. I haven't heard him 'live' since and so it may well be that he's developed since then and I'm being unfair. I know that I have been unfair like that about Andras Schiff's Beethoven sonatas so ... who knows?

I'll certainly try to listen to this Mozart performance at some point

[Nick Armstrong]

Foode

Need a spot of supper, ammy?

I think your typing finger heard your tummy rumbling...

[amateur51]

Need a spot of supper, ammy?

you know me so well!

I'll repair it - thanking you!