Our Summer BAL No 76 Mozart Piano Concerto No 23 K488

[Richard Barrett]

Hans Keller has been dead for 36 years and many of his ideas have been dead for considerably longer.

[Braunschlag]

Hans Keller has been dead for 36 years and many of his ideas have been dead for considerably longer.

And Schoenberg? 60 years?

[Richard Barrett]

And Schoenberg? 60 years?

Nobody is trying to use Schoenberg's ideas, which are also naturally very much of their time, as justification for their opinions about historically informed performance, which I'm willing to bet Schoenberg would also have disapproved of.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Hans Keller has been dead for 36 years and many of his ideas have been dead for considerably longer.

I’m not sure ideas ever really die do they ? - even if people disagree with them . Hans Keller was a deliberately provocative iconoclast wasn’t he? Overstating the case to perhaps hint at an underlying truth . His list of the bogus professions has a grain of truth in it. The way so many incredibly talented freelances have turned delivery driver while the arts bureaucrats have sat at home on zoom is almost beyond satire.

[Richard Barrett]

The way so many incredibly talented freelances have turned delivery driver while the arts bureaucrats have sat at home on zoom is almost beyond satire.

I lost count of the number of times I have pointed out to arts bureaucrats that they receive their nice salaries on time every month while many of the people whose work they feed off are living from hand to mouth. I'm not saying Keller was wrong about everything, just that bringing him up as an authority on a subject that most people in his generation were incurably prejudiced against is not very convincing. HIP is quintessentially a late 20th - early 21st century phenomenon. Most people whose musical tastes were formed before the 1980s tend to view it askance, and to claim that the great names in classical music performance from the preceding period are self-evidently on a different level of musical achievement from that of their more recent and more HIP-oriented counterparts. (Some old ideas do die - the divine right of inherited power or the acceptability of slavery spring to mind!)

[Bryn]

I lost count of the number of times I have pointed out to arts bureaucrats that they receive their nice salaries on time every month while many of the people whose work they feed off are living from hand to mouth. I'm not saying Keller was wrong about everything, just that bringing him up as an authority on a subject that most people in his generation were incurably prejudiced against is not very convincing. HIP is quintessentially a late 20th - early 21st century phenomenon. Most people whose musical tastes were formed before the 1980s tend to view it askance, and to claim that the great names in classical music performance from the preceding period are self-evidently on a different level of musical achievement from that of their more recent and more HIP-oriented counterparts. (Some old ideas do die - the divine right of inherited power or the acceptability of slavery spring to mind!)

Good to know I am an exception to that 'rule'.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I lost count of the number of times I have pointed out to arts bureaucrats that they receive their nice salaries on time every month while many of the people whose work they feed off are living from hand to mouth. I'm not saying Keller was wrong about everything, just that bringing him up as an authority on a subject that most people in his generation were incurably prejudiced against is not very convincing. HIP is quintessentially a late 20th - early 21st century phenomenon. Most people whose musical tastes were formed before the 1980s tend to view it askance, and to claim that the great names in classical music performance from the preceding period are self-evidently on a different level of musical achievement from that of their more recent and more HIP-oriented counterparts. (Some old ideas do die - the divine right of inherited power or the acceptability of slavery spring to mind!)

Richard - well done for having the courage to say it to their faces.I’ve never had the opportunity and having spent some career time as a bit of a bureaucrat before going freelance I could be accused of hypocrisy.
Sadly the divine right of inherited power and slavery survive not merely as ideas but as fact. I can think of one Middle Eastern regime for example where they are in evidence to this day.

[Richard Barrett]

Sadly the divine right of inherited power and slavery survive not merely as ideas but as fact. I can think of one Middle Eastern regime for example where they are in evidence to this day.

You're right of course, aided and abetted by supposedly democratic governments in the West. But I think (I hope!) it's already an outlier and set to become more of one.

[Richard Barrett]

Good to know I am an exception to that 'rule'.

It's not a "rule" of course (it doesn't apply to me either!), just a general tendency that I've observed.

[BBMmk2]

JLW, I’m keen to know what is your preferences for this concerto.

[Richard Barrett]

If it's really necessary to actually address the thread topic I had forgotten until half an hour ago about the recording made in 2012 by Rudolf Buchbinder and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the former playing a copy of a Walter instrument and the latter directing the Concentus Musicus Wien. What's not to like? Well, nothing really, I reckon after a listen to remind myself. I don't really understand why Harnoncourt spent so much time performing 18th century music with "modern" resources because recordings like this, unfortunately few and far between, just underline what might have been if he'd spent that time instead working with his own musicians. Anyway, this has to be added to my list of attractive HIP recordings from further upthread. I still wouldn't be able to choose between them though, and I have no intention of so doing.

Followers of this thread might be amused by these comments by one Brian Wigman on this recording in classical.net:

The fortepiano is an occasionally revelatory but mostly ugly instrument that is thankfully not in use today. As a historical item it is doubtless fascinating, but as a viable vehicle for Mozart it comes up short. As for the argument that the composer himself would have used one, that again falls under a historical quibble. The point is that no fortepiano comes close to a modern grand in terms of color and expression, and I say that as a writer who has very favorably reviewed issues that utilize the fortepiano as the main attraction. That's what it is, a gimmick and a marketing ploy. Sometimes, it works better than others. Nikolaus Harnoncourt does some really cool things in terms of woodwind detail but otherwise stays out of the way. Buchbinder remains a fabulous Classical period artist who is too traditional and serious an artist for this kind of nonsense. The orchestra plays well, but with little sense of discovery or enjoyment. The latter two qualities are frankly lacking from this whole project: a dud.

The word "bollocks" springs uncontrollably to mind!

[jayne lee wilson]

JLW, I’m keen to know what is your preferences for this concerto.

Fortepiano/Period Instruments:
Brautigam/Die Kölner Akademie/Willens (BIS).

Modern:
Goode/Orpheus CO (Nonesuch).

Among others on my shelves, I always enjoyed the Wiener Symphoniker/Buchbinder (Klavier und Leitung) complete cycle on Profil, very alert and expressive and echt-Viennese, but haven't heard it for some years.....
23....Playing now..... soloistically and orchestrally, this still sounds very good....!
Not sure which piano Buchbinder uses, but it is very light and tuneful under his fingers..... and those VSO strings (not too many of them) are really lovely! This is just gorgeous, the longer it goes on...

I'll try to listen to the alternative Buchbinder/CMW/NH the Barrett mentions later....

[silvestrione]

For what it's worth, I've tried Curzon/LSO/Kertesz (not Curzon quite at his best IMHO, and piano too bright, forward, prominent, i thought), and Solomon/Philharmonia/Menges, which I loved, and Solomon is sublime in the slow movement. He gets marvellous restrained singing from his instrument, and then deep pools of sound when it's finally chordal. The Philharmonia is full of spirit and expression. Again, the piano is too forward, and dominant, but you hang on to Solomon's every note, as it were, anyway.

(PS Curzon is at his best in the Orfeo disc with Kubelick and the BRSO, in Mozart 21 and 24!)

[Mandryka]

(PS Curzon is at his best in the Orfeo disc with Kubelick and the BRSO, in Mozart 21 and 24!)

Audite surely.

[gurnemanz]

When deciding to listen Mozart's Piano Sonatas I most often find myself turning to Walter Klien for his stylish and lucid interpretations and I like his recording of K488 with the Wiener Volksoperorchester under Peter Maag for the same reason. For me this good old Vox Turnabout version has really stood the test of time.