Musical performers to avoid

[zola]

American soprano Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet. Anyone recall John Foulds World Requiem at the Albert Hall in 2007 ? I think there was a prom she disfigured the following year to prove that was not an off night but I can't recall the piece.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

American soprano Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet. Anyone recall John Foulds World Requiem at the Albert Hall in 2007 ? I think there was a prom she disfigured the following year to prove that was not an off night but I can't recall the piece.

Glagolitic Mass with BBC forces and Boulez.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

So, whilst my preference is to leave the vibrato to the woodwind, I would say that it is not always out of place.

I don't like clarinet vibrato either, so that rules out Jack Brymer and Emma Johnson.

[verismissimo]

I don't like clarinet vibrato either, so that rules out Jack Brymer and Emma Johnson.

Alpie the HIPster. Now that's something new.

[Tony Halstead]

I don't like clarinet vibrato either, so that rules out Jack Brymer and Emma Johnson.

and Gervase de Peyer, Reginald Kell and Richard Stolzman.

[rauschwerk]

Are we allowed to mention pianists Yuja Wang and Valentina Lisitsa?

Certainly the latter! I have just heard a broadcast of Beethoven's D minor sonata (OP 31/2) in which she rode roughshod over the text (notes and dynamic markings) and played the mordents in bars 43-46 of the finale as triplets, than which (as Tovey rightly says) there is nothing more banal. Now it's a crazy, splashy, show-off performance of the Liszt sonata, which I'm about to switch off. Never again!

[Ariosto]

and Gervase de Peyer, Reginald Kell and Richard Stolzman.

That does not leave an awful lot! Anyway they are just about all of my favourites. I would say that they all use vib with taste and not too much.

[jean]

...Others on my list would be Dame Gwyneth Jones, Helen Field and Felicity Palmer - all too wobbly...

Does anyone remember Felicity Palmer at the start of her career, in the 1960s? She had the most wonderful clear, straight voice.

What went wrong?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Alpie the HIPster. Now that's something new.

In many ways I am a HIPPster. I just don't have much respect for those who play on the gullibility of others.

[Ariosto]

Does anyone remember Felicity Palmer at the start of her career, in the 1960s? She had the most wonderful clear, straight voice.

What went wrong?

I also knew Helen Field personally having crashed into her crossing the stage in the semi-darkness, and commented that we should do it more often. I then heard her sing many times and she had a pretty straight voice and was very good. Haven't seen her or heard her for years so can't comment on how she sings now.

Do singers get bigger vibratos with age? (No naughty comments about female singers please ...)

[Richard Barrett]

I've often wondered why it is that vibrato is generally offlimits for (orchestral) clarinets but not for the others. I think it's what you get used to. Some here will know Karel Ančerl's recording of Mahler's 9th symphony with the Czech Philharmonic (and no doubt other recordings too, but this is one that sticks in my mind because the score is so familiar), where, as was usual with central/eastern European orchestras in those days, not only clarinets but horns also played with vibrato, making for a very strange sound overall. However it doesn't sound in the least affected or inappropriate. At the opposite extreme you have Norrington's Stuttgart recording of the same piece where nobody plays with vibrato... my feeling is that something has been lost in the course of orchestras throughout the world evolving towards producing basically the same sound, varying only in how well or badly they do it.

[richardfinegold]

I've often wondered why it is that vibrato is generally offlimits for (orchestral) clarinets but not for the others. I think it's what you get used to. Some here will know Karel Ančerl's recording of Mahler's 9th symphony with the Czech Philharmonic (and no doubt other recordings too, but this is one that sticks in my mind because the score is so familiar), where, as was usual with central/eastern European orchestras in those days, not only clarinets but horns also played with vibrato, making for a very strange sound overall. However it doesn't sound in the least affected or inappropriate. At the opposite extreme you have Norrington's Stuttgart recording of the same piece where nobody plays with vibrato... my feeling is that something has been lost in the course of orchestras throughout the world evolving towards producing basically the same sound, varying only in how well or badly they do it.

That Ancerl recording was my first exposure to Mahler 9, and that Orchestral sound, for better or worse, is imprinted in my appreciation ofthe piece of the "right" way it should sound. I can't say that I would want to hear Norrington in this work.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've often wondered why it is that vibrato is generally off limits for (orchestral) clarinets but not for the others. I think it's what you get used to.

It may be partly what you get used to, but there is also the natural warmth of the clarinet's and the horn's sound. When these instruments are played with vibrato, warmth can turn into sickliness.

[ahinton]

American soprano Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet. Anyone recall John Foulds World Requiem at the Albert Hall in 2007 ? I think there was a prom she disfigured the following year to prove that was not an off night but I can't recall the piece.

I can recall the piece; I rather wish that I couldn't. I have immense admiration for Foulds but, in this work, I think he wrote almost unbelievably far below his best.

[Bryn]

... At the opposite extreme you have Norrington's Stuttgart recording of the same piece where nobody plays with vibrato...

You surprise me, Richard. The use of string vibrato in Norrington's Stuttgart recording is not, of course ubiquitous, but as in their wonderful Proms performance, it is used with care and sensitivity at appropriate points, principally in solo passages, but not exclusively so. I find that approach to have much greater emotional impact than simply wallowing in string body vibrato as first resort.

Re. central/eastern European orchestras, I originally found the heavy loading of wind and brass vibrato in the Witt recording of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie thoroughly off-putting. I have, however, come to accept its validity the more I have listened to it.


I am, of course, much in favour of the style of vibrato referred to by John Tilbury in his "On Playing Feldman":

"From ancient China there is a description of a vibrato technique: Remarkable is the ting-yin, where the vacillating movement of the finger should be so subtle as to be hardly noticeable. Some handbooks say that one should not move the finger at all, but let the timbre be influenced by the pulsation of the blood in the fingertips pressing the string down on the board a little more heavily than usual."