Why the need for speed?

[Rover_KE]

Am I alone in thinking Benjamin Grosvenor's performance of Chopin's Scherzo No 1 yesterday morning was too fast? His fingers flying over the keys like he was trying to break the sound barrier obscured much of the intricate detail and clever pianism of the composition.

But to me, it was only the latest in the recent trend of virtuoso pianists and other musicians seeming to be competing to break some sort of speed record. Take for instance some modern renderings of the Gipsy Rondo and the Lost Penny.

Some conductors too appear to be whipping their orchestras into seeing how quickly they can get to the finishing line as if their lives depended on it, irrespective of composers' intentions and subtle writing — the overtures, for instance, to the The Bartered Bride and Ruslan and Ludmila, to name but two.

Is there any evidence that composers ever wanted examples like these played at such breakneck speeds?

And when did anybody last hear every note of the turns in the last movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik?

[ardcarp]

Many HIPP Baroque ensembles play Bach/Vivaldi/Handel and the like at breakneck speed. I think there has very recently been a return to moderation by some. Thank goodness.

Changing the subject, some pre-war recordings of the Classical and Romantic repertoire didn't hang about. (Beecham was no slouch, for instance.) I've heard it suggested that fitting a movement onto one side of a 78 record may have had something to do with it. I'm inclined to doubt that.

[Mandryka]

Is there any evidence that composers ever wanted examples like these played at such breakneck speeds?

Yes, Beethoven left metronome indications. Not Chopin though. If you can get hold of it, do try Nikolai Demidenko’s Chopin scherzi, which err slightly in the opposite direction (and which is a favourite recording of mine.)

In HIPP - baroque HIPP - it was just a reaction against the previous generation, and maybe some (muddled?) thinking that the music is really an oration designed to lead the listener firmly to its conclusion, and so the important thing is to make that structure clear rather distract the listener with lovely details. Very few people play baroque music fast and tense like Goebel did now (thank gawd!)

An example where I think speed really works (but (ironically) goes against the fashion) is in the first movement of the Waldstein - there’s a fast recording by Paul Jacobs.

[gradus]

Our late member Peter Katin often complained at the speeds adopted by the latest piano whizz-kid appearing on R3 and I always agreed with him. Just recently there was a thoroughly charmless performance of Schumann's Spring Symphony that couldn't finish quickly enough eschewing opportunities to allow wind players to breathe through their phrases in a desperate rush to keep up to tempo.

[Keraulophone]

Rover_KE, I don't think you'd approve of Yevgeny Mravinsky's way with the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro.* It's on a live (!) Melodiya recording form 1965 which includes the Ov to Ruslan and Lyudmila that you mention, also played at breakneck speed. In this case, the extraordinary virtuosity of the Leningrad PO, particularly the strings, is worth hearing to be believed, whatever misgivings one may have about the conductor regarding the composer's wishes. We occasionally hear orchestral players pushed beyond their limits, then the music and the audience are the losers.

https://youtu.be/0wILsLM84L0?si=PpHqHJ6YSdvlS9x2

The finale of Tchaikovsky 4 in his DG recording is another famously breakneck example of Mravinsky's art.


* It might have felt fast in 1965, though listening again just now, by current standards the tempo doesn't seem out-of-the-ordinary, but the playing certainly is.

[cloughie]

Rover_KE, I don't think you'd approve of Yevgeny Mravinsky's way with the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro. It's on a live (!) Melodiya recording form 1965 which includes the Ov to Ruslan and Lyudmila that you mention, also played at breakneck speed. In this case, the extraordinary virtuosity of the Leningrad PO, particularly the strings, is worth hearing to be believed, whatever misgivings one may have about the conductor regarding the composer's wishes. We occasionally hear orchestral players pushed beyond their limits, then the music and the audience are the losers.

https://youtu.be/0wILsLM84L0?si=PpHqHJ6YSdvlS9x2

The finale of Tchaikovsky 4 in his DG recording is another famously breakneck example of Mravinsky's art.

I guess some works need to excite us whereas others need to be savoured!

[gradus]

I guess some works need to excite us whereas others need to be savoured!

Exactly.