Conductors who think they know better

[Ferretfancy]

Has he made them more interesting to play? Hopefully, because having played them many times I can testify they are EXTREMELY uninteresting to perform.

Even more uninteresting to listen to. Chopin's solo piano music is great, but both concertos are a bore ( Cue outrage! )

[cloughie]

Even more uninteresting to listen to. Chopin's solo piano music is great, but both concertos are a bore ( Cue outrage! )

When I wore a younger man's clothes I heard Pollini/Kletzki PC1 and Haskil/Markevitch PC2 and liked them - I cannot see what so many on these boards find to dislike in them. For a long time I was not keen on his solo piano works but since trying, not totally successfully to play some of his pieces I have grown to like them. I also listened to some of Samson Francois interesting interpretations which add a little Gallic charm, maybe not inappropriate considering how much time FC spent in Paris.

[Bryn]

Yes. Heaven forbid that the music might actually sound better.

But that's what vinteuil is in favour of, rather than sounding as if the instruments written for had no great variation in timbre, etc. over their different registers. How degrading to have such variation evened out.

[gradus]

But that's what vinteuil is in favour of, rather than sounding as if the instruments written for had no great variation in timbre, etc. over their different registers. How degrading to have such variation evened out.

...but modern pianos do not all sound the same, it's just that Steinway has a near-stranglehold. Not that I have anything against Steinways but Fazioli, Bosendorfer, Yamaha, Kawai, Bluthner etc add their own distinctive timbres and it would be good to hear them more often. I've long wished that R3 announcers told us which piano make is being played in broadcast recitals.

[Serial_Apologist]

Even more uninteresting to listen to. Chopin's solo piano music is great, but both concertos are a bore ( Cue outrage! )

And I've never been able to understand why Chopin was never able to translate onto the larger canvas his often remarkable formal ingenuity on the small scale.

[Barbirollians]

Even more uninteresting to listen to. Chopin's solo piano music is great, but both concertos are a bore ( Cue outrage! )

If badly played I agree - with Pollini/Kletzki or with Argerich I don't.

[seabright]

There seem to be two different types of example. First, arrangements - which never pretend to be by the original composer. I don't see how these meet the criteria for this thread. Then there are blatant tinkerings with the scoring (Mahler with Schumann, Stokowski adding a gong to The Planets). Now those really do need justification.

How about Toscanini adding half-a-dozen tam-tam crashes to the end of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 'Manfred' Symphony, to say nothing of cutting five minutes of music out of its finale? It's funny how no-one complains about Toscanini's changes to scores, presumably having been bamboozled into believing that he was a great "literalist" conductor. In the chapter headed "The Master Conductor" in Howard Shanet's "Philharmonic" the lid is taken off the "literalism" myth where Toscanini's tinkerings with any number of scores are laid bare. The examples are endless: extra timpani thwacks in the Beethoven "Pastoral" storm music; extra cymbal clashes in Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet"; extra bars for the glockenspiel in the Sibelius 4th; rewritten timpani parts in the Brahms symphonies, especially in the finale of the 1st. And as for Schumann's 3rd, hardly a page goes by in which there isn't some change to the scoring. But of course, the Toscanini hagiographers tell us these tamperings were actually "emendations" made in the service of the composer and were done with great taste, so I guess they should know!

[Pabmusic]

There are of course good reasons for altering the text - or at least justifiable ones. Sometimes the published text has bad editorial changes. 19th century Breitkopf bass parts often automatically transpose low Ds and Cs up an octave, whatever the composer wrote. No problem changing those, in my view. A tad more debatable is whether to change some horn passages where it's clear the composer would have written them differently if horns in his day could have played the notes. This is very common in Beethoven. I'm usually OK with this if it doesn'f result in an un-Beethovenian sound. (Weingartner went perhaps a little too far, though the book he wrote is good reading).

[kea]

I've heard a couple of recordings of Schumann's Spring Symphony transposing the initial horn call down a third to where it originally was before Schumann realised the horns would need to use hand stopping to play it. It does make for a definite improvement—his instincts were right, the instruments simply weren't (or at least the orchestra he was writing for didn't have any valve horns yet). That said, valve horns were introduced in Schumann's lifetime (and he wrote a Konzertstück and an Adagio & Allegro for them) but he never went back and revised the horn parts in his earlier symphonies, so maybe that's second-guessing him too much.

[Pabmusic]

I've heard a couple of recordings of Schumann's Spring Symphony transposing the initial horn call down a third to where it originally was before Schumann realised the horns would need to use hand stopping to play it. It does make for a definite improvement—his instincts were right, the instruments simply weren't (or at least the orchestra he was writing for didn't have any valve horns yet). That said, valve horns were introduced in Schumann's lifetime (and he wrote a Konzertstück and an Adagio & Allegro for them) but he never went back and revised the horn parts in his earlier symphonies, so maybe that's second-guessing him too much.

Spot on. Apparently the orchestra at the first rehearsal started laughing at the sounds. Very sensitive Schumann was traumatised.

[Richard Barrett]

And I've never been able to understand why Chopin was never able to translate onto the larger canvas his often remarkable formal ingenuity on the small scale.

He isn't the only composer to have that problem! Personally I find the concertos rather attractive, especially their slow movements, but there is the fact of the orchestral part being perfunctory and unimaginative. I can see why a conductor might want to "put that right" but without wholesale recasting of the whole composition I can't see it being more than a tinkering exercise which wouldn't address the core issue. Sometimes it's necessary to accept and even learn to love music with such flaws.

More generally, it's impossible to place a strict dividing line between interpretation and interference. For me personally Mahler reorchestrating Schumann is OK but Klemperer cutting Bruckner really isn't. It's just as much a matter of individual taste and feeling about the music as any other question of which music or which interpretation one favours.

[Stanfordian]

...but modern pianos do not all sound the same, it's just that Steinway has a near-stranglehold. Not that I have anything against Steinways but Fazioli, Bosendorfer, Yamaha, Kawai, Bluthner etc add their own distinctive timbres and it would be good to hear them more often. I've long wished that R3 announcers told us which piano make is being played in broadcast recitals.

Hiya Gradus,

That's far too sensible an idea for R3 presenters to undertake! But it would get in the way of inanities and trying to be your mate.

[Bryn]

...but modern pianos do not all sound the same, it's just that Steinway has a near-stranglehold. Not that I have anything against Steinways but Fazioli, Bosendorfer, Yamaha, Kawai, Bluthner etc add their own distinctive timbres and it would be good to hear them more often. I've long wished that R3 announcers told us which piano make is being played in broadcast recitals.

Indeed, but I was referring to the tendency for modern pianos to lack the degree of difference between registers found on the instruments the composers mentioned were familiar with and had to exploit/contend with.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Indeed, but I was referring to the tendency for modern pianos to lack the degree of difference between registers found on the instruments the composers mentioned were familiar with and had to exploit/contend with.

What you seem to be suggesting (and I'm in full agreement) is that the early prototypes were work-in-progress. I can't imagine composers, who we're used to other instruments that were developed beyond the early apprentice stage, would be ecstatic about the deficiencies of the early pianoforte (the name most commonly used at the time).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What you seem to be suggesting (and I'm in full agreement) is that the early prototypes were work-in-progress. I can't imagine composers, who we're used to other instruments that were developed beyond the early apprentice stage, would be ecstatic about the deficiencies of the early pianoforte (the name most commonly used at the time).

That vagrant apostrophe again, Alpie!

The flaw in your suggestion - and forgive me for pointing out something so obvious - is that these composers wrote so frequently for this instrument, when perfectly viable alternatives were readily available. The attractions of the late 18th Century piano were what they wrote for - and what the Music sounds best on. I can't imagine composers, who wrote so well for the instruments they knew, would be ecstatic about their Music being compromised by the homogeneous timbres of the modern piano (the name ironically used for the noisy machine mutated in order to play the work of Rachmaninoff in enormous concert halls ).