Period instruments In 'Modern' Works

[Beef Oven!]

We are all accustomed to period instruments and HIPP in classical and Baroque repertoire, and there has been much gnashing of teeth and long-standing friends have even fallen out over it all!

But what about recent music? The discussions concerning the Xavier-Roth Debussy and Ravel recordings show that the idea of period instruments and our penchant for familiar sounds clash, even with living memory. Some have taken to it, some have been wrong-footed.

Even the term 'historically informed' is unhelpful with modern music. For example, It doesn't help with a comparison of Boults RVW and Manze's, does it?

[Bryn]

We are all accustomed to period instruments and HIPP in classical and Baroque repertoire, and there has been much gnashing of teeth and long-standing friends have even fallen out over it all!

But what about recent music? The discussions concerning the Xavier-Roth Debussy and Ravel recordings show that the idea of period instruments and our penchant for familiar sounds clash, even with living memory. Some have taken to it, some have been wrong-footed.

Even the term 'historically informed' is unhelpful with modern music. For example, It doesn't help with a comparison of Boults RVW and Manze's, does it?

Ah but . . .

Then there's the likes of Gérard Frémy's approach to Cage's Sonatas and Interludes.

[Beef Oven!]

Jos van Immerseel/Anima Eterna is an interesting HIPP Boléro.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought you meant things like:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/About-Baroque-Goltz-Freiburger-Barockorchester/dp/B000L42HT2

There's also the short-lived (at least as far as the record companies are concerned: I think it's still going?) New Queens Hall Orchestra, who recorded works by Elgar, RVW, Holst using instruments and playing techniques etc from the time that the works were written.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Planets-St-Pauls-Suite/dp/B0000249V2

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vaughan-Williams-Fantasia-Thomas-Ascending/dp/B001RD1IDM

[Beef Oven!]

I thought you meant things like:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/About-Baroque-Goltz-Freiburger-Barockorchester/dp/B000L42HT2

There's also the short-lived (at least as far as the record companies are concerned: I think it's still going?) New Queens Hall Orchestra, who recorded works by Elgar, RVW, Holst using instruments and playing techniques etc from the time that the works were written.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Planets-St-Pauls-Suite/dp/B0000249V2

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vaughan-Wil.../dp/B001RD1IDM

I have the CD of the period instrument version of Holst's Planets by Roy Goodman & The New Queens Hall Orchestra.

Quite a different feel with tempos at a lick, narrow-bore winds & gut strings. Closer to what GH would have had in his mind's ear?

[Richard Barrett]

But what about recent music? The discussions concerning the Xavier-Roth Debussy and Ravel recordings show that the idea of period instruments and our penchant for familiar sounds clash, even with living memory.

The thing about the recordings by François-Xavier Roth (his first name is double-barrelled, not his surname) is that, while being historically informed, they don't really sound much like performances made during the time when (for example) Ravel was still alive. The instrumentation used encourages a different kind of interpretation from those using metal strings, Heckel bassoons etc., but the results are in no way a reconstruction of how the music sounded in Ravel's time. Of course similar things have been said about Norrington's recordings of Mahler. (Another work taken up by HIP orchestras is the Rite of Spring: Stravinsky himself recorded this in 1929, 1940 and 1960 - which is the most "authentic"?) But all of this just underlines a fact about HIP which is often misunderstood by both its supporters and its detractors - that reconstruction of hypothetical past performances isn't the point. The point is IMO to use the resources known to the composer to make the music sound as fresh and new, and as unstandardised, as it did when first performed.

[MickyD]

Two of Immerseel's latest discs are of Gershwin and Orff - I am a fan of Immerseel, but haven't yet taken the plunge with these discs, as I really wonder just how much they would bring to music as late as this. Has anyone heard them?

[MickyD]

Continuing this thread, but with a disc using smaller forces. "Une flûte invisible" is a charming collection of music for voice, flute and piano. Gilles de Talhouet plays 19th century flutes, Arthur Schoondewoerd plays a 1907 Erard, and there are contributions from Sandrine Piau and Hervé Lamy. Debussy, Caplet, Roussel, Godard, Roussel, Pierné, Saint-Saens make for a delightful programme.

[cloughie]

That should be on the interesting sleeves thread!

[oddoneout]

That should be on the interesting sleeves thread!

'No association whatsoever' might be more appropriate? There are other ways to illustrate a dawn if that is the justification for using that image.

[Serial_Apologist]

'No association whatsoever' might be more appropriate? There are other ways to illustrate a dawn if that is the justification for using that image.

Was that her name??

[oddoneout]

Was that her name??

Might have been - didn't like to ask, it might have been misconstrued what with her being in the nuddy.

[MickyD]

'No association whatsoever' might be more appropriate? There are other ways to illustrate a dawn if that is the justification for using that image.

If you read the sleeve notes for the music contained on the CD, you will see that the picture is very apposite.

[oddoneout]

If you read the sleeve notes for the music contained on the CD, you will see that the picture is very apposite.

I can't do that(or more accurately don't know how to) but the list of pieces seemed to be about Pan, dryads, fauns among other things,and the music is for flute and voice, none of which this image seems to represent? It's OK, I'm not wishing to get into a great 'feminist agenda' spat about the use of nude female images(do the male equivalents appear as often - I don't know), it just seems a rather lazy default position, and every so often it irritates me enough to comment on it.

[Richard Tarleton]

A niche one perhaps, but just about on-topic - I've just listened to lutenist Jakob Lindberg's latest disc, "Nocturnal", in which he plays a number of night-related lute pieces around a centrepiece of his arrangement for lute of Britten's "Nocturnal after John Dowland" for guitar - regarded by not a few as the greatest piece in the guitar repertoire. This venture was undertaken with the blessing of the publishers and the Britten estate. The lute doesn't have the sustain, tonal variety or resonance of the guitar for the slower passages - one can't help feeling Britten might have written it differently had he composed it for lute.

Back in the early 60's when Bream and Pears were regular recital partners Bream was keen for Britten to write a piece for guitar but equally keen to steer him off writing one for the lute, on the grounds (as he put it) that there were (in those days) only one and a half lute players in the country who were likely to play it. Eventually Britten came up with the Nocturnal, written very definitely for the guitar. This is an interesting experiment, but I don't see myself listening to it many times more, unlike the 22 lute pieces on the disc. But at 83 minutes a generously filled disc.