Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' string quartets - hard work?

[Joseph K]

This thread sent me to the first of this set played by the Alban Berg Quartett video performance on youtube. I got to know Beethoven's string quartets by the complete box of them by the Alban Berg Quartett and I am not fussed over whether or not they are HIPP. I have however ordered the Kuijken Quartet double-CD mentioned above.

[RichardB]

Something of an aside but Grammarly pretty much insists upon the use of the Oxford comma, but that's 'American English', of course.

I thought of it as an Americanism before I ever heard the term "Oxford comma".

Returning to the topic in hand, I hope it isn't going to drift into yet another HIPP versus HUPP argument, but "recordings made in the early 20th century" were made on instruments with different setups and different kinds of strings from those used in the early 19th century, which obviously will be associated with different playing techniques. Quite apart from that, I wonder how many of those "traditionals" involved research into treatises on playing style dating from the composer's time. I suspect few if any.

But apart from all that, speaking for myself, I only really began to appreciate 19th century music once it was possible to hear it in performances and recordings that took such matters seriously. This is one possible way of encouraging Mal not to give up on Beethoven's op.59. If they're played as a micromanaged emotional rollercoaster that may well be what makes them seem "difficult".

[RichardB]

This thread sent me to the first of this set played by the Alban Berg Quartett video performance on youtube. I got to know Beethoven's string quartets by the complete box of them by the Alban Berg Quartett and I am not fussed over whether or not they are HIPP. I have however ordered the Kuijken Quartet double-CD mentioned above.

For me it comes down above all to vibrato, the indiscriminate use of which really does constitute an obstacle for me (and which is a constant feature of the ABQ recordings), and is a much more important issue than the other aspects of HIPP I mentioned in my last post.

[Bryn]

For me it comes down above all to vibrato, the indiscriminate use of which really does constitute an obstacle for me (and which is a constant feature of the ABQ recordings), and is a much more important issue than the other aspects of HIPP I mentioned in my last post.

Yes, vibrato loses its impact if resorted to as the basic playing technique, rather than being a carefully deployed mode of expression.

[Mandryka]

The Rasumovskys certainly are a big step forward in music compared wih what was before; I felt I had to 'keep up' with them at first. I think they show Beethoven at fully confident creative maturity, having got over the fears of his deafness.

The most revelatory performances I know are by the Budapest and Busch quartets, with the Amadeus, Vegh and Alban Berg close behind.

I'm not saying it's better, but have you heard the live op 59/3 from the Busch recorded by Arbiter? The line-up had changed but still, and they were older . . .

https://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/the-busch-quartet-live/

Other oldies I thought were wort a listen in this music include The New Music Quartet, Calvet and Strub.

[Mandryka]

They supposedly express "intense, shifting emotions". I get intense (intense difficulty...). The emotions are perhaps shifting too fast for me to take in!

The way I would put it is like this (and obviously I'm speaking about my response to the music, not the music): they can come across as an emotional effusion, and lacking poise, nobility, elegance and dignity. Some people seem to like that, I don't. The search for me is to find performances which give the music a touch of the style I personally need, a touch of restraint. If you feel like me, it may be worth trying the Smetana Quartet on Denon and the Tokyo Quartet.

[smittims]

I think the argument between the spirit and the letter will never be resolved: it will always involve personal preference. But (to risk a generalisation) HIPPs do depend on being 'right' about the historical basis for what they do, whereas 'traditionalists' don't think that's so important. So 'Beethoven didn't do that' doesn't mean that Joseph Roisman was 'wrong' to use vibrato here or there. He certainly used little portamento in contrast to the Leners, who despite being younger used it in spadefuls . That doesn't , to my ears , make either of them 'right' or 'wrong'.

Where I get suspicious about HIPP is when its practitioners start to sound like a fundamentalist religion ('thou shalt... thou shalt not...') when they surely know how much conjecture there is in deciding how music was played in the past.

[RichardB]

I think the argument between the spirit and the letter will never be resolved

Do you really think that's where the argument is located? I don't. It's very hard to draw any distinction between them, for a start.

Where I get suspicious about HIPP is when its practitioners start to sound like a fundamentalist religion ('thou shalt... thou shalt not...') when they surely know how much conjecture there is in deciding how music was played in the past.

The argument is really between conjecture and ignorance, and your own conjecture about HIPP practitioners is really not borne out by the vast majority of literature on the subject, which most of its detractors haven't even read - the egregious Mr Hurwitz even admits as much in his rant about vibrato. Nobody is claiming anywhere that it's "right" or "wrong" to use vibrato here and there. What I can't handle in Beethoven quartet performances is vibrato as a default playing technique. The fact that this was not a feature of performance in Beethoven's time isn't really the issue as far as I'm concerned; the issue is whether I can hear the pitches and harmonies of the music clearly and not through a wobbly blur, and this applies to any music for string instruments.

[smittims]

I see what you mean , RichardB . I agree abouot excessive vibrato obscuring the music (er... just which high note was she singing there?' , but I'd say 'conjecture and inspiration' rather than 'ignorance '. Calling the Budapest quartet ignorant isn't convincing, I think.

Since we're talking about Beethoven I'll give one example: Schnabel's 1932 recording of op.109. Shortly before the end of the first movement there's a moment where, after a half-close, the music suddenly takes off on a flight of fancy. Schnabel has no 'historical authority' for doing this; there's nothing written in the score to say this is what Beethoven wants. He does it by instinct, and to me that's the essence of the music; it's what lifts the music off the printed page and makes it a magical experience.

So by letter I mean the written word or note, and the insistence that it be followed literally. By the spirit I'm thinking of those few musicians who realised that music isn't the printed notes, it's not even the sounds , but an idea in the mind which is conveyed by those things.

[RichardB]

by letter I mean the written word or note, and the insistence that it be followed literally. By the spirit I'm thinking of those few musicians who realised that music isn't the printed notes, it's not even the sounds , but an idea in the mind which is conveyed by those things.

Not "few" musicians, though, but all musicians! Following the written note literally would presumably be best achieved by feeding the notation into a machine and having the machine play it. This would not sound like a musical performance, as anyone who works with notation programs on their computer will have found out. The written notation has never been considered as a complete repository of the information necessary to perform the music it encodes, and less so in 1800 than now. This is obvious, surely.

[Mandryka]

I see what you mean , RichardB . I agree abouot excessive vibrato obscuring the music (er... just which high note was she singing there?' , but I'd say 'conjecture and inspiration' rather than 'ignorance '. Calling the Budapest quartet ignorant isn't convincing, I think.

Since we're talking about Beethoven I'll give one example: Schnabel's 1932 recording of op.109. Shortly before the end of the first movement there's a moment where, after a half-close, the music suddenly takes off on a flight of fancy. Schnabel has no 'historical authority' for doing this; there's nothing written in the score to say this is what Beethoven wants. He does it by instinct, and to me that's the essence of the music; it's what lifts the music off the printed page and makes it a magical experience.

So by letter I mean the written word or note, and the insistence that it be followed literally. By the spirit I'm thinking of those few musicians who realised that music isn't the printed notes, it's not even the sounds , but an idea in the mind which is conveyed by those things.

The "problem" is that if anyone were to call Toscanini ignorant, Toscanini of come è scritto fame, that wouldn't be convincing either.

When I say "problem" I mean that there's a veritable tradition now, in the west, of playing classical scores pretty much comme scrito -- not just Toscanini, but, off the top of my head, Walcha, the early Rubinstein, Godowsky the performer, possibly even Pollini. Yes, there's always an anti-modernist tendency -- from Furtwangler to Scherchen and Harnoncourt and Rzewski's hammerklavier.

I remember once looking at the first page of the score of Boulez's second sonata with a composer and a pianist here in London. I naively said, well, you can use a bit of tempo rubato to give it life. They looked at me horrified "What? Are you mad? Discretionary rubato in Boulez is streng verboten!"

That's silly, I think. But the way of thinking from trained, even successful musicians, exists.

[smittims]

Well, 'the written notation' plus contemporaneous instructions (e.g. Leopold Mozart's and CPE Bach's treatises) do seem to be regarded as a sort of Bible by some musicians, hence my remark about fundamentalist religion.

There's an anecdote of Someone asking Toscanini to play something on the piano which he had insisted must be played 'as written' and when he made a little ritardando they called out 'aha! you played something that's not in the score'. Toscanini shrugged and said 'one cannot be a machine'.

I must go now; this has been a good debate and I must say a more polite one than we sometimes used to see on the old BBC board!

[Joseph K]

I have however ordered the Kuijken Quartet double-CD mentioned above.

This arrived today. Looking forward to giving it a spin.