Should A Modern Symphony Orchestra Be Allowed To Play Mozart Symphonies?

[Ferretfancy]

Essential Classics broadcast Ian Bostridge's recording of Britten's Serenade a couple of days ago with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Unless my ears deceived me, the German horn player made no attempt to emulate the sound of a natural horn as prescribed in the score, but played beautifully in tune in both the prologue and epilogue of the piece.
This would certainly not be a choice for my collection. I do admire Bostridge, but his mannered diction was very odd -- " Dyeeeeng! Dyeeeeing! Dyeeeeing!" for example.

[MrGongGong]

Essential Classics broadcast Ian Bostridge's recording of Britten's Serenade a couple of days ago with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Unless my ears deceived me, the German horn player made no attempt to emulate the sound of a natural horn as prescribed in the score, but played beautifully in tune in both the prologue and epilogue of the piece.
.

That sounds to me like the "wrong" sound entirely
which would be "out of tune" even though it's "in tune" in ET

The 7th and 11th harmonics are not "out of tune" they just don't fit the system that most music uses

and so on........La Monte , Arnold Dreyblatt, Glen Branca, Harry Partch et al

(is the nationality of the Horn player of significance ? )

MrG
(49 English Male
likes cheese and malt whisky )

[aeolium]

I think that HIPP has reminded us that things were once done differently - that is good, and the use of smaller bodies of strings and crisper styles has been a big plus - though there's nothing wrong with other styles. But to suggest that things should be reduced to a snapshot of 1782 (or whenever) is tremendously limiting.

Not least, since we don't really know what the performances in 1782 sounded like. What's also interesting is that when we do know what performances of more recent music such as some of that of the early C20 sounded like (because recordings survive) there is no comparable sense of obligation among modern performers to be faithful to that older performance style. And that to me is how it should be - in performance each generation discovers the music afresh.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

there are some similarities [alas i have not done the necessary research so this is just a Sunday morning musing] between the impact of HIPP and Evolutionary Psychology which very quickly turned into issues such as 'allowed to say' etc ... it was a great and refreshing eruption in social science as HIPP was/is to my ears .... many evopsych leaders became the politburo pursuing tenure for their comrades at major universities with single minded nastiness reminiscent of all such cults ....

the reaction and reclamation of domain from the evopsch coup now generates very fruitful hybrid/mutt approaches and life is more interesting for all of us but the personal and social reputational attacks may not heal so quickly ...

telling people what they may or may not do so offends my anarchist tendencies that i would ban it

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I wonder EA what your reaction would be at the announcement of a new vibratoless Norrrington recording of Eine Alpensinfonie !

I have nightmares about this. The worst of it would be that I would have to buy it.

(My "Keep it up, Ferney" was a reference to his change fron "Old Alpie" to "Young Alpie".)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

telling people what they may or may not do so offends my anarchist tendencies that i would ban it

I recall a Faure BaL when the reviewer said "you really shouldn't be listening to this", referring to a recording that wasn't authentic.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But to suggest that things should be reduced to a snapshot of 1782 (or whenever) is tremendously limiting.

Indeed, and I don't know of any practitioner who genuinely seeks to do this (it would not surprise me to discover that there are such animals - HIPP is no more immune from misguided ideas than the BPO is immune from hiring poor conductors). My own enthusiasm is not for the "museum" aspects of HIPP - I'm not that interested in a recreation of a Handel or Mozart opera with "authentic" audience chatter, nor in the Bach Cantatas performed in a cold, unlit church at 8.00 am by hastily-rehearsed performers. I want performances to get as close as we can imagine (and that leaves the performers' fantasy as "free" as they could wish - perhaps too dauntingly so for some souls) to the ideal performances that the composer heard as he was writing the work. There is nothing too radical in such a desire; nor is there anything revolutionary in believing that this can best be achieved by using the forces the composer wrote for, with their timbres, and dynamics - and by discovering as much as we can about the performance practises the composers took for granted.

Which doesn't mean that deeply profound Musical experiences cannot be achieved by "modern symphony orchestras": the Mozart Symphonies are amongst the greatest achievements of the human imagination, a testament to our species. So massive are these deceptively "easy" masterpieces that any single performance (even if led by Fürtwangler, or Klemperer, or Horenstein or Kuijken or Al Smith and the Scunthorpe Phil) cannot hope to reveal all their facets, and performances using different forces from those the composer would have expected can - and very often have - reveal aspects that might otherwise pass unnoticed, given sensitive, intelligent performers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And that to me is how it should be - in performance each generation discovers the music afresh.

Quite so: and the glorious rediscovery of the Music engendered by the HIPP "movement" (so varied it could be called a "gyration") began with performers discovering the Music afresh for themselves. The generation of Karajan and Bernstein was really the last that could perform Mozart naturally in that "traditional" way; performers trying to continue that way just sounded stale and imitative - it was the HIPPsters who brought the repertoire back to life and not just for themselves: Abbado, Chailly, Rattle and even Bernstein himself all show how refreshed the Big Band approach is following the HIPP discoveries. Abbado's two Beethoven cycles are a perfect example: the first, with the VPO, adequate, acceptable a bit stodgy; the second with the BPO returned to life, exciting and excited by what this Music is capable of.

[amateur51]

Quite so: and the glorious rediscovery of the Music engendered by the HIPP "movement" (so varied it could be called a "gyration") began with performers discovering the Music afresh for themselves. The generation of Karajan and Bernstein was really the last that could perform Mozart naturally in that "traditional" way; performers trying to continue that way just sounded stale and imitative - it was the HIPPsters who brought the repertoire back to life and not just for themselves: Abbado, Chailly, Rattle and even Bernstein himself all show how refreshed the Big Band approach is following the HIPP discoveries. Abbado's two Beethoven cycles are a perfect example: the first, with the VPO, adequate, acceptable a bit stodgy; the second with the BPO returned to life, exciting and excited by what this Music is capable of.

You're on stonking form this morning ferney I'm nodding away here

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I was decidedly unimpressed by Rattle's VPO Beethoven symphony cycle. A great orchestra playing in handcuffs. For a while, Radio 3 jumped on the bandwagon and kept playing individual movements from the set.

[Roehre]

..... it was the HIPPsters who brought the repertoire back to life and not just for themselves: Abbado, Chailly, Rattle and even Bernstein himself all show how refreshed the Big Band approach is following the HIPP discoveries. Abbado's two Beethoven cycles are a perfect example: the first, with the VPO, adequate, acceptable a bit stodgy; the second with the BPO returned to life, exciting and excited by what this Music is capable of.

Haitink's cycles with the Concertgebouw (1970s) and the recent LSO one show a similar development.

[Pabmusic]

Not least, since we don't really know what the performances in 1782 sounded like. What's also interesting is that when we do know what performances of more recent music such as some of that of the early C20 sounded like (because recordings survive) there is no comparable sense of obligation among modern performers to be faithful to that older performance style. And that to me is how it should be - in performance each generation discovers the music afresh.

What a good point you make about the value of early recordings and how they are usually ignored as a record of style.

...I want performances to get as close as we can imagine (and that leaves the performers' fantasy as "free" as they could wish - perhaps too dauntingly so for some souls) to the ideal performances that the composer heard as he was writing the work. There is nothing too radical in such a desire; nor is there anything revolutionary in believing that this can best be achieved by using the forces the composer wrote for, with their timbres, and dynamics - and by discovering as much as we can about the performance practises the composers took for granted...

The whole of your post is excellent, Ferney, and I agree with you, though I think that to search for the "ideal performances that the composer heard as he was writing the work" is more an aspirational goal than a practical one.

(By the way, I think that Al Smith and the Scunthorpe Phil do a good job of 18th Century stuff.)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

nor is there anything revolutionary in believing that this can best be achieved by using the forces the composer wrote for, with their timbres, and dynamics -

Well, yes and no. Most composers did, whenever instruments were updated, prefer the newer ones. They weren't stuck in a museum, and liked to move on as the newer instruments were developed. That isn't to say we should not also perform as we think players of the 18th century might have done (but let's do this without the extremes of some scholars/practitioners).

[MrGongGong]

Frank Denyer (now there's a sadly neglected English composer !) started writing Shakuhachi music precisely because the instrument allowed for the possibility of a different spectral profile for every note unlike the western flute where technology has had the goal of equalising the timbre.

[richardfinegold]

Well, yes and no. Most composers did, whenever instruments were updated, prefer the newer ones. They weren't stuck in a museum, and liked to move on as the newer instruments were developed. That isn't to say we should not also perform as we think players of the 18th century might have done (but let's do this without the extremes of some scholars/practitioners).

Agreed. Beethoven and Mozart in particular were always pushing the envelope with instruments. I really wonder what they would think if they could return to life and witness the fetish devoted to playing with instruments that they would have gladly discarded.
Which is not to mean that the trend of playing music from the Classical Period with smaller Orchestras, and in some cases using H.I.P. practices, is without value. Clearly it has made most of us rethink how the music should go and increased the realm of possibilities. I prefer this music best when it is performed by
modern orchestras playing modern instruments but that incorporate H.I.P ideas in terms of tempos, phrasing, balances, color, and vibrato. I have Period Orchestra recordings in my collection and will continue to do so going forward.