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

[MrGongGong]

and will continue to do so going forward.

I wonder what other directions are possible ?

[amateur51]

I wonder what other directions are possible ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- I was reminded of Spike Milligan's retelling of The Sleeping Beauty: "The little princess grew up; which is the best direction for princesses."

[amateur51]

- I was reminded of Spike Milligan's retelling of The Sleeping Beauty: "The little princess grew up; which is the best direction for princesses."

encore!

[Pabmusic]

...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...

Hear! hear! Period instruments usually sound quaint to me and often make me aware that this is a 'museum' performance - whether it actually is or not.

[richardfinegold]

I wonder what other directions are possible ?

From personal experience, I can assure you that the possibilities are endless.

[jayne lee wilson]

Late in the day (after a weekend's late-winter bush-hacking) a few crumbs to add to fhg's living definitives...

My most recent acquisitions of Beethoven Piano Concertos are Cristofori/Schoonderwoerd (1 to a part Orchestra, Fritz Fortepiano) and Andnes/MCO. Both sound wonderful - hard to fault in their very different ways of breathing life into the old masters. Then I put on VPO/Backhaus/Schmidt-Isserstedt (1958) in Pristine's latest remaster... gosh, I think, this sounds marvellous too - until the climaxes arrive, seeming too big-boned, too massive. "Just wrong for Beethoven now" I think.
Fast forward a few decades and a bored musician discovers a primitive 96khz file of the VPO and Backhaus and thinks wow, I didn't know they did it like this - and stereo too! Soon orchestras are playing big-band LvB, Haydn, Mozart, everywhere. Someone reorchestrates those concertos for a Mahler-sized orchestra and the critic says, over-the-top, but very exciting!
It's always a problem to preserve something old outside of a museum (real or in-the-mind); how do you keep it alive without changing it? The rationale for period-performance may have started out as historical reconstruction, but gifted musicians from Bruggen to Brautigam use those sonorities to find new expressive life in the set of instructions a score constitutes.

If you hear the full, clear wind-band and close, soloistic strings, the fortepiano's singing brilliance, of the Schoonderwoerd performances of the LvB Concertos, warmly expressive and dynamic though they are, and think - no, just no mystery or poetry here... then you really are clinging to the past, whether Klemperer/Barenboim, Szell/Fleisher, Leitner/Kempff...

But, at the same time, you're probably going back to the future...

[Roehre]

....Fast forward a few decades and a bored musician discovers a primitive 96khz file of the VPO and Backhaus and thinks wow, I didn't know they did it like this - and stereo too! Soon orchestras are playing big-band LvB, Haydn, Mozart, everywhere. Someone reorchestrates those concertos for a Mahler-sized orchestra and the critic says, over-the-top, but very exciting! .......

I am convinced this will happen, in reconstructing the 20C performance traditions.
And I do think we might even live to see mid-20C-music being HIPPed.

[MrGongGong]

I am convinced this will happen, in reconstructing the 20C performance traditions.
And I do think we might even see mid-20C-music being HIPPed.

There is going to be a problem (as I have seen discussed elsewhere) with Cage's prepared piano pieces as modern "rubbers" are not made of latex which does affect how the preparations sound.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

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.

Yes, but HIPP vibrato goes too far, with most performances shunning it altogether, as though it was never used. It was - confirmed by Leopold Mozart, who didn't much like its excessive use. But even he was not opposed to it entirely. So why do some HIPPsters take such as extreme stance?
And Mozart liked his symphonies to be played by large orchestras, as evidenced by his comments on the 1st performance of the Paris Symphony, though I doubt whether he would have minded "little band" performances as well.

[MickyD]

Yes, but HIPP vibrato goes too far, with most performances shunning it altogether, as though it was never used. It was - confirmed by Leopold Mozart, who didn't much like its excessive use. But even he was not opposed to it entirely. So why do some HIPPsters take such as extreme stance?
And Mozart liked his symphonies to be played by large orchestras, as evidenced by his comments on the 1st performance of the Paris Symphony, though I doubt whether he would have minded "little band" performances as well.

But Hogwood did go to the trouble of ensuring that his Mozart symphonies contained the same number of players cited by whatever contemporary accounts were available, and that meant big band HIP for many of them.

[Bryn]

Yes, but HIPP vibrato goes too far, with most performances shunning it altogether, as though it was never used. It was - confirmed by Leopold Mozart, who didn't much like its excessive use. But even he was not opposed to it entirely. So why do some HIPPsters take such as extreme stance?
And Mozart liked his symphonies to be played by large orchestras, as evidenced by his comments on the 1st performance of the Paris Symphony, though I doubt whether he would have minded "little band" performances as well.

If you find yourself unable to hear the vibrato used by orchestras directed by the likes of Sir Roger Norrington, you could always try using your eyes to see the finger wobbling. It's easy enough to see, though quite possibly subtle enough for those over-acclimatised to the middle to late 20th Century ubiquitous use of vibrato to recognise by ear.