Fortepianos

[richardfinegold]

I've been listening to Ronald Brautigan's cycle of Beethoven Sonatas on BIS and enjoying it immensely. I also have a couple of his recordings Mozart Piano Concerto discs and they are equally fine.
Brautigan is a great player. He does seem to have a penchant for quick tempos and a certain restless quality
which I find suits the instrument, with it's lack of sustain (relative to a conventional Concert Grand) very well.
I am left wondering if he plays this way in order to overcome the instrument's limitations, or whether this is how he would play regardless of the instrument, and therefore finds himself particularly well suited to a fortepiano.
My other experiences with fortepianos have not been happy ones. I vividly remember seeing, but not hearing a note, of Robert Levin playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto from the cheap seats in Boston's Symphony Hall many years ago with Hogwood and the AAM. Many fortepianists (Derek Han in particular) struck me as Pianists who lacked the technical chops to succeed on a conventional instrument and were salvaging a career by playing a novelty instrument. Even the better practitioners, such as Levin, made discs that reminded me of Beecham's old saw about Harpsichords sounding like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof.
Anyway, Brautigan has banished all those thoughts, and will make further inroads into my pocketbook as I finish adding the rest of his cycle.

[verismissimo]

Thanks for a perceptive note, Richard.
I've only ever heard Levin in concert, not on record, and not from the cheap seats, and I find his improvisatory style quite exciting.
Two others I enjoy, but this time on disc, are Andreas Staier and Malcolm Binns.
But there are plenty who fulfil your rather sad formulation.
I'll finally get around to Brautigan, given your endorsement!

[Bryn]

No need to wonder how Brautigam approaches Beethoven on a modern instrument. His recordings of the concertos use just such a piano (sans lid, and in the middle of the orchestra). I think you may be confusing Derek Han with Melvyn Tan, by the way. I have not come across examples of the former playing fortepiano.

[MickyD]

I too am a great fan of Brautigam....his Mozart and Haydn cycles for BIS are superb and have what I consider to be the perfect recorded sound, too. I purchased his excellent disc of Mendelssohn Songs without Words earlier this year - I am hoping that BIS will soon put those Beethoven sonatas into a box, as I very much want to hear them.

[DublinJimbo]

Another practitioner I'd recommend is Kristian Bezuidenhout. His Harmonia Mundi recording of Mendelssohn concertos with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is revelatory. The idea of Mendelssohn on fortepiano would have earned a pooh-pooh reaction from me not so long ago, but Bezuidenhout effortlessly won me over.

[verismissimo]

I should have mentioned in the plus column Christine Schornsheim in Haydn.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He does seem to have a penchant for quick tempos and a certain restless quality
which I find suits the instrument, with it's lack of sustain (relative to a conventional Concert Grand) very well.
I am left wondering if he plays this way in order to overcome the instrument's limitations

With apologies for overlooking the main focus of your question, rfg, (and I'm glad you so enjoyed Brautigan's superb performances) but isn't there the danger of a suggestion here that the works should "really" be played more slowly, but can't be on the instruments of the early 19th Century - a hint of putting carts before horses? Shouldn't it be more a case of his realizing that these are the speeds Beethoven intended/imagined for these Sonatas because this is how his pianos "worked"?

[richardfinegold]

No need to wonder how Brautigam approaches Beethoven on a modern instrument. His recordings of the concertos use just such a piano (sans lid, and in the middle of the orchestra). I think you may be confusing Derek Han with Melvyn Tan, by the way. I have not come across examples of the former playing fortepiano.

Perhaps I am confusing them. It was a long time ago, and the recordings did not make want to further investigate the artist.

[richardfinegold]

I too am a great fan of Brautigam....his Mozart and Haydn cycles for BIS are superb and have what I consider to be the perfect recorded sound, too. I purchased his excellent disc of Mendelssohn Songs without Words earlier this year - I am hoping that BIS will soon put those Beethoven sonatas into a box, as I very much want to hear them.

I didn't realize that he made Haydn recordings...I feel another squeeze on the credit card coming. i also think that the Mozart and Beethoven recordings are amongst the most natural sounding recordings in my collection.

[richardfinegold]

With apologies for overlooking the main focus of your question, rfg, (and I'm glad you so enjoyed Brautigan's superb performances) but isn't there the danger of a suggestion here that the works should "really" be played more slowly, but can't be on the instruments of the early 19th Century - a hint of putting carts before horses? Shouldn't it be more a case of his realizing that these are the speeds Beethoven intended/imagined for these Sonatas because this is how his pianos "worked"?

That is exactly what I am suggesting, ferney. As to how fast Beethoven really wanted them to go--that brings up the old debate about how much we can rely upon LvBs metronome markings, which I won't go into here.
Let's take the Brautigan's performance of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. It's very poetic but quite fast sounding. It is a relief to be spared the overpedaled playing of many other Pianists (I remember my Piano Teacher kicking my foot to get me to release the sustain pedal when I learned this as a child), but a spare amount of Pedal allows for more of a legato feel. I then wonder if Brautigan's quicker than normal tempo is truly the way that he feels the piece should go, or is it because the instrument can't support a true legato. One of Brautigan's teachers was Serkin, and his recording is a perfect counterweight. It isn't lugubrious, it is probably a bit quicker than the norm, but there is enough use of pedal to convey the dreamy quality that we tend to associate with this movement. RB's overall phrasing resembles his teacher but is just a bit quicker.

[rauschwerk]

Let's take the Brautigan's performance of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. It's very poetic but quite fast sounding.

Brautigam is recognising that the time signature of the first movement is 2/2, which the means that the minims, not the crotchets, have the Adagio tempo. Others have blithely ignored this but nevertheless produced wonderful results on modern pianos (Solomon, for example). As for pedalling, Beethoven apparently intended ("senza sordini") that the right pedal should be permanently depressed. I don't know if Brautigam does this. It would, of course, be ruinous on a modern instrument.

[MickyD]

I didn't realize that he made Haydn recordings...I feel another squeeze on the credit card coming. i also think that the Mozart and Beethoven recordings are amongst the most natural sounding recordings in my collection.

Sorry to have tempted you to use the credit card, Richard! The Haydn set is superb and the 15 CDs can be had at a pretty good price at the moment:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001DSR9PC/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A88XI38RAB5GB

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Let's take the Brautigan's performance of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. It's very poetic but quite fast sounding. ... I then wonder if Brautigan's quicker than normal tempo is truly the way that he feels the piece should go, or is it because the instrument can't support a true legato. One of Brautigan's teachers was Serkin, and his recording is a perfect counterweight. It isn't lugubrious, it is probably a bit quicker than the norm, but there is enough use of pedal to convey the dreamy quality that we tend to associate with this movement. RB's overall phrasing resembles his teacher but is just a bit quicker.

Interesting comparison, rfg - but the "norm/normal" standards that you suggest aren't necessarily Beethoven's: more ours after a century of recordings and broadcasts of performances on 20th Century instruments by performers trained in post-Wagnerian concepts of tempo, perhaps? The legato that Brautigan achieves from the pianos he uses is "true" to the instrument: I feel it is more a case that he has used the virtues of the instrument to discover "the way that he feels the piece should go", rather than putting up with what some listeners (and players: Alfred Brendel, for example) might feel to be "limitations".

And what a fortepiano can (and cannot) do has implications also for Beethoven's works without Piano: the length of a Violin Bow (c75cm) hasn't changed since Beethoven's time, so instruments that can sustain notes longer than a Fortepiano have always been able to do so in this repertoire. Unless the suggestion is that Beethoven meant different things when he wrote Adagio for a String Quartet from an Adagio in a Piano Sonata, the sustaining power of the 1820 Piano gives us an idea of the Tempo of the third movement of the Ninth Symphony or the Cavatina of the Op130 String Quartet, regardless of arguments over any Metronome markings. (No; I'm not going there, either - this is quite long enough!)

But you're absolutely right - just playing on contemporary instruments doesn't guarantee good performances, and I've heard many such performances that have been merely "adequate", "interesting" (and all the other positive synonyms for "lacklustre"): it takes as special a Musician as Brautigan (or Krivine or van Immerseel or Bruggens - or Serkin, Pollini, Brendel, Gilels, Kempff etc etc etc) to achieve the highest, most revelatory results.