Beethoven, Ludwig van that ilk (1770 - 1827)

[Mandryka]

And this is where 'early music' often goes astray in my opinion. So often what I hear is a modern performance for a modern audience. and all too often an attempt to excite the audience 21st-century style by making the music sound new or modern in some way. I'm all for a fresh interpretation, but when they claim it's 'authentic' I smell a rat.

.

The claim is not about recreation of historical performance, or to make it sound modern (which is an absurd idea really), it is to recreate for us now "The ability to feel how groundbreaking and visionary this music was in those days. My colleagues and I feel that using instruments that are comparable to those of the time has helped us enormously in getting somewhat closer to the surprise, the bewilderment and the rapture that the musicians in Schuppanzigh’s quartet must have felt when they first came face to face with the newest and most innovative chamber music of the day."

The thought is that we've become a bit blasé about the Amadeus approach, which is very 20th century, so the music when played in that way has lost its capacity to épater la galerie. We're too comfortable when we listen to it.


This is what I mean by a new wave in HIP.

[smittims]

I think recreating surprise and bewilderment is a very vague concept. Success would surely depend on what the recipient already knows. Most listeners today 'already know' not just Beethoven;s op. 18 but opp. 131, 132, etc, Schoenberg et al. I make no secret of being an 'early -music sceptic' but really this is fantasy. It ranks with bloodthirsty Tv dramas of the Wars of the Roses which are supposed to 'make you feel what it was like' .

I think I could tell which of the two quartets revealed more of the depth behind the notes, and it's the Amadeus by a long way. These new people , face a very competitive world. In 1952 the Record Guide said there was no fully satisfactory available set of all the Beethoven Quartets. But today a listener could say 'why do I have to buy your version? I can have digitally-remastered versions of the three (almost) sets by the Budapest Quartet, etc. etc. The obvious response is to say 'Ah, but they don't do it properly. We've done the research and only we make you feel what it was like. ' And making music sound shocking and bewildering to convince your audience that youre doing something new is a very 20th century idea.

Don't make me larf'. Do they think the Budapest,the Busch,the Amadeus were ignorant fools? Did they do no research ?

I've no doubt your fellows are sincere and doing their best but they sound to me like a bunch of keen students having a bash at Beethoven.There's nothing there that convinces me that that's how Beethoven wanted it played.

[vinteuil]

I am reminded of the discussion on landscape gardening in Thomas Love Peacock's Headlong Hall [1815] -

“Sir,” said Mr Milestone, “you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the picturesque and the beautiful.”

“Will I?” said Sir Patrick, “och! but I won't. For what is beautiful? That what pleases the eye. And what pleases the eye? Tints variously broken and blended. Now, tints variously broken and blended constitute the picturesque.”

“Allow me,” said Mr Gall. “I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness.”

“Pray, sir,” said Mr Milestone, " by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?"

.

[Mandryka]

I am reminded of the discussion on landscape gardening in Thomas Love Peacock's Headlong Hall [1815] -

“Sir,” said Mr Milestone, “you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the picturesque and the beautiful.”

“Will I?” said Sir Patrick, “och! but I won't. For what is beautiful? That what pleases the eye. And what pleases the eye? Tints variously broken and blended. Now, tints variously broken and blended constitute the picturesque.”

“Allow me,” said Mr Gall. “I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness.”

“Pray, sir,” said Mr Milestone, " by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?"

.

There's a lot of work on how the concept of the fantasy in Emanuel Bach and Haydn and Beethoven was inspired by landscape gardening aesthetics, a surprise round every corner.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0521027535/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Mandryka]

I've no doubt your fellows are sincere and doing their best but they sound to me like a bunch of keen students having a bash at Beethoven

What could be better than that?

[Mandryka]

I.There's nothing there that convinces me that that's how Beethoven wanted it played.

Part of the idea is that Beethoven wanted, expected, surprise and bewilderment.

One thing I was surprised to read in their blurb was this: how groundbreaking and visionary this music was in those days. I'd never thought of the op 18s as that -- until I heard Narratio.

[smittims]

If that works for you, Mandryka, happy listening.

II think we've flogged this one to death but I can't resist replying to your earlier question, 'What could be better than that?' Well, since you ask, better musicians playing it better, in this case the Busch, the Budapest, the Alban BergQuartet if Vienna. I know that the performing scene is overcrowded and there should always be space made for eager newcomers, but for me the finest performances are by the finest artists.

[Sir Velo]

Nikolaus Harnoncourt in an interview with Rob Cowan several years ago said (in the context of discussing ‘authentic’ performances of Bach) that, what prompted him to choose period instruments was less a question of ‘hearing the music as Bach heard it’ than hearing it sound better, more compelling, than it has ever sounded before.