Prom 10 (21.7.12): Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4

[Ariosto]

after a while I didn't
[I can't think why there needs to be close ups of soloists anyway]

Although I find most TV concerts not well done from a visual and/or a sound point of view, from a purely selfish reason a lot of musicians (especially string players) like to see close ups of soloists so that technical things can be observed. Of course these things will be meaningless for the average viewer.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I find the extremely close close-ups very distracting. I'm sure this is fairly recent and we used to have far more shots of, perhaps, a whole section of the orchestra. I don't wish to gaze at their fingers orlook up their noses as they play - give them and us a bit of space please.

I agree totally. I'm not suggesting extremely long "takes", but constantly "hurling" the audience around the concert hall, with in-your-face close ups of soloists can be distracting, and does not do any favours to the performers.

Having said that, some DVDs with attention-seeking producers/editors do far more extreme things. In Nagano's Alpine Symphony, the orchestra rotates vertically, so that we, the viewers, have to watch the orchestra playing upside down during the Thunderstorm sequence. But I digress. This is Beethoven/Boulez

[King_Ouf_I]

Good to hear from you again, King_Ouf_I. You may well be right with your theory (and in any case, you are a "techy", aren't you?)

Tetchy, definitely. But there are "techies" and "techies", if you know what I mean. I inhabit a very low rung on the techy ladder...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Tetchy, definitely. But there are "techies" and "techies", if you know what I mean. I inhabit a very low rung on the techy ladder...

Oh, it was just that you called yourself a "computer person".

[King_Ouf_I]

Oh, it was just that you called yourself a "computer person".

Yes, but compared to the wizards at the Beeb, I'd might as well be an abacus-operator!

[affenkopf]

Very much enjoyed the interval on the radio. Time to reread the West-Eastern Divan.

[bluestateprommer]

As with Symphonies 1 & 2, the same overall ethos that I felt then recurred with 3 & 4, which shouldn't have been a surprise, in retrospect. I got the same sense of odd quirky nudgings of phrase here and there, besides the relatively heavy feel of the tempi and textures. Some of the stretching was more than a bit much for my taste particularly in the Eroica, the first 2 movements. The Fourth is my favorite LvB symphony (distinctly a minority opinion, I realize), and was OK, not particularly splendiferous. So overall, neither interpretation was one for the ages, although hopefully people who were perhaps relative newbies to classical music and Beethoven in the hall were happy. However, Boulez's Dialogue de l'ombre double was a rare treat to hear on the radio, and Jussef Eisa (and his electronic "double") were splendid. I can count the number of Boulez works I've heard live on less than the fingers of one hand, so iPlayer is the next closest thing at least this year.

...and for something to be an arrangement, someone has to arrange it. In these instances no-one has.

For EA: game, set, and match. Spot on.

An arrangement does not have to be notated.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There's a reason that Mahan Esfahani's arrangement of JSB's KdF and Sir Henry Wood's arrangement of Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie are called that precise term, "arrangements". Esfahani and Sir Henry respectively took the original works and completely arranged the original music into a different instrumentarium than what each respective composer used. The instrumentarium is not where the "age" of the instruments is the issue, but the actual instrumental medium itself.

Simply playing on instruments with acoustic properties sufficiently different from those the original was written for is enough in my book.

Sorry, no dice. For example, there's a fine recording on harmonia mundi with Alexander Melnikov performing Brahms piano sonatas on a 1875 period Bosendorfer. By contrast, artists like Sviatoslav Richter used more modern pianos, for instance. Richter did not play an "arrangement" of the Brahms sonata. The notes are the same in both instances. Melnikov and Richter played the same works, on different instruments, but neither is an "arrangement" of the other.

[Bryn]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There's a reason that Mahan Esfahani's arrangement of JSB's KdF and Sir Henry Wood's arrangement of Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie are called that precise term, "arrangements". Esfahani and Sir Henry respectively took the original works and completely arranged the original music into a different instrumentarium than what each respective composer used. The instrumentarium is not where the "age" of the instruments is the issue, but the actual instrumental medium itself. ...

Calm down dear. My contention was entirely correct. An arrangement does not need to be notated. Instruments and their standard playing techniques have changed sufficiently over the two centuries since most of Beethoven's symphonies were written to validate my use of the term. It is possible, by careful attention to playing technique, to largely compensate for the technological changes to the instruments (as Norrington and the Stuttgarters, for instance, have demonstrated), but where such compensation is not applied, an arrangement for modern forces is what results. I as wrote, this is not a matter of negative value judgement, just a case of facing the facts.

[JohnSkelton]

Alexander Melnikov performing Brahms piano sonatas on a 1875 period Bosendorfer.

You mean he plays sonatas written in the early 1850s in an arrangement for an 1875 Bösendorfer?

[heliocentric]

An arrangement does not need to be notated.

Of course it doesn't. Otherwise you'd have to find another word for what happens when pop, jazz and folk musicians work out how their music is going to be distributed through the voices and instruments. They might for example say to one another "let's use the Steinway for this one rather than the Fender Rhodes, it would suit the music better (even though all the notes would be exactly the same)." "The notes" are only one element in how music sounds, albeit a centrally important one in the music under discussion.

[JohnSkelton]

Implied in some thought about - shorthand - western classical music seems to be a descendant Platonic argument, that sound is inessential. It's strange how it persists, given that I don't imagine many would now claim that language is external to thought (have there been theoreticians who have dissociated colour and line in painting? Or dematerialised sculpture?) People used to say things about Bach being 'abstract music', despite the wonderful sensuous instrumental effects and affects in his music or his fascination with out of the way musical instruments and with instrument technology.

I wonder if there's also an implied thought that if anything is an arrangement it is performances involving the instruments Bach had to hand, or copies of those instruments (or Beethoven in this case) - the music was waiting for the perfected instruments of the modern orchestra to sound correctly (which is to say, to sound as Music rather than sound), and the music as music implies modern rather than reconstructed 'historically informed' playing techniques to emerge as Music. So that in a way modern instruments are atemporal and disappear as a medium and ditto modern techniques which are themselves pretty much fixed and un-extendable (or are restricted to being a transparent medium which nonetheless sounds beautiful and right).