Prom 27: 5.08.16 - Helen Grime, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky

[pureimagination]

"awful", "an abomination", "unforgivable", "a mockery of one of the greatest works ever written for violin", "I thought that I must have tuned in to the first round of "The X Factor" by mistake!"
"Really? Please!" to quote HM The Queen. Whilst I have no problem with others expressing their opinions - it is a forum after all - Pekka Kuusisto's playing of the Tchaikovsky was none of those things. I really do wonder why some contributors to this forum bother listening to the Proms at all. Are musicians not allowed to interpret the music they play? Does it always have to be as the composer intended or be the same as how so and so played it in such and such a year?
And while I'm at it can we have less posts going on and on about the BBC Proms on TV/Radio 3 presenters. Every time I read a thread I have to wade through sh_tloads of posts about the presenters and it's getting tiresome. And I hate emoticons!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Are musicians not allowed to interpret the music they play?

No.

Does it always have to be as the composer intended

Yes.

And while I'm at it can we have less posts

"fewer"

And I hate emoticons!!!

[ahinton]

Are musicians not allowed to interpret the music they play?

Writing of Ravel's Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé in the essay The Great French Song Writers that is Chapter XX in his volume Mi Contra Fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician (1947), Kaikhorsu Shapurji Sorabji heaps praise upon it ending with the words "it must be heard to be believed", to which he appended a footnote that reads "Unfortunately(,) I have never heard these wonderful songs sung. I have only heard them "interpreted". It was very unpleasant".

Does it always have to be as the composer intended...?

At the risk of appearing rude by answering one question with another, if the composer's intentions may be overlooked in favour of someone else's, what would have been the point in the composer expressing his/her intent by writing it down in notes in the first place?

And while I'm at it can we have less posts going on and on about the BBC Proms on TV/Radio 3 presenters. Every time I read a thread I have to wade through sh_tloads of posts about the presenters and it's getting tiresome.

fhg having already pulled you up on the "fewer" instead of "less" gaffe, I assure you (if you genuinely need such assurance) that, of the vast number of threads on this forum, those that either deal with or occasionally refer to certain R3 presenters and the manner and matter of their presentations are vanishingly small indeed to anyone who reads posts here other than with wilful selectivity.

Of the number And I hate emoticons!!!

Then don't use them; that's the solution that I find works for me.

[Serial_Apologist]

Exclamation marks are a form of emoticon.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Exclamation marks are a form of emoticon.

[Tony Halstead]

Enjoying this almost as much as the Kopatchinskaja recording of the work.

Ahaaahh.... now THERE'S a fresh interpretation. Wonderful.

[pureimagination]

To ferneyhoughgeliebte regarding the second two points of your reply to my post - grow up. To your first two points. Why then do we listen to performances/recordings by different musicians/orchestras/conductors of the same piece - just find the 'perfect' "interpretation" and never listen to any other versions again. And surely every new performance is an interpretation because how it is recorded/mixed or in the case of a live performance how the orchestra is set up, the acoustics of the venue and where the listener is seated as well as the conductor's demands/requirements of the different sections of the orchestra.
To ahinton once a composer releases his compositions for others to perform / interpret surely the degree of variation in that will vary from the faithful, to the minuscule amount of deviation, to the quite marked. The composer might not get to hear it for various reasons... and our own individual interpretations [how we hear it, how it moves us or not, whether we are aware of how the score is annotated, are all going to influence our response when hearing it whether for the first time or the umpteenth. Re criticism of presenters my "wilful selectivity" probably does get the better of me but I still think they detract from some good posts/threads detailing individuals responses to the particular Proms they've just heard.

[Serial_Apologist]

To ferneyhoughgeliebte regarding the second two points of your reply to my post - grow up. To your first two points. Why then do we listen to performances/recordings by different musicians/orchestras/conductors of the same piece - just find the 'perfect' "interpretation" and never listen to any other versions again. And surely every new performance is an interpretation because how it is recorded/mixed or in the case of a live performance how the orchestra is set up, the acoustics of the venue and where the listener is seated as well as the conductor's demands/requirements of the different sections of the orchestra.
To ahinton once a composer releases his compositions for others to perform / interpret surely the degree of variation in that will vary from the faithful, to the minuscule amount of deviation, to the quite marked. The composer might not get to hear it for various reasons... and our own individual interpretations [how we hear it, how it moves us or not, whether we are aware of how the score is annotated, are all going to influence our response when hearing it whether for the first time or the umpteenth. Re criticism of presenters my "wilful selectivity" probably does get the better of me but I still think they detract from some good posts/threads detailing individuals responses to the particular Proms they've just heard.

If the composer lays down his or her intentions for the performance of their work in detail, then it seems most propitious for the conductor/orchestra/performer(s) to follow his or her instructions. If the composer leaves the question of interpretability wide open - as Satie did in a number of his works - then, lacking any further instructional detail, the obverse applies, I would have thought.

[Sir Velo]

To ferneyhoughgeliebte regarding the second two points of your reply to my post - grow up. .

I can honestly say that until FHG's correction I had no idea what you meant by "less posts". Had you omitted the suffix "er" and meant "lesser"? It was not clear.

[Bryn]

I can honestly say that until FHG's correction I had no idea what you meant by "less posts". Had you omitted the suffix "er" and meant "lesser"? It was not clear.

Phew err.

[jayne lee wilson]

To ferneyhoughgeliebte regarding the second two points of your reply to my post - grow up. To your first two points. Why then do we listen to performances/recordings by different musicians/orchestras/conductors of the same piece - just find the 'perfect' "interpretation" and never listen to any other versions again. And surely every new performance is an interpretation because how it is recorded/mixed or in the case of a live performance how the orchestra is set up, the acoustics of the venue and where the listener is seated as well as the conductor's demands/requirements of the different sections of the orchestra.
To ahinton once a composer releases his compositions for others to perform / interpret surely the degree of variation in that will vary from the faithful, to the minuscule amount of deviation, to the quite marked. The composer might not get to hear it for various reasons... and our own individual interpretations [how we hear it, how it moves us or not, whether we are aware of how the score is annotated, are all going to influence our response when hearing it whether for the first time or the umpteenth. Re criticism of presenters my "wilful selectivity" probably does get the better of me but I still think they detract from some good posts/threads detailing individuals responses to the particular Proms they've just heard.

"Karl Bohm was a third-rater who became old enough to grow into a "great conductor". I do recall, from my childhood and teens in Vienna, trying to escape his concerts whenever I could; unfortunately, I couldn't always, and was forced to hear performances of classical masterpieces without any trace of interpretation".
(Hans Keller, 7/85 review, in "The Keller Column" lengnick 1990)

I've often said here that if a performer can't be creative, what would the point of performing be, why be a performer at all? Obedience to instructions, devotion to a quasi-religious object? Very inspiring...

"Reverence for the score" is a frequent cliche of conductor-interviews - one hand on the heart, one hand on the sacred book - well, it does at least absolve them of any creative responsibility to actually do something other than beating time, or moving their hands up and down to adjust volume, as the bored band trots out the right notes in the right order.... thank you, Maestro Gradgrind.

It was the same reverence that produced years of classical piano concerto performances without a trace of ornament, embellishment or individually improvised cadenzas, despite the fact that Mozart would never have played any concerto the same way twice, whatever he'd written down.... and even now a given listener may criticise someone like Robert Levin for so doing. Like/dislike as ever, of course, but - who decides "faithfulness to the score" then?

If the development of Romantic music through the 19th C. meant anything, it meant a liberation of the individual, in feeling and expression of their thoughts or emotions. So why would anyone deny that freedom to those who perform that music?

[Serial_Apologist]

I've often said here that if a performer can't be creative, what would the point [of] performing be, why be a performer at all? Obedience to instructions, devotion to a quasi-religious object? Very inspiring...

"Reverence for the score" is a frequent cliche of conductor-interviews - one hand on the heart, one hand on the sacred book - well, it does at least absolve them of any creative responsibility to actually do something other than beating time, or moving their hands up and down to adjust volume, as the bored band trots out the right notes in the right order.... thank you, Maestro Gradgrind.

But interpretation and composer intentions aren't necessarily as far apart as you seem to imply. Either the compose stringently details every requirement precisely, as Stockhausen did, apart from for one brief stage, or s/he leaves details open to the interpreter, without dynamic or expressive markings, in which case, unless the composer is on-hand to give advice, the interpreter has no option but to infer. Other composers mark up details they consider need drawing the interpreter's attention to.

[jayne lee wilson]

But interpretation and composer intentions aren't necessarily as far apart as you seem to imply. Either the compose stringently details every requirement precisely, as Stockhausen did, apart from for one brief stage, or s/he leaves details open to the interpreter, without dynamic or expressive markings, in which case, unless the composer is on-hand to give advice, the interpreter has no option but to infer. Other composers mark up details they consider need drawing the interpreter's attention to.

If the performer has "no option but to infer" surely that is, precisely, a (re)creative act which will produce many different "interpretations" of a given work. What if a score has some but not many markings, surely a performer will again use her musical intuition to create an interpretation, likely being quite free even where those markings occur...
There are many examples of composers revising their scores on the advice of soloists or conductors after they had begun rehearsing them. Perhaps some works of art, especially performance art, are never really finished but abandoned - to the world of performance, reception and consumption to begin a new history.

When the Bruckner Complete Edition was established by Haas and later Nowak, the scores had relatively few variations of tempi or dynamic/expression markings, etc. As they ruled the roost of recordings and performances, this led to a tradition of very steady, sometimes monumental, performances from conductors as different as Wand, Tintner or Karajan, emphasising a sense of the spiritual or visionary. This did produce some beautiful results, and many reviewers praised this "one basic tempo" conception for its "faithfulness" to the score or to Bruckner's "intentions", taking a more critical view of those who interpreted them more freely.
Later research into the first published editions of the symphonies, rarely played or recorded, has revealed far more varied tempi and expressive markings. Bruckner's letters reveal that he was indeed sympathetic to such revisions or additions. So those conductors who used their innate feel for the music to shape it more freely were arguably closer to his "intentions" insofar as you could ever pretend to know them. But which intentions? What if he liked it played differently at different times? Why not allow performers the freedom to choose - use their musicality to create afresh?
See John Williamson "Conductors and Bruckner" in The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner (Cambridge 2004):

"The truly lost tradition would seem to be Furtwangler's style of rubato which almost convinces there is a technical dimension to conducting beyond timebeating, that the conductor is ultimately a performer rather than the vehicle of the mystic vision".**
(John Williamson).
**i.e the "vision" that arose from the sparsely-indicated Gesamtausgabe editions which gave rise to the concept of unified tempi or "monumentality". The later Celibidache as an extreme example).

Your Stockhausen point is well taken of course, but what about "aleatorics" or those conductor-cued sections in some works of Lutoslawski or Boulez for example? Wasn't this an explicit recognition of the performer(s) essentially creative role in "classical" performance?

[pureimagination]

To Sir Velo. I would prefer a few less posts re presenters and a few more regarding the performance is what I'm tring to say more or less.
"less |lɛs| determiner& pronoun
a smaller amount of; not as much: [ as determiner ] : the less time spent there, the better | [ as pronoun ] : storage is less of a problem than it used to be | they returned in less than an hour.
• fewer in number: [ as pronoun ]
To jayne lee wilson. Thank you for going beyond the call of duty with the examples in your post. Thank you also for your reviews of various Proms over the seasons.
For someone like me who can't read music and have only a modicum of knowledge regarding classical music, I know when I like a piece of music or performance and when I don't [with varying degrees in between, and maybe after more than one listen.] Often that is all that matters [to me] and too much analysis starts to eat into the emotion one felt. I do appreciate those who contribute more fleshed out opinions/information but dislike those posts that disparage [fellow] musicians just because they weren't keen on what they heard yet fail to offer a reasoned critique other than "awful".

[Serial_Apologist]

To Sir Velo. I would prefer a few less posts re presenters and a few more regarding the performance is what I'm tring to say more or less.
"less |lɛs| determiner& pronoun
a smaller amount of; not as much: [ as determiner ] : the less time spent there, the better | [ as pronoun ] : storage is less of a problem than it used to be | they returned in less than an hour.
• fewer in number: [ as pronoun ]
To jayne lee wilson. Thank you for going beyond the call of duty with the examples in your post. Thank you also for your reviews of various Proms over the seasons.
For someone like me who can't read music and have only a modicum of knowledge regarding classical music, I know when I like a piece of music or performance and when I don't [with varying degrees in between, and maybe after more than one listen.] Often that is all that matters [to me] and too much analysis starts to eat into the emotion one felt. I do appreciate those who contribute more fleshed out opinions/information but dislike those posts that disparage [fellow] musicians just because they weren't keen on what they heard yet fail to offer a reasoned critique other than "awful".

Because it's one thing not to like a particular piece of music, artifact or whatever, but to judge it "awful" leaves open the question if, "in what way"? - the substance of which requires intelllgent justification if it's not just stirring up negativity for its own sake.