tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-716509980377809016.post7792105587689837633..comments2024-03-11T10:20:01.582-07:00Comments on The Rehearsal Studio: Strong Opinions about BrahmsStephen Smoliarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14689767135234237242noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-716509980377809016.post-27193551557822297752011-02-14T09:34:43.534-08:002011-02-14T09:34:43.534-08:00I enjoyed reading Hansen's comment and value m...I enjoyed reading Hansen's comment and value many of the assertions it makes. However, while the original topic had been Brahms, I was most taken by the issue of the proper performance of Beethoven's Opus 130 quartet. One reason is that reflects a particular <a href="http://www.examiner.com/classical-music-in-san-francisco/marek-janowski-s-second-all-beethoven-concert-at-davies-review" rel="nofollow">concern</a> I have over a general tendency to confuse "<a href="http://www.examiner.com/classical-music-in-san-francisco/marek-janowski-s-first-all-beethoven-concert-at-davies-review" rel="nofollow">Beethoven the monument</a>" with the more realistic (if less romantic) notion of Beethoven as a "<a href="http://www.examiner.com/classical-music-in-san-francisco/mere-words" rel="nofollow">composer at work</a>." Hansen's approach falls solidly in the composer-at-work camp; and for me that trumps any number of decisions that seem to deny pragmatics in favor of some isolated scholarly "insight" (scare quotes intended)!Stephen Smoliarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14689767135234237242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-716509980377809016.post-3564104553272678442011-02-13T17:55:26.874-08:002011-02-13T17:55:26.874-08:00Interesting points, Stephen, and I appreciate your...Interesting points, Stephen, and I appreciate your consideration of my points, despite the "invective." If anything, my opinion of Wang is even less now. I found her facebook page and sent her a missive essentially telling her what I thought of her Paganini "artistic" decision. Her response was typical of performers when confronted with criticism:<br /><br />"Thanks for the feedback, would love to hear you play it sometime."<br /><br />This strikes me as hubris as well. "Well, if you can't play it, then you have no right to criticize the way I do it. Neener Neener."<br /><br />I'm all for interpretive license, but there must be boundaries. Certain things in the score are open to interpretation. Others are not. What Michaelangeli and Wang have done is to take a dubious practice of Clara Schumann and use it as an excuse to monkey around with the score as published, which is utterly unambiguous. If a set of variations has an extended finale, it's pretty obvious how the composer meant it to be performed. The two-book structure is also unambiguous. So where did Michaelangeli and Wang find the ambiguity for this particular interpretive license? The answer is that it isn't there.<br /><br />Would we listen to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with the Allegretto performed twice or three times just because that happened to be done in some early performances?<br /><br />What about the extremely common practice (which I loathe) of regularly performing the "Grosse Fuge" as the finale of the Op. 130 quartet out of some self-righteous sense of respect for the composer's "original" intentions? Beethoven replaced it as the finale for a reason. He certainly wasn't one who, especially as the acknowledged greatest musical mind of his day, would make such a change just because a publisher told him to. In order for him to agree to write a new finale, he MUST have at least somewhat seen the point that the fugue was too overwhelming to the first five movements. The result was a finale that transforms an unwieldy, overly lengthy quartet into the most exalted divertimento ever written. But try to tell that to all the self-righteous quartets who insist on performing the fugue as the finale. The practice has become so pervasive and so standard that performances of Op. 130 with its proper finale are few and far between, and the last completed movement Beethoven ever wrote is hardly ever played. Something about this is wrong. The Grosse Fuge was published as a separate piece, Op. 133, with the composer's blessing, yet we think we are respecting his wishes by reversing his decision. In contrast, I would say that performing Op. 130 with the Grosse Fuge is not "respecting" Beethoven's wishes, but ignoring them.<br /><br />As you can tell, I am a musician who ALWAYS respects the composer far more than the performer, and when the performer wishes to insert too much of his or her own "interpretation" into aspects of the composition which are unambiguous, that person will draw my "invective."<br /><br />Thanks again for the respectful observations.Kelly Dean Hansenhttp://www.kellydeanhansen.comnoreply@blogger.com