how do you determine the artistic merit of a recorded orchestral performance?

This is very easy to answer.

A great performance draws you into the music - the music's Spiritual and emtional thrust - without you seeming to know why!

It has the ability to make you listen and not for one second stop listening and consider how it might go differently!

There are no standardised tempi, not even a strict adherence to metronome marks is crucial. Brahms even removed them from his works, so dissatisfied was he with their artistically constraining influence on performance practice!

Certainly technical address is important to the extent that the music must be within the technical grasp of the musicians tp play without messing everything up. Technical perfection is not the aim however, so much as attempting to uncover what the musicians and artists performing find as the emotional core of the music - its thrust, its perpose for existence.

ATB from George

I can't read music so for me, the emotional impact of a performance is all-important. In some cases, I find that more than one version has this impact, even when the performances are patently different. For example, Klemperer and Mackerras with Beethoven's 9th. So can adherence to the score be all that matters? For me, no. But I can't speak for anyone else.
Regards,
Ken

Dear Ken,

I think it is certainly important to consider that Beethoven, and Bach, Haydn, or Mozart [for four great examples] would have expected most listeners to be non-score readers, and that should not be forgotten.

Why should someone who does not play an instrument need to read music?

I barely speak French [and definately cannot easily read and understand it in its more complex forms] but that does not stop me enjoing French wine, or even possibly a holiday there!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by KenM:
So can adherence to the score be all that matters?

No, not at all. Actually the score most often isn´t but a rough sketch of the music (more true the earlier the music is written). Indeed if you play completely "true to the score", the result will most often become stiff and boring. Like the way Bach often was played in the 1950es (sewing-machine-Bach). To those of us, who were fortunate to learn to read music, it is of some importance to know the score to get an idea of the frames, within which the artists use their artistic freedom. But the listening to great artists interpretations will remain my principal musical activity, as I am not a professional musician myself.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
This is very easy to answer.

A great performance draws you into the music - the music's Spiritual and emtional thrust - without you seeming to know why!

It has the ability to make you listen and not for one second stop listening and consider how it might go differently!

There are no standardised tempi, not even a strict adherence to metronome marks is crucial. Brahms even removed them from his works, so dissatisfied was he with their artistically constraining influence on performance practice!

Certainly technical address is important to the extent that the music must be within the technical grasp of the musicians tp play without messing everything up. Technical perfection is not the aim however, so much as attempting to uncover what the musicians and artists performing find as the emotional core of the music - its thrust, its perpose for existence.

ATB from George

i just ordered a book that looks quite interesting :The Composer's Advocate: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicans (Paperback)
by Erich Leinsdorf (Author)

in the chapter on tempo, he makes an interesting point that comes directly from
wagner's "on conducting".

he says that tempo is half the interpretation and says wagner went further, claiming that tempo is all the interpretation.

and a note on technical performance :

from my own experience, and what a number of friends who are professional musicians have reported to me, achieving technical perfection when practicing a piece goes hand-in-hand with developing an interpretation. when you are struggling to get the notes right, or faster, or slower without disrupting the continuity of the rhythm, or in tune, or making a seamless entrance to a phrase, or any of the dozens of technical matters that are the concern of practice and rehearsal, the meaning of the piece to the performer can feel just out of reach.

but when all such matters have been put to rest, it is as if a door has been thrown open to a wider world, a world constructed in the composer's mind, and a span of centuries is bridged in a moment.

at such moments, interpretation becomes possible. i have had the privilege to be present on a number of such occasions though i never had the experience myself.

and i think there is happy news. after the classical dark ages that were the eighties, classical music has recovered. the young musicians of today have absorbed the lessons of the past and moved beyond them, achieving levels of performance and understanding in their music only dreamed of by their predecessors.

this gives me hope and joy. it is wonderful
to be able to look forward to new thrills in music.

i'll end with a single example of a band of young who have moved forward and beyond :

il giardino armonico

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
I think it is certainly important to consider that Beethoven, and Bach, Haydn, or Mozart [for four great examples] would have expected most listeners to be non-score readers, and that should not be forgotten.

I do not think this is entirely true. Much of their solo music and chamber music was written primarily for the plesure and education of the musician himself.

And also a grat part of the members of the upper class circles, where these composers worked, played an instrument themselves and were able to read music.

It would be interesting of some of you could give us example of CDs which such performances.

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Martinleon:
It would be interesting of some of you could give us example of CDs which such performances.

Thanks

here are a few i am currently obsessing over :

Bach Brandenburg Concertos by il giardino armonico

Respighi ancient airs and dances by the orpheus chamber orchestra

rachmaninow symphonic dances by martha argerich and nicolas economou (this is the way they spell rachmaninoff on the cd, so if you go to buy it on amazon use this spelling)

paganini 24 capricci by shlomo mintz

bach st. matthaus passion by philippe herreweghe

brahms symphonies abbado/berlin

prokofiev violin concertos chicago symphony/shlomo mintz/ claudio abbado

beethoven symphonies
gardiner / orchestre revolutionnaire et romantique

also of great interest :

boulez doing stravinsky's ebony concerto
reiner/chicago symphony doing anything
rattle/birmingham doing stravinsky

hope you find something interesting in this batch.

quote:

beethoven symphonies
gardiner / orchestre revolutionnaire et romantique

The ORR with Gardiner made me re-think all of the Beethoven symphonies just at a time when I thought there was nothing else to say about them.

Cerainly an excellent example of how something very familiar can suddenly seem new and exciting again through interpretation.

How do I determine the artistic merit of a recorded performance? It's difficult to say, and indeed with a live one. I know what I like, and can usually describe why I like or dislike something fairly easily. But pinning down any hard and fast rules is much harder.

Technical quality of performance is indeed important, but I've heard plenty of recordings which are technically excellent yet which leave me cold. I've heard others, often from live relays that have their flaws, are beset with vast quantities of audience noise and yet absolutely transport me.

Don't get me wrong, I like my orchestral performances to be of the highest technical standard but that isn't everything. Back in the spring I attended a concert by an amateur orchestra. The standard of the playing was, in honesty, pretty poor and had it been a professional orchestra I would probably have walked out. And yet, I enjoyed myself very much - there was a passion and commitment and sense of enjoyment amongst the players that is often absent in performances which can seem routine.

So I suppose I look to be moved first and to technical quality second. And, of course, there is little rhyme or reason as to why Mackerras moves me so in Beethoven and Gardiner, for the most part does not (and for exactly this reason why for others the position will be reversed).

regards, Tam