What's new in classical music performance?

A second change in performance practice occurred to me. As a student, I was taught to snap valves into place with precision. Today, many teachers begin students with horns that have a heavy oil on the valves, so they slow down. On these horns, a valve change produces a "gliss", or slide in pitch from one note to the next. This is currently called a "true legato".

When you snap the valves and try to "snap" from one pitch to the next, you have to come at each note from above or below, each instrument requiring a different approach. The gliss can be quite fast, and allows you to approach the next note from the last note you played. This is a tremendous advance in intonation. The gliss keeps pitch control much, much "tighter".

And Yamaha produces "artist series" instruments that are +/- 5 cents across their usable range. In 1970, +/- 17 cents was the best you could do.

Notes that are "bent" away from the instrument's "inclination" do not resonate. So "lipping" notes in tune deadens the timbre.

That means a lot more notes "sound" on a new instrument.

I think the upshot of all this is that modern playing does not sound anything like what Beethoven might have imagined as he wrote. The options simply were not available to him.

So, to be pure, this is not the way to go.

But I feel as if looking further into these works, when I hear them played these "modern" ways. It's as if tuning in a radio station, rocking the dial back and forth, and finding the sweet spot, and everything "snaps into place."

I want more of it :-)

I think R & B performance practice changes are a manifestation of a move to increase the "color" of music worldwide, and that this trend might be found in any music.

It would be nice for some "world music" fans to post some observations and recommendations in this regard :-)

where is mat cork? Pe-Zulu of performance practice fame? GFFJ?

Deasr Mike,

Please do not think this is something that does not interest me.

Indeed I have a very strong view on it, but it does not actually co-incide with your view, and as it is very strongly held, it might potentially lead to offense to post all I think about it.

Suffice it to say briefly that players usually prduce less musical performances than in older times quite simply because as players they are expected to work to such impossibly high technical standards in live performances that even one serious blip in a concert will see them rapidly replaced nowadays.

Thus their concentration is on a technically clean performance where almost all risk taking or fantazy is eliminated.

The problem is the phenomenon of the modern gramphphone recording where the general edited perfection has led to an audience that expects a live performance to be as clean and technically perfect.

This is a great shame in my view, even if of course it remains nothing more than my humble opinion, and certainly not a provable fact.

I might add that you actually know that I used to play in the freelance standing in orchestras, where in fact one's reputation in only as fine as one's last concert. In the end I had a repetitive strain problem with my left hand and resigned my commitments before it affected my playing, such that my departure was regretted, but better to go than be pushed in my view!

Sorry to disagree so profoundly.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
where is mat cork? Pe-Zulu of performance practice fame? GFFJ?

I am reading this thread Mike, and it is interesting. I'm just chewing on it, I'll be back

I love the wording of Georges post! I can almost smell the Earl Grey there George...beautifully polite!

For me, I think the diversity of a pure performance and one which has evolved (through various factors) is interesting.

I was listening to some Shostakovich quartets (the 14th I think played by the Emerson quartet) and there some cello work that sounds incredibly modern (I've no idea how they are achieving the sound). I wondered if it was something due to the options available to musicians now (compared to the 60-70's), an influence from electronic music, or the old Russian influencing electronica? I need to listen to older recordings of the same work...I like that.

World music has typically evolved in response to external influences, so we now have traditional musicians playing western instruments...again I like that, and I equally like some of the African musicians who play authentic instruments.

Fence sitting I guess...but traditionalism and modernism breeds diversity - I like that.

Beethoven always ignored my letters, so we never met, but I would expect, he may well have found great comfort in the 'living nature' of his music through external factors...not sure he'd want it to sound, like it sounded in his head. I can, I think, speak with some authority on this matter...his hearing was similar to mine

Dear Mat,

That things progress is not open to doubt.

When Elgar made recordings the new kid on the block among oboe players was the very young Leon Goossens, who single-handedly transformed English oboe playing - much as Dennis Brain cemented the revolution that his father Aubrey Brain started for another example - but these guys were given the freedoms to perform at their best!

Elgar observed that telling Goossens how to play was un-necessary as to interfere could only make it less wonderful.

What is striking is that Goossens the musician understood what Elgar wanted without it being explained chapter and verse!

But nowadays the players are mostly young, and without a great deal of performing experience, and the competition for their seat/job is intense.

The pressure to perform to some blue print of expected normality and perfection has produce a lessening of the character differences between orchestras and individual players. Goossens would not have stood a chance today, because his style was so unlike the norm of his day. It was unique and would prove the way forward. He had his chance, but today he would not get onto the shortlist, given his difference from the norm.

As for influences on musical performance, of course there is no question of a static perfomance tradition or else what it becomes is dead. Nothing else but totally moribund.

We cannot ever expect to quite recreate the very style Beethoven composed for, because we know Brahms, Bruckner, Berg, and Bloch, let alone Schumann, Sibelius, Schostakovitch, Stravinski, and Szymanowski ...

Or the whole of other music, including perhaps Rock, Rap, Garage, Grunge, Wild and World!

But I think we need to retain a grip on listening to live concerts rather than getting fixated on the false presentation of the modern recording, which conspires with digital editing to produce the false idea that the players are technically infallible.

A little bit of fallibility is reassuring sometimes!

ATB from George

GFFJ, a number of the recordings i am responding to are on the label CSO-Resound, which only issues recordings of live performances.

Likewise, the Abbado/Berlin/Beethoven recordings I am responding to are DVDs of live performances.

This difference in articulation, instrument and intonation is something I have been experimenting with myself on my horn, and I have to report it has made a difference for me, in the delicacy and accuracy of performance I am able to realize. So I extrapolate how much of a difference it would make in an accomplished performer :-)

And I hear those results in our local orchestra. This makes me look forward to Chicago, where I can hear the local greats display the current state of the art.

George, it would be difficult for me to quantify the pleasure and excitement these changes in performance practice are bringing to my listening experience ...

The short and the long of it is that I am having a visceral response to current musicians efforts to bring the classics to life.

It is moving me in different ways than this music has moved me before.

That has to be a good thing. I want more of it :-)

In my collection, I have carefully selected examples of what my wife and i consider the best of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and this decade. We hear a "dip" in the 70s and 80s, rebounded in the 90s, and reaching new heights since 1992 with the Abbado/Berlin Brahms symphonies.

To me, this is all good news.

I don't know if Fred Simon is reading any of this, but I am overdue in saying - his music displays all the refinements of pitch, articulation and intonation I am reporting here. Sorry for the delay Fred, but finally here it is.

Dear Mike,

Here is something for you to think about concerning live recordings.

Recently a friend of mine told me about a recording he was involved in of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which amounts to about 100 minutes of music.

The make up sessions amounted to 27 hours!

The finished recording contained the applause at the end from the live concert!

Nowadays the only true live recordings issued that are true continuous performances are those from old recordings held mainly in radio station archives!

No orchestra would stake its reputation on publishing an unedited live performance these days.

But I am happy that the perfection contained in modern recordings is so much a source of musical pleasure for you and I am sure mainy others.

But knowing it from the inside, I cannot take most recordings made in the last forty years all that seriously as a representation of the artistic quality of the players who made it, because all faults will be edited to perfection, and all bum notes [usually badly tuned, but sometimes badly articulated] are covered again so that you would imagine that the players really are so much better than their forebears.

I personally don't find my experience of live concerts, my own playing experience, or the anecdotes of my playing collegues lead me to find modern performers are generally musically or technically better [even particularly at the highest level such as the BPO, VPO, LPO, LSO, CSO, NYPO etc] than their forebears.

What is certain, however, is that provincial orcheastras are much improved, because many more musicians are very well trained in the technical sense. I don't think that a study of modern performances would conclusively prove that musicianship has improved however, even if recordings certainly are cleaner, and more technically correct.

As I say it is all just opinion, so please forgive me for not agreeing with you ...

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Nowadays the only true live recordings issued that are true continuous performances are those from old recordings held mainly in radio station archives!

CSO-Resound is the label owned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They claim their recordings are from actual concert performances. So if you are right, they are lying.

I hope that is not the case.

If it were the case, I would be quite perplexed, as what I hear on recordings is equivalent to what I hear in live broadcasts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland orchestra, which I listen to most weeks over the internet.

One final point; I have friends in the local orchestra and I hear them play often, in practice in their homes. As a player myself, I have to say I hear improvements in accuracy and phrasing under these circumstances on a regular basis.

Dear Mike,

Live classical recordings contain performance that are edited to save them from the inevitable blips that can become annoying on repeated listening, but usually pass un-remarked in single listen to a live radio relay or at the actual event. That or the recordings are rejected, and another concert is recorded and if more successful it will be prepared for issue. Even Toscanini's [and Furtwqngler's] live recordings were subjected to the choice of complete movements recorded at different concerts, and frequently if you look at the recording dates for these live performances, you will notice the perplexing fact that the performance took several days to complete in spite of the music being perhaps a Brahms or Beethoven Symphony played over in only 35 minutes. It is nothing new, and it has merely become more sophistacated -and therefore a bigger con, because it is less detectable - over the years as the techniuques of recording allow for ever more subtle assistance to be given to the performers and recording teams.

Yes, in the strictest sense to edit these performances to correct technical details is to be dishonest.

I doubt very much that you will get a straight answer out of the label on how much editing they do. Unles you know some members of the orchestra rather well, then you may not out them either ...

I would be amazed if they do no editing, however!

In the old days live direct cut recordings were frequently completely rejected for only one or two mistakes, because no editing was possible.

I would never have known some of these things had I not had friends playing in orchestras at the highest levels.

ATB from George

For a while in the 70s, I studied trumpet with Ray Crisara. To this day, he is the best trumpet player I have ever heard face to face. He played first trumpet in the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, then second and assistant first in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Harry Glantz
( http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12...mphonic-trumpet.html ), with Toscanini conducting. He had a long and distinguished career as a studio musician after that. He also played a number of Bach festivals in Germany as principle trumpet over the years.

Many trumpet players of note in the U.S. earned their chops studying with Mr. Crisara. You can read something about him here :

http://www.trumpetguild.org/20...ference/wed/204.html

Mr. Crisera told me they worked a forty hour week at NBC, doing commercials and radio shows and whatever, then in the evening they would be broadcast live, I think I remember twice a week.

Why would he bullshit his students?

As a matter of note, Alfred Brendel would agree with you about the con.

He refused [and still refuses] to allow broadcasting of his concerts as he is not prepared to encourage recording of his live performances where he cannot control whether the concert might be listened to many times.

I believe he has approved some live performances for issue, where he felt the absense of significant blemish allowed for this.

Klemperer actually would insist on recording whole movements again as he considered editing even a studio recording to be a swindle.

These are men of of rare integrity. Very rare indeed, and working in an industry not exactly noted for its transparent honesty ...

ATB from George

[QUOTE]Originally posted by GFFJ:
which conspires with digital editing to produce the false idea that the players are technically infallible.

A little bit of fallibility is reassuring sometimes!
/QUOTE]
Totally agree George, not only reassuring, but actually emotive, it's the humanity of the performer.

This discussion has been had before, and it's a personal thing I guess. I can appreciate something flawless (or close to it). But I'm drawn to any performer who is seeking to communicate, whether that be taking a risk, or whatever.

quote:

Why would he bullshit his students?

I don't think anyone said that your teacher was b********ing anyone did they?

A live broadcast is one thing and a recording advertised as live is entirely a different thing as an investigation of Toscanini's live NBC recording dates will show very quickly.

There were listening seesions with the producers from RCA and Toscanini where the best takes from different live concerts were selected to be stiched together as passed off as live recordings.

There were live recordings for certain, just simply not of single live performances, but a conflation of different live performances.

In this case I am grateful to Harvey Sachs, who actually lists some examples of this in his generally favourable biography of Toscanini. I would never have looked at the dates for myself, but when I checked Sachs' information for some of the RCA issues which I had in those days, I found that he was being entirely factual in his reporting.

ATB from George

George, please respond to my comments about
Ray Crisara. Do you think I was being hoodwinked?

Music evolved quite differently in my experience than yours. I am trying to understand the difference.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
A live broadcast is one thing and a recording advertised as live is entirely a different thing as an investigation of Toscanini's live NBC recording dates will show very quickly.

ATB from George

The Abbado/Berlin/Beethoven performances are video of a live performance. How did they get all those people to sit still for 27 hours per symphony?

I imagine that they made the films on different days for differnt works, but once agian, I rather doubt that they are entirely unedited.

Not even the BPO is made up of people who never make mistakes.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
I imagine that they made the films on different days for different works, but once again, I rather doubt that they are entirely unedited.

I think you would see the edits if you watched the audience closely. I think I will try that tonight with the Eroica.

I am wondering if we were all sitting comfortably in a bar, you and me and 6 or 7 members of the BPO, discussing a recorded performance, if you would make your points in quite the same way ...

but seriously, George, you made no comment at all on the changes in performance practice that begin this thread. I would love to know what you think on that front.

quote:

I am wondering if we were all sitting comfortably in a bar, you and me and 6 or 7 members of the BPO, discussing a recorded performance, if you would make your points in quite the same way ...

Dear Mike,

If I were sitting in a bar with you and some members of the BPO, then I certainly would not embrrass those players by asking the questions expecting answers in front of you!

I doubt it would be the first topic of conversation that I would have with any members of the BPO that I happened to be sharing a beer with even if you were not there. I would be fascinated about their concerts under Karajan, Kempe, Klemperer, Clutyens and so on ...

But if we did get onto it, then I would happily let the conversation run, and would cite the examples about Toscaini, and my understanding of modern live recording techniques without expecting a particularly informative answer!

quote:

but seriously, George, you made no comment at all on the changes in performance practice that begin this thread. I would love to know what you think on that front.

If you look up about three posts the answer was posted almost the instant you requested that I should compose it, and appears in the post above your request.

Sorry to disasgree with you, dear Mike.

I find disagreeing with you disagreeable, and yet you named me asking for a reply in your third post, so I either had to engage or appear to be ignorant in ignoring you ... I would otherwise have left it well alone.

Serious apologies, and I will stop as soon as you say enough.

Best from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
I will stop as soon as you say enough.
Best from George

George, you are a man whose opinion is worth knowing. One of my hopes is that I will learn to hear music as you do. I think that would benefit me.

But it is a totally different approach to music than what runs in my gut. That means I have to work harder at understanding it as you see it.

I am trying to use solfege to find articulation to shape and color the phrase. My wife says it sounds very musical and suits the phrases. Yes, George, you frustrated me to the point where I dug out my trumpet and started to work things out again :-) This technique is a result of conversation with members of the brass section of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. They play 218 services a year. Good outfit :-)

So it's not just the stereo any more.

Thank you.

So, are there any changes in the execution of articulation in the strings over the past five decades?

Had to add a note on Bass Clef : a couple of times a week, I listen to a Beethoven String Quartet, and follow the cello.

Everyone tells me the transposition will become automatic, and not slow me up.

I'll report back in three months ...

quote:

So, are there any changes in the execution of articulation in the strings over the past five decades?

Dear Mike,

As you know my field is in strings, and yes there have been massive changes.

Pleasse forgive that I do not answer this evening, but I will explain the revolution in the secod half of the last century in string playing technique, and its particular implications for articulation, tempi, and accuracy of intonation. There is strange and unexpected implication for the legatto style as well, which defies logic until you actually play on an instrument set up with gut strings and find a beautiful surprise in it!

I have a fascination for the winds and brass, and have studied them from the outside, but my understanding of strings is from the inside - from playing, from selecting strings and set-up, from moulding a tone and style that was acceptable and wanted in the freelance world at least.

Also, I crave you forgive a brief explanation of my love for music which is so strong that I cannot survive happily for more than a few days unless I concentrate for more than half an hour a day on some great music - especially as you know from Bach, Haydn, Handel or Beethoven.

It does not give me any pleasure to disagree with you - a music lover - so let us see if we can find a set of things which we share an agrement in such as the life enhancing effects that the greatest music can have for many of us!

Very best wishes from George.

PS: Current watching a BBC DVD of Part Two of The Lost Prince - Poliakow's play about the Prince John, son of King George V, who sadly died young.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Please forgive that I do not answer this evening ...

The pregnant pause before a good time ... :-)

In this thread, I've tried to describe differences in performance practice that I have observed over the past 40 years. For convenience, I would say there was a "traditional" style that persisted into the late 1960s, A variety of aberrations in the 1970s and 1980s, and a "modern" style in the 1990s to today.

The most perfect example of the traditional style that I know of on disk is Berstein/NYPhil doing the Mahler 3rd. It features two flavors of trumpet : Fanfare and lullaby. These are characteristic trumpet stong suites, and William Vacchiano and John Smith render these two styles so flawlessly, you hear it if you think of it :