Thoughts about performing unsung music...

Started by Alan Howe, Tuesday 30 December 2014, 12:46

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Alan Howe

It varies tremendously. One good solution is a recording made following a concert.

Alan Howe

A further thought on Manfred Honeck: he takes all sorts of risks - with dynamics, phrasing, tempo, balance. etc. In many ways he is a throwback to an earlier school of conductors. He's definitely his own man, he's never safe - which can lead him into some questionable decisions driven by excessive subjectivity. As fine conductors go he's the opposite of, say, Chailly, who is much more rational and objective in his approach.

What we want in the unsung repertoire is someone like Honeck to take up a worthwhile piece and give it a thorough going-over. And Chailly would be great in Raff too...

chill319

The post at the top of this thread is spot on.

I'm reminded that quite a few Americans became aware of then-unsung Carl Nielsen through Leonard Bernstein's explosive 1963 and 1965 recordings of Symphonies 5 and 3. It isn't as though there weren't worthy recordings before Bernstein's, but his interpretations were nothing if not full of juice, Nielsen's symphonies truly receiving a "thorough going-over," sometimes at the risk of distorting the composer's intentions (like colorizing Reed's The Third Man. Nonetheless, charisma tells -- or, better, shows. Today, of course, Nielsen is no longer unsung in the provinces, and Bernstein certainly has something to do with that.

Sounds as though Honeck is performing a similar service, though sadly (for the likes of us) culture has moved on and Honeck, for one, won't be airing any Young People's Concerts on a major network anytime soon, or amassing the fan base that goes with such major exposure.

On the other hand, Nielsen's ascendency occurred before the advantages of our internet age. Forums like this are less conspicuous than public performances, to be sure, yet they are quietly pervasive and are becoming foundational to the discerning preservation of our forefathers' culture.  Fifty years hence -- assuming the biosphere still supports human life and human life still supports culture -- the before and after of a composer like, say, Rufinatscha will resemble the before and after of Nielsen today.

eschiss1

Well, just having more (and both better- and lesser-known) conductors performing lesser-known music well and more often - as Muti has done with Martucci, Slatkin did with Ropartz (with the ORTF, awhile back), though possibly for specific/contingent reasons each time rather than as part of a general trend - would be a good thing (and restore a sort of status quo ante in which some, at least, of this music used to get performed by a fairly large cross-section of ensembles rather than by performers, groups, record labels, devoted specifically to underknown repertoire, as increasingly now...)

thalbergmad

A plus point for me with performing unsung music  is that i got less grief in piano lessons.

It seemed i used to get stopped every 20 seconds when playing a Chopin nocturne, but very rarely when playing one by Henselt.

Thal


Alan Howe

Would the Herz have been worth interrupting over some finer point of interpretation, though?  ;)