tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-388014615339890178.post8768612234727252043..comments2023-05-27T07:47:26.610-05:00Comments on Bass Blog: Ravinia Week 2Michael Hovnanianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07822257921093170726noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-388014615339890178.post-67922848685178081682012-07-24T09:23:45.489-05:002012-07-24T09:23:45.489-05:00My favorite conductors were often active composers...My favorite conductors were often active composers. Most have higher insight-to-ego quotients (though sometimes due to extraordinary insight). Boulez provides an example. His TV broadcast Mahler 7 (http://video.pbs.org/video/1626498784/) contained a second movement that really felt like a hike in the mountain wilderness as Mahler intended. Usually this movement is more like Central Park or even the Bronx Zoo, something the musicians can sink their virtuosic teeth into. Mahler was quite capable of unfolding his images so doesn't require our embellishments. Extra effects soon take us off his path. On the other hand, how many remote mountain hikers are present in audience or orchestra? The Romantic lifestyle and environment are kaput, so maybe contemporizing effacements should be expected, even justified. We relate more to peacocks than to nightingales. <br /><br />How many in the audience are even aware of graciosos or alla breves? The most recent Schubert 9th even added an accelerando into its tweaked-up alla breve section. In a parting nod to structure, the conductor abruptly braked to the original tempo so that the final bars were a mirror image of the opening, as Schubert intended. It was a nice, brisk performance which ignored Schubert's puzzle-perfect proportions and therefore diminished what was perhaps his greater message, the contrasting effects of lyrical and symphonic-motivic styles. Conductor-composers are much more likely to help us hear the graciosos and alla breves in convincing if not revelatory ways. It was natural that Boulez, Bernstein, Rosbaud, Furtwangler, Skrowaczewski, Silvestri, Maderna all strove to assert the primacy of composer over conductor. Even their libertarian excesses, such as Mahler rewriting passages, were respectful efforts aimed to bring clarity to another composer's intentions. <br /><br />My other favorite conductors are nearly all former musicians, such as Jaap van Zweden. Care to take the plunge, Michael?<br /><br />Stan Collinssjidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08808392811620961090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-388014615339890178.post-16399140262795189792012-07-17T16:36:24.972-05:002012-07-17T16:36:24.972-05:00"Allegro energico e passionato, began at a pr..."Allegro energico e passionato, began at a promising pace but, reaching the middle section, lapsed into the all-too-familiar dirge funebre."<br />One of my all-time pet peeves. Brahms clearly indicates that the quarter notes in the middle section should equal the quarter notes in the previous music. The time signature changes from 3/4 to 3/2, so there is a natural halving of the tempo, but it should be no slower than that. If you actually do it this way, the underlying Chaconne theme is discernible, and the flute solo has a noble and simple Bachian quality. Unfortunately, even the finest flute players, aided and abetted by the clueless conductors that now populate the landscape, cannot resist the urge to love this solo to death, as if it were a Verdi recitative or something. The only guy I ever heard make this part of the piece work was Bernard Haitink. Eschenbach's version was worse than most, of course, but not by much.nocynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07998727400312237867noreply@blogger.com