mcmillan@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (03/11/84)
I recently heard a performance of the Mozart 35th symphony by small orchestra using old-style technique (notably, little vibrato). [A recording, I forget whose.] It worked very well, with the music (even the 2nd movement) very perky. I am not always happy with the sound of old-style techniques, and anyway I am dubious about how accurately we recreate old styles. Particularly (this is a flame!) DON'T IMAGINE THAT THE AWFUL OUT-OF-TUNE STUFF WE HEAR FROM OLD WIND INSTRUMENTS is at all representative of the way they sounded 100 years ago. Most wind players spend years getting their particular modern wind instrument to play in tune. I'll bet it was always thus. I want to hear a 150 year old flute played by someone who has been practicing on it 6 hours a day for ten years, nothing less. The Forte-piano appears to have far less sensitivity than the modern piano, and tends to yield very poor performances in comparison to modern performances, even for Mozart sonatas. What's the catch here? I can't believe that modern pianists have discovered so much more in Mozart's music than he himself intended. Is there some way to play more sensitively on a forte-piano, or must the listener hear much more forte-piano performances in order to detect the sensitivity in performances? We used to have an old-fashioned tuner who tuned the lower octaves sharper than the higher ones. This makes more sense to me than "stretched octaves", but I would prefer stretching in neither way. Our current tuner is very good, but a few years he switched to a very accurate tuning machine. (Incidentally, tuning with the machine is slower for him than tuning the old way, but probably requires less concentration.) I find that the tempered tuning with the machine is extremely regular. I insisted that he go back to the old way of tuning by hand, which is not entirely regular; there are some compromises in the black notes. I primarily play 19th century (and early 20th century) romantic music, which is clearly written for the standard hand tuned piano. With a good hand tuning, C-major is a very bland key, A-flat major has an extraordinarily sweet sound that is very easy to recognize, and B-major has a bright, exciting sound due to the unequal tempering compromises among the black keys. A very accurate tempering (by machine) ruins the individual characteristics of the scales, which must have influenced the great composers. - Toby Robison allegra!eosp1!robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison princeton!eosp1!robison (NOTE! NOT McMillan; Robison.)
simon@psuvax.UUCP (Janos Simon) (03/12/84)
[] I must applaud the quest for "non-authentic" playing. Reminds me of a friend's story: he went with a group of fellow students to study the conditions of miners in West Virginia. In a union hall, they persuaded some of the old folks to sing songs from the 30's, and, in particular, a miner in his 80's gave them a long recital - raspy, throathy voice, but lots of enthousiasm. A member of the group was enthralled: -"Your voice - it's so, ...,so AUTHENTIC!" -"Yeah. It used to be GOOD." was the dispirited reply. As for fortepianos, Mozart does not seem to fare that well - maybe because some of the best pianists ever spent years perfecting their interpretations, and so far, no fortepianist can match the interpretive powers of these masters. However Haydn, Schubert, and some early Beethoven sound very nice. Try listening to Malcolm Bilson. js