I can't be the only music lover to have had this experience: a performance of a well-known work - say, a Beethoven symphony - sounded all wrong, and yet there is not one reason I can think of that would convincingly explain my response. The performance did not violate the score. It did not suffer from technical defects of execution. It was not sabotaged by noisy audience or unexpected headache. And yet it almost made me gag...
Not that I have some rigidly fixed idea of how a score - Beethoven's or otherwise - must be translated into sound. I have no problem with Beethoven's music clad in heavy Teutonic armor, its structure buckling under the slow-moving extra weight. I don't mind it being pumped full of steroids to give it restless tempos, cranky dynamics, and impatient transitions.[1] Or when, medicated with Xanax, it sleepwalks lethargically [2] through what once were audacious modulations and startling dynamic contrasts. My skin did not crawl when I was introduced to Beethoven the Foppish Metrosexual sporting skinny jeans, pointy shoes, and tight-fitting jacket, his expensively disheveled moussed hair cascading over designer eyeglasses.[3] And if my blood boils at the thought of Beethoven the Circus Freak grotesquely disfigured by off-pitch amateurish playing of period-instrument bands [4], at least I understand clearly why I feel this way.
No, my problem is not with the variety of ways in which a composer's musical personality can be shaped by conductors and instrumentalists. Rather the problem is that on rare occasions I find the results inexplicably repulsive. My most recent experience of this kind was with Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony whose concert recording of the Eroica symphony still seems to me as perverse as a Netflix remake of Dirty Harry in which the title character is a bi-curious Asian-American detective who defends undocumented Mexican migrants from vicious Federal agents and, on his days off, distributes clean needles to cute heroin addicts in San Francisco's Tenderloin District.
Of course such experiences are not the only mystery of my musical life. Those of the opposite kind - where I am awed by performances which violate the score [5] or suffer from defects of execution [6] - are no less mysterious. It is just that people are not eager to scrutinize positive experiences. After all, we don't pay psychoanalysts to help us understand why we have happy marriages, fulfilling careers, and well-behaved children. Nor do we expect the pharmaceutical industry to develop drugs for treating cheerfulness and optimism. So I suppose I am just being human here...
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1. Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic.
2. Frans Bruggen and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra.
3. Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
4. Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood.
5. Sergei Rachmaninov's recording of Chopin's Piano Sonata in B-flat minor.
6. As heard in recordings of Wilhelm Furtwangler, Edwin Fischer, or Alfred Cortot.
7 comments:
Your description of YNS’ Beethoven was spot-on and hilarious. How this guy has gotten as far as he had, or receives the adulation he gets is beyond me. Everything I’ve heard of his—and Lord knows I’ve heard his entire studio discography for some perplexing reason that eludes me—has been abysmally, nauseatingly, narcolepsy-inducingly boring. Leave it to him to wring out all the color, fun, and sheer campy zest of Bernstein’s Mass. His Schumann and Mendelssohn is the Muzak those poor fallen souls can expect to hear droning for all eternity in the call waiting of Hell.
I’m a little surprised, though, at your disgust of Honeck. To my ears he’s quite good; often much better than that. Though he has the same tendency that many contemporary conductors lapse into of making Beethoven’s music way too punchy, over-emphasizing each sforzando and accented note. But I’ll gladly take him over YNS, K. Petrenko, Gilbert, et al any day!
I suppose there’s no formula for a successful performance. When it comes to Beethoven symphonies, the interpretations which have given me most pleasure are those by Furtwangler, and I also admire some of the period instrument performances, such as Gardener, Krivine, Jos van Immerseel, and Bruggen, who in a number of respects is closer to Furtwangler than others. Oh, and Carlos Keliber, and even Karajan’s first couple of cycles, before it got too glossy.
It’s nice to hear that something gives you positive pleasure, other than the negative pleasure of writing about things that don’t.
Nestor,
Just to make clear, my disgust is not for Honeck as a conductor in general, but for the specific performance of the Eroica linked in the text. Honeck's other recordings I've heard - there are many on that WQED website - struck me as just routine and mediocre (as do most performances by most musicians these days). Only this Eroica impressed me as intensely but inexplicably hateful.
As for YNS, the linked concert recording of Beethoven's First gives me a good idea of how he made it as far as he had: his performances exhibit exceptional level of craft and refinement. In fact, I've listened to that First symphony many times just to enjoy these technical aspects of YNS's work, despite ending up each time feeling creeped out by YNS's vision of Beethoven's musical personality.
Boom,
To each their own, and I certainly do respect your opinion. In fact, friends whose discernment in such things I respect, and who are enthusiastic YNS supporters would agree with you. But for whatever reason, I find his performances just so loved to death, so lacking in rhythmic bite, so dull. To me, it’s “Night of the Living Dead” whenever he’s on the podium (no offense to zombies). Craft and refinement are there, yes, but other conductors—certainly in the past, but even a few alive today—possess that and more.
Awhile ago, I heard the nonagenarian Blomstedt deliver a Beethoven program that was full of charm, grace, and youthful muscle. YNS’ Beethoven, in comparison, sounds hopelessly terminal, dwindling away his final hours in hospice care. But I still keep trying to give him a chance. Who knows? Maybe his style doesn’t make sense to me yet. Or maybe someday I’ll come across some recording of his that’ll make me a convert yet. I am perfectly willing to believe my assessment of YNS may be wrong or unfair.
I wouldn’t mind him so much if he at least recorded more interesting repertoire. A YNS recording of music by Sessions, Perle, Rochberg, Holmboe, Popov, Valen, Gerhard, et al would be a lot more rewarding and valuable than just more standard rep.
Try this
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=2266163
Regards
Chris
Chris,
There is little if any novelty in these "pocket" versions of Beethoven, certainly not for those familiar with arrangements of his symphonies for string quintet done by his exact contemporary Carl Friedrich Ebers (1770-1836):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g7q7HCqJqA
Not to mention Hummel's arrangement of Mozart symphonies and concertos for similarly meager ensembles.
Back then such arrangements made good sense (no home stereos to get to know new orchestral music!), but today there seems to be no musical reason to perform them, except perhaps as an exercise in musical archeology...
:)
I’m quite fond of Listz’s arrangements of the Beethoven symphonies, more reorchestrations for the piano. Not a first choice, but an interesting second.
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