JEFF MANCHUR: PIANIST
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact
Search

The Problem of Recordings in Beethoven's Op. 110

6/1/2016

Comments

 
My last post was inspired by a recording of a pianist who made a choice in interpretation that was directly in conflict with what was written by the composer in the score. I believe performers ought to pursue this agenda with enthusiasm, especially the more advanced the artist: trust your musical intuition, your analysis might well be better than the composer's.

But few people do this, and so many performances of standard repertoire suffer because they fit into a box, take few risks, and simply recreate what everyone expects to hear. Often we talk about respecting the 'composer's intentions' when studying a new piece of music and advocate using an Urtext score so that our interpretation is based on what the composer wrote and nothing else. Again-I refer you to the Taruskin quote to the right: starting with the Urtext is important, but performing is by its very nature an act. We must make the composer's intentions come alive by putting ourselves into it.

Furthermore, I would argue that we confuse composer's intentions with interpretations that we have already heard. What undergraduate piano student prepares a piece for performance without consulting recordings by other artists? What good teacher does not encourage their student to use recordings for information? This is common practice in preparing for performances today and while I'm not against the idea, I'm convinced that there is a fine line between being inspired by a recording, and copying a recording. I'll bet that more often than not, we fall on the side of the latter, rather than the former.

When I was first preparing Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op. 110 for performance several years ago, I was struck by a passage in the Scherzo movement: 
Picture
I found myself emphasizing beat 2 of the first and third measures of this excerpt as if they were the downbeat. Momentarily, I shifted the barline over one beat. This bothered me, my inclination should be to keep the sense of meter correct and this created some sort of metric dissonance. I realized that I played it this way automatically because EVERYONE plays it this way. Not that it is incorrect: some accent could be implied on beat two being the first note under a slur, but it bothered me that I would automatically make a musical decision just because "that's how it's done". I believe my alternate interpretation, is equally valid: giving an emphasis to beats one and two as equals, "DUH-DUH" instead of "da-DUH).

Oftentimes what we think is following the "composer's intentions", we are only following another performer's decisions. If that is true, I'm going to give myself some credit by going along with my ideas, even if I cannot verify that anyone else has ever interpreted the passage in the same way. 

Since then I have tried to be aware of all musical decisions that I've made when learning a new piece of music. What if I approached this canonical score as if I were preparing the premiere? This was the primary reason pursued a doctorate in contemporary music: I was on the forefront of new creations, and prepared countless works for which I could NOT consult a recording. I had to look at the score and make decisions for myself, not based on what someone else decided to do. And working with composers on their own music, I found that they often are surprised by the decisions I make, but they are happy to go along, understanding that my musicality was an honest response to the textual clues that they had written. 
Comments

    Subscribe to my mailing list for updates on my activities and special access to my recordings and performances.

    * indicates required


    ​"Modern performers seem to regard their performances as texts rather than acts, and to prepare for them with the same goal as present-day textual editors: to clear away accretions. Not that this is not a laudable and necessary step; but what is an ultimate step for an editor should be only a first step for a performer, as the very temporal relationship between the functions of editing and performing already suggests." -Richard Taruskin, 
    ​Text and Act

    Archives

    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    June 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011

    Categories

    All
    Alex Ross
    Amy Beach
    Artistic Messages
    Artistry
    Audio
    Bach
    Best Practices
    Boring
    Chamber Music
    Chiara
    Chopin
    Clapping
    Cliburn Competition Report
    Competitions
    Concert Reflections
    Contemporary Music
    Creativity
    Enjoying
    Extraordinary Recordings
    Glenn Gould
    Influential Books
    Intellectual
    Learning
    Listening
    Liszt
    Messiaen
    Mozart In A Month
    Nature
    Performance Practice
    Performance Traditions
    Pianistic Intentions
    Piano Business
    Practicing
    Richard Dare
    Richard Taruskin
    Rising Stars
    Serialism
    Subjectivity
    Teacher Sayings
    Teaching
    Textual Fidelity
    Time
    Video

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Now Happening
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Blogger
  • Teacher
  • Contact