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Soundwave
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« Reply #30 on: 16:02:31, 17-02-2007 » |
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Ho Operacat.
I too like Hampson in this cycle. Sad to say, I could never stand Pears voice even in the days when he was young.
Cheers
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« Last Edit: 16:05:19, 17-02-2007 by Soundwave »
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Ho! I may be old yet I am still lusty
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #31 on: 16:10:03, 17-02-2007 » |
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There's really no point in my getting involved in the Pears argument again, but oh, you do miss a lot! And what was this inferior stuff? I always finish up by saying that a far greater musical mind than any of ours adored him too  . More than one, actually - Stravinsky also admired him. I'm curious, though - did any of you Pears-haters see/hear him LIVE? I've rarely met anyone who did who wasn't captivated. |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #32 on: 16:17:07, 17-02-2007 » |
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Mary, with all due respect to both Pears and Britten (both of whom are tastes I have yet to come anywhere near acquiring), the greatness of the musical mind of the listener is neither here nor there.
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Soundwave
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« Reply #33 on: 16:24:39, 17-02-2007 » |
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Yes! I saw Pears live, the last time in the Messiah. Why do you assume that hate enters into this? I didn't and don't hate him - I just don't like his voice at all, although I appreciate his artistry. In his youth he sang some rather less than good English songs - before the Third Programme existed and in its early days. I suspect that if a tenor appeared these days with Pears voice and its (to me) faults, he would not be held in high regard. I suppose that it's a question of "one man's meat ......"
Cheers
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #34 on: 16:43:55, 17-02-2007 » |
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I didn't mean "hate" in a very literal sense! And yes, you are right that he sang some less than good songs. I do understand that it's possible to dislike a voice and appreciate artistry, though I can't think of any where I feel that - I suspect I value artistry rather more than I care about the actual voice. On the other hand I can think of a good few where I think the voice is beautiful but the artistry lacking.
I agree he might not be acceptable today. Neither would Margot Fonteyn, if you follow the analogy.
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Soundwave
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« Reply #35 on: 16:59:12, 17-02-2007 » |
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Ho Mary. But the aim is voice plus artistry - artistry plus voice. Artistry, for me, is a natural inbuilt gift, more so than the physical voice. Generally, sometimes with a lot of application, vocal faults can be overcome or minimised and it always surprises me when they're not. Of course, because of age, on occasions it's too late to do anything. Artistic faults are very hard to improve without a feeling, in my opinion, of artificiality. Composers are the greatest aid to artistry in a singer.
Cheers
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Ho! I may be old yet I am still lusty
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #36 on: 17:07:11, 17-02-2007 » |
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I do actually like Pears's voice, though I can see why some don't. I like the fact that he sounds always like a real person, not a sort of substitute musical instrument (I think Hans Keller said this about him, too). There's a humanity to it that probably wouldn't be there if it were more conventionally "beautiful".
However, I have no desire to convert you or anyone else - that would be foolish, and impossible anyway.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #37 on: 10:55:06, 18-02-2007 » |
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I promise I will shut up after this, but I just can't resist quoting something I found by accident some time ago while surfing, because it expresses roughly what I feel. It was a memory from a member of the Philharmonia chorus in Messiah with Klemperer, about 1960. He said,
"God knows how many times I'd sung Messiah. One tends, I fear, to become a bit jaded. You sit there, in a dream, waiting for the next bit of choral action.
Suddenly this iron claw gripped my throat.
What?
It was the tenor soloist, Peter Pears, in the opening bars of "Thy rebuke has broken his heart."
He has a distinctive voice, small and not particularly beautiful, but he performed the artistic ultimate. He made the listener feel so intensely, yet he couldn't have been feeling what he was conveying. If he had been, he wouldn't have been able to sing. It wasn't just me who reacted like this to him. All the critics singled him out for the highest praise.
I had now experienced the difference between an extremely good singer - all the soloists were that - and a truly great singer. It's all technique, but the listener is aware only of pure emotion. It's a form of alchemy."
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operacat
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« Reply #38 on: 19:15:12, 19-02-2007 » |
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I'm curious, though - did any of you Pears-haters see/hear him LIVE? I've rarely met anyone who did who wasn't captivated.
No...maybe that's the problem, on the recording his voice sounds thin, reedy and INADEQUATE....sorry, but there it is!  |
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nature abhors a vacuum - but not as much as cats do.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #39 on: 21:41:57, 19-02-2007 » |
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Oh dear, I said I wasn't going to go on - but really, that is nonsense. Inadequate singers simply don't, and didn't, have the career that Pears had. They don't inspire great composers, but his career wasn't just with Britten, remember - he was the most famous Evangelist of his time in the Bach Passions, and not only in Britain - he sang Bach regularly in Holland and Germany. He was nominated for a Grammy for his recording of Britten's Nocturne. He sold out concert halls for many years. OK, so does Russell Watson (a truly inadequate singer!), but I'm talking about serious music here. All right, you still don't like him, and why should you - but I can't let you get away with that statement! We all have our crushes, and I know who yours is - well, Pears is mine. |
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roslynmuse
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« Reply #40 on: 22:14:02, 19-02-2007 » |
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For me, who knows Pears' singing only from recordings, I find him first and foremost (like Pierre Bernac) a communicator. The voice itself was - well, unique (Bernac's too could be decidedly unbeautiful); in some repertoire (the more plangent- Bach, much of what Britten wrote for him, some Schubert, Schumann, Wolf...) Pears' is for me the appropriate vehicle for what he is expressing. On the whole I like him less in more strenuously cheerful pieces - some of the folksong arrangements are rather hard to take nowadays, but I suspect that is Britten's fault as much as Pears'. The sound is easy to parody, but that misses the point of what he was able to express through phrasing and text (listen to his Gerontius).
Thin? - no. Reedy? - well, at times there is a lot of nose in the sound, and that became habitual later on. Inadequate - never.
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harrumph
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« Reply #41 on: 10:47:27, 21-02-2007 » |
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My suppelmentary question, which I forgot in my last post, is why people find this work so life affirming, when the subject and the setting are so depressing? I don't. While Winterreise contains many fine songs, I find it just too long and too consistently downbeat to love. I prefer Schwanengesang. Even if it isn't a proper cycle, it contains two mini-cycles and indicates where Schubert was headed if only he had lived longer. If I do listen to Winterreise, I like the versions sung by Olaf Bar and John Shirley Quirke. And the wonderful recording of Die Leiermann by Harry Plunkett Greene - sung in English, by an old man with only a very limited voice remaining to him. Altogether appropriate to this particular song, and communicative in a way quite unequalled by any other version I have heard. |
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