I agree with you Kitty. However performers depend on good reviews by critics and try to please them.
Also one only can perform if one wins competition.
I find the whole thing is too sad. I can closely observe a quartet of some international reputation.
Now days one has to be very shrewd. To get engagements are not easy and I am observing the bad side of business.

I think that's an entirely reasonable position to take, Kitty. The much-vaunted "composer's intention" is first and foremost to create a situation in which music can be made, and the score is a catalyst for the music-making process, not a product. Not all of the composer's intentions are or can be encapsulated in a score, nor are they set in stone even while the composer is alive. Mahler, as has been mentioned, made many pragmatic adaptations to his scores as they were performed. This isn't to say that anyone else necessarily ought to tamper with whatever Mahler's final thoughts were, but it underlines the fact that he (and pretty much any other composer-performer) wasn't concerned to reproduce his work at each performance, but to recreate it, which is what the best performers do after all. Confusion as to the role of the composer and his/her intentions in all this may well have arisen from the fact that, since the early twentieth century, composers have less often been personally involved in performing their work, so that a view of the score as some kind of end-product has arisen.

Richard

This rather makes me think of Bernstein who seemed to all but re-compose the work in front of the auidence. Watching the DVDs of his 1970s VPO performaces I often wonder what Mahler would have felt and usually conclude that Bernstein might just have been given the nod.....

Some conductors seem to DE-compose the music and micro-manage the orchestra into a thoroughly over-considered performance. I sometimes find it difficult to engage by recordings make by Roger Norrington for this reason, and sometimes Rattle too. Sometimes it just nice to hear the Orchestra flying on a wing and a prayer.

Nick

I like this performance. I think that cellist is magnificent.
Do people agree? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ-GwxyJ2ZY

Nick,

Of course, we shall never know what Mahler would have thought of Bernstein's later readings of his works (or his earlier ones, for that matter), which is a shame, because it would have been interesting. Indeed, I'm sure I've read somewhere Bernstein saying that after a successful performance he would feel for a moment or two like he had composed it.

That said, in my view his later Mahler is mixed - he did tend to go on safari somewhat and it didn't always pay off (I think the last 9th, with the Concertgebouw, suffers terribly). However, when it worked, as, in my view, with the Concertgebouw first, the Berlin and Vienna 9ths or the Vienna 5th, he produced something rather special that I wouldn't want to be without.


Interesting to put Norrington in the same group as Rattle - my problem with him has always been in the light of excessive rigidity towards the score (take his quotes about speed limits in Beethoven for example), and also his incredible ego (as he showed when I saw him with the NYO). I do agree about Rattle though and his Beethoven suffers badly from deconstruction and, to these ears, much more critically from dullness. Then again, sometimes it works wonderfully, as I think his Schubert 9th did (though I know plenty who disagree). How dull it would be if we all judged performances exactly the same.

regards, Tam

t-p,

Your words in message 7 are really good for me.  I occaisionally need messages like that to remind me to listen wider and learn what I can from performances I might otherwise dismiss.

I see a lot of sense in what Kitty and Richard say too.  For me a score can only go so far......  Who is to say exactly how fast a crescendo gets loud (if it's not in the score)?  And what shape is it?  Just how different are f and p.  And how often do you find markings about tone in scores?  For me, there is plenty of space for interpretation within the score.

Hence, I get annoyed with myself when I stray from the score for either a technical reason or for a gut-felt emotional one.  "Technical" because my physical limitations as a violinist shouldn't dictate the music.  "Gut-felt emotional" because I either haven't felt what the compser wanted me to convey, or I haven't been able to convey it in the way (s)he wanted.

But after your words in 7 t-p, and the tales of composers 'favouring' many different interpreations, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

Thanks all

Tommo

Hi Tapiola
re Sibelius 4 - i have both Beecham and Karajan versions and prefer Karajan because think he gets more poetry out of the score - but really are not different interpretations subjective and just to individual tastes  

Hey offbeat

Oh completely

That was my point. I raised that particular symphony because Sibelius praised both different versions. Even the composers seem to be happy with subjective points of view represented in various interpretations, thus showing us that no-one person can tell us what we should think about a performance.

Surely this really diminshes the 'point' of many critics who like to tell us that there is such a thing as right or wrong...?

Regards

Nick