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Reiner Torheit
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« on: 18:23:26, 27-07-2007 » |
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How far are you influenced by other performances when preparing your own? (No matter at what level you perform). Do you go for the "omnivorous" approach and try to hear everything? Do you ascetically deny yourself access to any recordings until your own performance has taken shape?
Or are you utterly unworried about how others have performed the piece? (Assuming, of course, it has ever been performed before).
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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thompson1780
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« Reply #1 on: 20:08:42, 27-07-2007 » |
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I vote for the first and last options so I think I ought to explain myself!
Before I start, I took this to mean when preparing pieces that are new to my repertoire, rather than works which are new or newish to the world.
I leave listening to other people's interpretations until I have had at least a run through the work and tried different approaches to various passages. Sometimes I'l get enough from that and my own view of teh work to not bother about a recording, but at others I will seek out recordings - not necessarily just ones I own.
Tommo
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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rauschwerk
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« Reply #2 on: 21:17:20, 27-07-2007 » |
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Once, when preparing a Mozart sonata (K 332) for my first public performance of it, I listened several times to Mitsuko Uchida's recording which seemed to me to be played almost perfectly. I did not listen again until I had pepared the piece to my satisfaction, and was amazed to find how much of Ms Uchida's interpretation I then disagreed with. So I was certainly not copying the recording!
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Biroc
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« Reply #3 on: 21:28:19, 27-07-2007 » |
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Very interesting thread...
Garry Walker once advised me never to listen to a work before conducting it (which of course is not always possible!), but his basic point was never let any other interpretation affect your own and certainly never let the ensemble think you're being dictated to by a past maestro.
When I conducted Schumman 3 though, I couldn't help but be influenced by Bernstein's (rather idiosyncartic!) performance and it wasn't to the detriment of the performance the orchestra delivered in the end...
However, it often depends on the piece (which is why I haven't voted!). Preparing the music of Graciela Paraskevaidis, it was particularly useful to have a prior performance on recording as a marker for what she wanted in terms of (as she put it) "the claustrophobia of the piece". But, I recently conducted Stockhausen's "Kreuzspiel" and Gorecki's "Kleines Requiem fur Eine Polka" and spent virtually no time (though I was fairly well-acquainted with both) with the available recordings, content to develop an interpretation that was specific to the ensemble (students in both cases) and that they were comfortable with.
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"Believe nothing they say, they're not Biroc's kind."
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Jonathan
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« Reply #4 on: 21:29:44, 27-07-2007 » |
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rauschwerk, I had a similar experience with the finale of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata - I listened to Kempff's recording and, after learning it myself decided to play it utterly different to him!
The more different recordings I hear, the more I think that the way I play it should be in some way different to all of them. Recently, I've listened to 3 recordings of Liszt's Scherzo & March in the car on the way to work and I find myself being really critical of all of them (not that I have ever played the piece properly, but the principle is the same)
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Best regards,
Jonathan
*********************************************
"as the housefly of destiny collides with the windscreen of fate..."
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #5 on: 21:34:42, 27-07-2007 » |
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Listening to lots of recordings of a piece often gives me some idea of the common practices and limits of a range of interpretations, and what other possibilities there might also be.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Poivrade
Posts: 36
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« Reply #6 on: 23:42:08, 04-08-2007 » |
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I don't like recorded music. I used to, and have a very large collection, but it's no more real than a photograph, and I'm disturbed that most enthusiasts see performance as a rather minor thing compared to the reality of recordings, with which they become familiar in a most unnatural way.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #7 on: 23:53:21, 04-08-2007 » |
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I am with Poivrade here - mine is the vote for "I avoid listening to recordings" above.
I find that no matter how much recorded music I have, I still don't listen to it much... I would far rather pore through a score, or plunk-through a vocal-score at the piano, if I am learning new material.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Poll
