Rather than becoming bogged-down in abstruse theories that have no usable relevance to performance...

... tell us about instances in "mainstream repertoire" (ie the kind of thing which might get a play on R3) where you feel some "Historically Informed Practice" (or "authenticism" if you don't mind the brickbats you'll get for using the term..) has substantially improved your enjoyment of a performance?   You can either talk in general, or about specific interpretations.  Let's please try to talk about benefits, although if you're unconvinced by something and you'd like to say why, that would be welcome too!

To get the ball rolling, I'd like to mention using cornets instead of trumpets in the overture to Verdi's RIGOLETTO - they're what the composer expected and wrote for,  and they're a quite different sound to trumpets.  (To be overly simplistic, the cornet is effectively a soprano horn, with tubing that slowly and gradually expands in diameter throughout its length...  whereas trumpets remain cylindrical for 2/3rds of their length, before "flaring" to a bell-shape more rapidly.  That's why they make different noises ) 

I'm entirely with you on the ophicleide, Tony - it's a completely different instrument for which the tuba (a fine instrument in its own repertoire!) is an inappropriate substitute.  It's like replacing double-basses with bass guitars

I'm going to (predictably!) jump in with praise for the rediscovered difference in sound gut stringing makes.  Well-made gut strings have a range of colours that metal strings simply can't give.

Of course, it's only very recently that gut strings are being made well again.  And there's a lot further to go - much of the string-making art has been lost.  I've heard about people using late 19th century gut strings they've found tucked inside a dusty violin case in the attic, expecting them to be dried out, unstable, thin in sound and ready to break.  Six months of glorious sound later and not even the thinnest E-string has broken.  Not even the best contemporary stringmakers can produce something half that good.

I've heard that gut-stringing only gave way to metal during the first world war, and only then because gut was scarce (being needed rather more urgently by surgeons).  Anyone know more about this?

As will Mr Kipling, I'm sure.

I'm looking forward to being old enough to instruct people in historically-informed performances of Peter Maxwell Davies.

The real original Mr Kipling could not have known my string quintet and I rather doubt that his commodified alter ego would have encountered it either; furthermore, the work is hardly a piece of cake, as any one of its six performers would doubtless tell you were you to ask!

I'm looking forward to being old enough to instruct people in historically-informed performances of Peter Maxwell Davies.
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I very much hope - as I'm sure we all do around here - that your wish be granted in due course!

Best,

Alistair

To the extent that a solo soprano is added to the string ensemble in its finale, it is no more exceedingly unusual than Schönberg's F# minor quartet (and that's no piece of cake either)...

Best,

Alistair

No one here has yet mentioned either HIP replacement surgery or those beyond-absurd creations of our what's-that-Browning government commonly known as Home Information Packs; I suppose that it would not have been especially hip to mention either. OK, so now back to the subject following my wholly unwarranted but at least mercifully brief intrusion...

Seriously, though - what does anyone here think about how to approach this problem in respect of composers in whose work a performing tradition only begins to develop way after his/her death? - I am thinking of Alkan, Godowsky and Sorabji in particular, in which instances one cannot realistically think or talk about the ways in which the music was performed at or around the time of composition...

Best,

Alistair

That's an interesting one though. I would certainly be the last to dismiss the whole counter-tenor thing as an important development in performance; performances by various counter-tenors have given me a great deal of pleasure and musical fulfilment. (Indeed some of my best friends are counter-tenors. Well, one of them anyway.)

But the counter-tenor, in the sense of a mature male voice on alto parts singing in falsetto throughout the range, is as far as I know not something that's strictly 'authentic' in any period, at least not as the 'rule'. Bach's altos were boys; Handel's male altos were mainly castrati; French male altos (and for that matter Monteverdi's) were tenors using falsetto at the top as an exception (helped by a vocal approach which allowed the registers to be more seamlessly blended), not throughout the range. Purcell might have had falsettists for some parts, but for higher ones, certainly not for things like 'Tis Nature's Voice.

It's just that the English cathedral choirs had counter-tenors on the alto parts, so period performances which sprung from that tradition used them too. I'm not sorry though. It would be a poor soul indeed who could resist Michael Chance's Es ist vollbracht.