Re: Bach's Matthew Passion: Versions Selection


Gabriel Parra wrote:
Ian Pace wrote:
Try the String Sexets with L'Archibudelli or the C Minor Piano Quartet and
Piano Quintet with La Gaia Scienza.

As I wrote above, I find L'Archibudelli to be a fine group so I am
looking forward to getting the recordings you list. As for the piano
quintet, is it played with a fortepiano? I shudder at the thought but
will give it a try nonetheless.

I have this recording of the sextets, too. And, while being very much
pro-HIP, I don't really like it. Comes across as a bit glassy and bland
- I miss the unbelievable richness of tone and of shadings and
colorations gut strings can offer. Instead, what you get here is a very
bright clarity with little variation of tone.


Speaking of pianofortes vs. fortepianos, do HIP adherents not agree
that instruments did not evolve in a vacuum, but rather in response to
the demands of the music they were called on to play? That is,
Beethoven's fortepianos were inadequate instruments for his
music--especially a piece like the Hammerklavier--and it was not until
playing styles evolved thanks to Liszt and fortepianos became
pianofortes that, say, his last sonatas finally were able to be
performed as Beethoven intended, with instruments he did not have at
his disposal when he composed music that did not depend on the
sonorities of the instruments of his time? Recall that after Op. 111 he
said he found the pianos available to him "inadequate," although he did
go on to compose Opp. 119, 120 and 126. I'm pretty sure he would have
been thrilled to have a modern concert grand. I also love it when he
told the Schuppanzigh quartet, after they complained they couldn't
perform one of his last quartets, "Do you suppose I care about a
fucking fiddle when the spirit moves me?" To me, that is the most
authoritative statement ever made against the idea that period
instruments make a significant contribution to the art (and I'm sure he
used the more uncouth "fucking" and not "wretched"). I also remember
reading the Cambridge music handbook of Beethoven's 9th where the
author writes that for a trully "authentic" performance of the work it
should be played by a band of badly trained amateurs on inadequate
instruments under wretched conditions and with innumerable mistakes.
Also, Mozart's enthusiasm for large orchestras. Problem with HIP is, it
takes an incidental and makes it a fundamental. Bach wrote for the
limited forces and instruments he composed for because they were what
was available to him as a court composer. Same goes for Mozart. When he
knew he would have clarinets available for a symphony, for instance, he
would throw them in. He salivated over the huge orchestra in Mannheim.
Anyway, point is, if you want to play HIP style, by all means, go ahead
and do so, but please don't be ridiculous and claim it was "what the
composer intended." I, for one, am thankful for professional musicians
who play on instruments that have evolved to meet the demands of the
score and not of history.

May I confess what makes your posts most interesting and enjoyable for
me?

Until 3 years ago, I was thinking exactly the way you write now. It all
sounds so familiar and makes me think about how I could change so
drastically...

I also preferred Klemperer's Bach to any HIP I knew - than came
Concerto Italiano/ Alessandrini and Nederlandse Bachvereniging/
Veldhoven (haven't got their St. Matthew yet, but their Christmas
Oratorio is stunning). And I agree about your remark about lacking
"spritual" content - when listening to the opening of the St. Matthew
Passion in Gardiner's recording, the music sounded in contrast with the
text rather than in tune with it.

I loathed harpsichords - then I discovered Richard Egarr and Christine
Schornsheim (Haydn).

I loathed fortepianos, too. This tinny, wiry, miserable sound! Well,
after Schornsheim (Haydn) and Brautigam (Beethoven), to name only two,
I am counting the days for the next installment of Brautigam's
Beethoven cycle.

All of which made me begin to read about performing practices in the
past. Currently, I am reading a book by a violin teacher of the
Sternsches Conservatorium in Berlin, Siegfried Eberhardt (a reference
to this book is made in the booklet of the Archibudelli sextets CD).
And in this book you find an important violin teacher active from the
late 19th century to the mid-1930s complaining about the changes in
violin playing that threatened to "kill" the art of violin playing.

The new, Russian way of holding the bow and the steel strings are his
main points of criticism. He goes into pretty much detail, but the
broad outlines are that these changes greatly diminished the subtlety
of the playing and it's tonal richness.

I don't know if Arthur Nikisch is HIP for you - but currently, I am
trying to analyze his recording of Beethoven 5 as closely as possible.
And to be sure, the pre-WWI gut stringed playing of the BPO fully bears
out Eberhardt's complaints about the deterioration of the art of violin
playing after WW I.

Obviously, the recording sounds very poor. But once I adjusted to it, I
could hear that the strings were playing with an amazingly broad tonal
palette. The tone has some kind of transparency and a very fragile,
velvety, subtle shine to it. And they use vibrato VERY sparingly, but
when used, to telling effect. The amount of vibrato which is standard
today they only use for the climaxes: and listen to those violins
roaring out in the finale - the contrast makes this much more
impressive than the increased volume of steel strings ever could.

In addition, they often use a typical HIP device called inequality:
they regularly dot important notes slightly in a sequence of undotted,
equal notes in the score.

And most of this subtlety of tone, of this nobility of tone, got
rapidly lost after WWI.

And I don't think that HIP has already fully regained the technical
mastery of getting all the sonic possibilities out of the gut strings,
but they have made great progress in the last years.

For romantic big repertoire, Herreweghe's new Bruckner 4 is a prime
example for this. They managed to rescue a lot of the subleties I so
greatly enjoy in Nikisch's recording.

Which were things that got lost under Furtwängler after 1922. Not to
speak about Klemperer's granitic Philharmonia or Karajan's
one-massive-silvery-tone-fits-all approach of the uniform golden glow
the Staatskapelle Dresden glutted over everything in Jochum's Bruckner.

I am really thrilled that now at last subtlety and tonal richness come
back into our present-day musicmaking. And I repeat it: they just do
what was still living practice before WWI under one of the most famous
and adventurous conductors.

Cheers,
Floor

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