Re: Schiff comment part 2

On Tuesday, July 15, 2008, Kevin wrote:

You know what I mean: boundaries of a "school" of interpretation, this
particular school teaching that nothing must be done which probably
would not have been done at the time. That's an arbitrary boundary, not
an aesthetic one, and different from aesthetic choices all artists make.

But if that's what the HIP "school" teaches, most current HIPsters are very
bad students. To take just one example, think of all of the HIP choral
recordings that use female voices even when such voices are anachronistic:
Brüggen, Gardiner, Norrington, Fasolis, and so forth. If you were correct
about how HIP works as a "school of interpretation," we would not see such
prominent HIPsters consistently flouting the rules of that school.

Even if something is inauthentic it's not necessarily ridiculous
nonsense if people like it.

Or if they don't....

Of course, which is exactly the way all interpretations should be
judged, not whether or not they conform to the composer's wishes.

Harnoncourt said as much to me when I interviewed him for a project I was
working on several years ago. He claimed that his primary goal as an artist
was to communicate with his audience, and that he would make whatever
artistic choices he felt were necessary to accomplish that goal. (His
performances and recordings would seem to bear this out.)

In some parts of the repertoire that's been happening for some time,
courtesy of ... HIPsters. If you want really colourful, dynamic,
exuberant, over-the-top performances of baroque music, you'll find it
served up by the likes of Minkowski, Il Giardino Armonico, MAK,
Harnoncourt, Carmignola, Sonatori della Gioiosa Marca et al.

You're preaching to the choir here in recommending these ensembles,
but I don't think they're truly a backlash. In fact, I was thinking
of just those sorts of newer performers/ensembles when I talked about
"inspiration, passion, and even grotesqueries". Each of those
performers/groups, however, would probably defend their
interpretations as being historically authentic, which is the sort of
boundaries I was talking about. For example, you don't hear them use
modern instruments, anachronistic levels of vibrato, etc.

Eh? Harnoncourt conducts (and records with) orchestras playing on modern
instruments all the time. And this is hardly a recent phenomenon: think of
his Mozart recordings with the Concertgebouw. Minkowski regularly conducts
the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. I've heard Carmignola play on a modern
violin.

It's true you don't hear Il Giardino Armonico playing on modern
instruments, but they are a period instrument orchestra. That is what they
do. (I suspect many of the players also play modern instruments, though.
That is certainly true of the members of the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment, for instance.)

Matty
.

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