Klarinet Archive - Posting 000004.txt from 1994/03

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Jim Perrone comments on the Mozart concerto
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 11:33:11 -0500

It could not have been said better, Jim. Most performers treat
the Mozart concerto as something to be worshipped, not studied
and played. As a result, it has become frozen with every
performance sounding much like very other performance. Though
almost every professional performance is beautifully executed,
it is difficult to distinguish a unique characteristic outside
of beauty of execution. There is little performer creativity
brought to the service of the music, just a good many repetitions
of the same old cliches, the same eingange in the first and second
movements, the same nuances, the same love that has frozen the work
into a monument to rigidity.

There is a story in one of Mozart's letters to his father that describes
his performance of one of his concerti. He knew what the public
liked and he gave it to them as often and as well as he could. In
this case, the public so enjoyed what he was doing (as a performer
in addition to as a composer), that they interrupted him in the
middle of the movement on several occasions with their shouts of
pleasure with his imagination. How many performances of K. 622 have
you heard get interrupted with shouts of pleasure at the performer's
imaginative approach to the work?

If one goes to a jazz club, and the tenor has a great solo, one
applauds, right there and right then, and one says "What an
imaginative display." That is what should be happening when someone
does K. 622. Instead, we get a retread of what was done last week,
last month, last year, and the last century; i.e., unimaginative
displays of exquisite execution skills.

That is what happens when you embalm a great work! K. 622 R.I.P.

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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