Klarinet Archive - Posting 001067.txt from 1995/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Adam Pease asks about interpretations
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 17:01:32 -0500

Interpretations? It is a very personal word. I am not sure what
you mean. But let me take the easy road and assume you mean how
one performs the work.

I wish to offer a view, but it is a personal one. If you accept what
I said about what interpretation means, I suggest that anyone who
performs any work the same way twice must be made of stone. The
whole nature of music is disturbed and the fabric of the universe
rent if one is so very fixed that every nuance in every performance is
precisely the same.

I once played at a concert for which Radu Lupu, the Romanian pianist,
was the soloist. I did not play with him since he did the Mozart
C major, K. 467 and that has no clarinets. This gave me a chance
to hear his performance. I heard it three times.

It was identical from performance to performance. Every nuance was
the same. Every phrase has the same emphasis at the same point, time
after time. Then I went and bought his recording of K. 467 and heard
the same thing there. A few years later I heard him do the work in
London and it was the same thing there.

Lupu is a brilliant pianist with hands as light as a feather. He works
very, VERY hard to play every performance exactly the same way, but that
is not what I consider music. That is what I get from an automaton.

It is for this reason that I do not buy records. Why would I want to
hear the same performance over and over? What purpose is served?

I can recognize that there are views that differ radically from this
perspective, but they are not my position (for whatever it is worth).

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