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Klarinet Archive - Posting 000004.txt from 1995/11

From: "Steven E. Klimowski" <sklimows@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Adam Pease asks about interpretations
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 09:56:32 -0500

On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> 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)
> ====================================
>
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Dan. I would just like to add that,
to me, if music is always the same at each performance why do we need
people to play it? If it's the same it is as dead as stone.

I buy records to learn pieces and to hear other people's interpretations.
I don't buy many jazz records because it seems to me that spontenaiety
(sp) is even more essential it that medium.

Steve K.