Klarinet Archive - Posting 000016.txt from 1995/11

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.EDU>
Subj: Fresh start
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 21:08:18 -0500

Okay, now I'll wait. I signed off of the list, waited for an
acknowledgement, and then signed back on again. Maybe that'll get rid of
the duplicate postings. If not, I'll sign off again and resubscribe
under a different name or something.

Anyway, the topics as of late haven't been terribly , um, intense or
exciting. The questions on interpretation, and the other one on the
merit of hearing recorded performances, have potential for a more
long-lived run on the list. As a matter of fact, I think I'll say a
couple of sentences about recordings and interpretation, in hopes of
perpetuating one of these threads beyond just two or three exchanges, followed
by seemingly apathetic silence:

As some of you may know, I spent three years at a multimedia company,
where I had access to over 12,000 recordings of classical music spanning
every musical period and every genre of performance. You want recordings
of the Ring cycle? We had 12 of them. You want Mozart's Gran Partita
(Dan)? We probably had another dozen or so recordings of that piece as
well. My job, along with my crew of 60+ classical musicians, was to
listen to every single recording and determine which segments of each
piece would be accessible to the public on our interactive music
previewing kiosk (called the "iStation" - now discontinued). The value
of having so many different interpretations of a given piece at my
fingertips is probably impossible to measure. I must have listened to 20
different recordings of Mahler Symphony No. 1, and from each one I
learned of a new musical possibility for that piece. As a clarinetist,
I discovered many different ways to interpret each exposed part and
still preserve the character intended by Mahler.

We had recordings of the Mozart concerto by every major artist on the planet:
Marcellus, Shifrin, Leister, Meyer, Stoltzman, Neidich, DePeyer, Pay, Prinz,
Boeykens, Brymer, Marriner, heck we probably even had one by one of The Three
Queens (how I miss that discussion!) - you name it, we had it, and
several of these performers recorded it 2 or 3 times each. While I liked
some of these perforamces better than others, there wasn't a single one that I
would want to emulate in every detail. On the other hand, I acquired a VAST
grab-bag of stylistic interpretations and innovations on the Mozart, giving me
more ideas and inspiration than I could ever have hoped for when
fashioning my own unique presentation of this masterpiece.

While most people's recording collections aren't as substantial as the
one for which I was responsible, I believe that the notion of using
recordings as a model for future performances of a given work is not only
valid, but important. First of all, one is given an understanding of how
another person conceived and interpreted the composer's intentions
(assuming they were taken into account at all, which is another
possibility). While listening, we naturally find ourselves agreeing and
disagreeing with certain things that another person does in their
performances, helping us to define what we would like OUR performance to
reflect and communicate. The broader exposure one receives to a piece,
the more open-mindedly they are able to approach it in their own
performance, making full use of all possibilities within the style and
tradition of the piece and its composer. That's the other important
value of recordings...being able to witness that tradition, if only to
know how the music might have been understood in its day - even if you
choose to disregard tradition altogether and forge a whole new concept.
I don't believe that hearing other ideas and interpretations in any way
contaminates one's own individuality or spontaneity when playing the
piece themselves. On the contrary, having a model might serve to inspire
yet another entirely unique and valid interpretation...

Let the flames begin.

Neil.