Klarinet Archive - Posting 000453.txt from 1998/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] 1234/2341
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 22:41:49 -0400

Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net> wrote:
>>At some point in the development of a musician, and it is a point that some
fairly accomplished players seem never quite to reach, one abandons words and
logical reasoning, and thinks about music purely as music....When you're
performing (do I have to specify that I don't mean in an ensemble? Yes,
probably I'd better), you're in charge, you're the boss, and it's not
necessary to slavishly copy the work of some other artist.... I play the
piano and organ too, and when I'm learning something I haven't heard all my
life, I'm interested in the interpretations of artists of real stature,
particularly in their tempi. Rachmaninov's famous 18th variation on a theme of
Paganini's is one that's played all over the map, from medium bright to
painfully slow. My tempo of choice is somewhere in between, with a generous
slathering of rubato.>>

Words of wisdom. For a striking example of differing interpretations, listen
to the many performances of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 582)
for the gargantua of wind instruments, the pipe organ. I've collected
recordings of 33 (so far) different organists playing the P&F, in more than 40
recordings because some organists, such as E. Power Biggs, recorded the P&F
more than once. Biggs, one of my favorite interpreters of Bach, typically
finished in around 13:45 or thereabouts (as on Columbia KM30648, stereo LP;
undated but could not have been made before 1967, when that organ was built,
or after 1974, when I bought the record). Many others recorded the P&F
somewhere between 13 and 14 minutes. Anthony Newman, the speed demon of my
collection, pounded out the P&F in 11:21, in a 1976 performance (VoxBox CDX
5100) that sounds perfunctory to me, although it certainly displays Newman's
virtuosity. (I prefer him as a harpsichordist.) My slowest recording,
surprisingly, is not Albert Schweitzer's, although he's very slow indeed at
17:05 (Columbia Masterworks ML 5042, Vol. 6, mono LP, no date but recorded in
the early- to mid-1950s, possibly 1953). It may be true that as an organist,
Schweitzer was a great humanitarian, but to give him more respect than that,
he didn't always have a lot of time to practice. At any rate, although he
made a lifelong intellectual study of Bach's music, his struggles with its
technical demands sound painfully obvious in this recording. Yet Wolfgang
Rubsam, a superb organist, takes an even slower tempo, an astonishing 19:27
(Naxos CD 8.550704). This 1992 performance sounded almost unbearably
eccentric to me at first, but it grew on me gradually until it's now one of my
three or four favorites.

These enormous differences in tempi (think of the contrast between 11:21 and
19:27!) can't be attributed to some organists taking repeats that others skip,
BTW, because there are no repeats in Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.
It's so tightly structured that any substantive deletions or additions sound
painfully obvious and grossly wrong, although of course there's room for
personal choice in the ornamentation and phrasing. 1234/2341 doesn't begin to
cover that territory! It's fascinating to listen to the different decisions
all these organists have made. I imagine someone could gather a similar
collection of recordings of, say, the Mozart clarinet concerto, although I
haven't come close to completing my collection of the P&F yet, and one
obsession at a time is enough for me!

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The first thing [Bach] would do in trying an organ was this: he would say, in
jest, 'Above all I must know whether the organ has good lungs,' and, to find
out, he would draw out every speaking stop, and play in the fullest and
richest possible texture. At this the organ builders would often grow quite
pale with fright."
--Letter from C. P. E. Bach to J. N. Forkel, 1774, published in _The Bach
Reader_, ed. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel (rev. ed, NY: Norton, 1966, p.
276).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-------------------------------------------------------------------------