Klarinet Archive - Posting 000683.txt from 2002/04

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Mozart Concerto Competition
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:05:08 -0400

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:32:11 -0700, leeson0@-----.net said:

> [Lelia wrote:]
>
> > Dan, I realize you're trying to be honest and blunt rather than
> > merely insulting; and let's assume for the sake of argument that
> > your assessment of Italian knowledge of Mozart is correct, a point
> > I'm not knowledgable enough to debate with you, though it seems like
> > an awfully large generalization.
>
> Well Lelia, let's talk generalization. Are you able to make reference
> to a quality recording of K. 622 (or any recording, for that matter)
> by an Italian clarinetist over the last 30 years? Have you ever heard
> the work performed by an Italian clarinetist? (And by that I mean a
> clarinet player who studied in Italy, lives in Italy, is a performer
> in an Italian orchestra, not a person who happens to be of Italian
> descent.)

I think Lelia is just wanting to say that although *she doesn't know*,
Dan's assessment that the judges in this competition will almost
certainly be ignorant of Mozart scholarship seems a bit sweeping.

Having taught regularly in Italy for the past 20 years or so, I can say
that there are certainly good Italian players who have knowledge of what
Dan is talking about; and it's not impossible that the jury may contain
one or more of them. (We can't say for sure, though, because the
details of the jury aren't published.)

That's not to say that there aren't many silly difficulties in Italy.
An ex-student of mine, auditioning to become a certified Conservatoire
teacher, was told that, while his audition was successful, it was not
the Italian tradition to play from the Barenreiter edition. The true
Italian tradition was enshrined in the Ricordi edition, and should be
maintained.

Such idiocy is of course to be deplored, and I fight against it whenever
and wherever I can. To the extent that Dan's postings can be thought of
as part of that fight, I applaud them.

> While the Italian music academies turn out magnificent technicians who
> can play anything and transpose anything...

Nah. If only.

> ...the whole matter of performance practices of music of almost any
> period is not a serious consideration in the conservatories of Italy
> today.

Well, it's a serious consideration in some of them. For example, I did
a two-day masterclass in the Milan Conservatoire a week ago, and several
teachers, among them Luigi Magistrelli of this list, showed themselves
to be interested in just such matters. (I think it was one of the
reasons they invited me.)

And just as an example, although Luigi hasn't recorded the Mozart, you
can see something of what he has recorded on:

http://web.tiscali.it/luigimagistrellihome/CDReviews.htm

...and he owns more photocopies of original manuscripts, early editions
and even different clarinets than I do.

> If you are offended by that, then you are going to have to be
> offended. I offer it as a criticism of the Italian music education
> system. (More below.)
>
> > Nonetheless, IMHO it would be more constructive to wait and see how
> > this competition turns out before condemning it, rather than assume
> > that the judges and other officials can't or won't learn anything
> > between the announcement of the competition and its completion.
> > Though I'm not in love with the entire idea of music competition, I
> > think that a rigorous endeavor of this sort can provide a powerful
> > motivation for learning and growing.
>
> You can't be serious or one of us doesn't understand the issues. What
> I spoke of was what was possible (in my opinion, likely), and you
> suggest that we wait until the competition is over and then decide if
> the situation was as ripe as I suggested it might be. What good does
> waiting do? If one has information about the likelyhood of an
> occurrence, the whole point of giving that information out is to do it
> BEFORE the event so that a participant can be well prepared. To do it
> afterwards as you suggest serves no useful purpose whatseover. I
> would never submit to a contest of performance of this period of music
> if it were held in Italy with all Italian judges, and for the very
> reasons I have given.

My Italian students sometimes ask me about the business of Mozart style
and competitions. They are worried that, if they play the piece in a
way that may be judged 'radical' by the commission, they will inevitably
fail.

It's an interesting question, and one worth pondering. I think that Dan
captures my attitude when he says above -- and notice that this bit
doesn't go against what Lelia said, when she counselled against
'condemning' the whole competition without evidence:

> If one has information about the likelyhood of an occurrence, the
> whole point of giving that information out is to do it BEFORE the
> event so that a participant can be well prepared.

Now, as far as I can see, the only point of entering competitions is to
win them.

Like Lelia, I'm not a great fan of competitions of this sort. But it's
certainly true that if you enter and win one, it may get you work.

And you know, I find that when I listen to people playing the Mozart, it
really isn't whether they play on a basset clarinet, or embellish -- or
even whether they subscribe to my ideas about classical phrasing -- that
wins me over. Aside from the idiot who told my student to 'teach the
Ricordi edition', I suspect that any good Italian musician thinks the
same.

I've heard wonderful 'uninformed' performances, and execrable 'informed'
performances. I *prefer* performances that are both informed and
wonderful, but those are quite rare. (Indeed, wonderful performances of
any sort are quite rare.)

So, what I say to my students is that they won't lose out by playing on
a basset clarinet if they don't *underline* the fact that they're
playing on a basset clarinet.

In other words, if they don't honk out the low notes as though they
think that's the *whole point* of the piece.

I also tell them that they won't lose out by embellishing if they don't
*underline* the fact that they're embellishing -- that is, they don't do
it to the extent that the audience gets the impression that they think
that *that's* the whole point of the piece.

And in fact the Mozart concerto is perfectly satisfactory with quite
minimal embellishment.

(Actually, both of those considerations apply to judging an actual
performance, by anybody. It's understandable, because once you get to
play those low notes, it's very easy to be too proud of them; and once
you start to embellish, it's easy to have rather too much of your
attention on that particular facet.)

I also tell them *again* that, unsurprisingly, playing on a basset
clarinet, with embellishment, from the Barenreiter edition, etc., is no
guarantee at all of satisfactory performance, and that if they think
otherwise, then they're in trouble.

Of course, many of them don't want to hear that, because they want to
know *what they should do* to be 'good'.

The difficulty then is, that if they are judged not to have been as good
as someone else, there is a temptation to say that it was *because* they
played on the basset clarinet,.....that they weren't successful.

We all know that juries of any nationality can be dishonest. (Look at
all that stuff about the ice dancing recently.) But I was part of a
jury of which all the others were Italian for an audition. Afterwards
the candidates asked for comments.

Clearly, what makes you prefer one candidate over another is a
multidimensional judgement, not easily reducible to words. Anyway, I
told someone, a European player, that I thought his playing would
improve if he approached it in a more outgoing fashion.

He immediately bridled, and told me that he had studied *in America*,
and the American ideal of sound was much more contained close to, but
much more effective at a distance. I said that though I understood
that, I still thought that he could be more outgoing. But I could hear
him getting ready to go away and tell his friends that he'd been passed
over by someone who 'didn't understand' and was prejudiced against 'the
American sound'.

So it goes.

> I thought that I was doing a useful service by giving what I believed
> to be a serious flaw in a contest of Mozart performances should that
> contest be judged by Italian performers. I would say the same thing
> if a contest of jazz music was to be judged by Ukranians, who have
> little expertise with such music. I would say the same thing if a
> contest of military march music was to be judged by Tibetans. (These
> analogies are strained to be sure...

Yes.

> ...but I use them to try and get the idea across to you, since it is
> clear you misunderstood what I was saying.

I don't think it's quite as bad as you say, Dan.

If I were to criticise the Italian system, it would be on a quite
fundamental level, totally divorced from scholarship. The fact is that
much of the conservatoire system doesn't even encourage people to play
together -- or even with a piano.

Because playing music is all about responding to context (and
scholarship can be thought of as context too), this disables young
Italian musicians very deeply.

They should have a National Youth Orchestra, and other little orchestras
feeding it, as they do in Spain, rather than this weekly encounter with
a teacher who writes pencil marks in their part.

> With the exception of two or three great Italian Mozarteans over the
> past 40 years, the Italian vocal schools just don't turn out people
> who can sing Mozart effectively either. Same with clarinet players.
> Is it because Italians make poor musicians? Certainly not. It is
> because the Italian music schools are teaching Mozart as it was sung
> and played in 1885.

I think what I wrote above is the more important consideration. But
what you say is true too, in part.

> You can certainly hold a counter position, but don't waste my time by
> suggesting that my comments were insulting to Italians simply because
> they were the subject of the discussion.

All of this applies not only to Italy, of course. When I played the
Mozart concerto in San Diego a couple of years ago, eyebrows were raised
in parts of the (modern, American pickup) orchestra at my boxwood basset
clarinet. And several of them found my (rather limited) embellishment,
how shall I say, amusing.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... If you really want to know, you won't ask me.

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