Klarinet Archive - Posting 000240.txt from 2004/02

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] An unfortunate omission
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:53:09 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:
>Over the past few days, we (OAE) have been playing Beethoven's ballet music
>to Prometheus on period instruments, together with the Emperor concerto
>(Manny Ax), conducted by Roger Norrington.
>
>I'm rather sad to report that, though the programme claimed it was a
complete
>performance of Prometheus, we didn't even play all the music in the
clarinet
>part; and the conductor also skipped what I now know to be the only
occasion
>on which Beethoven wrote for the basset horn, in a duet with the oboe.

Why the cuts? Unfortunately, the only way I can listen to BBC concerts
here (Virginia, USA) seems to be through Real Player on the Internet, which
means putting up with (a) my computer's speakers and (b) Real Player's
unrelenting barrage of unneccessarily annoying sales pitches that I finally
managed to eradicate from my computer only by dumping the Real Player, too,
with the mental imagery of a slam-dunk straight to Hell. But I don't
believe I've ever heard any of "Prometheus" except the Overture and this
sounds like an interesting performance, cuts or not, so this concert is
tempting....

I've got Roger Norrington's recording of the Overture on EMI CDC 7 49101 2,
with the London Classical Players, on the same CD with the 3rd ("Eroica")
Symphony. His liner notes discuss antique pitch (he used A = 430 Hz in
that recording), old instruments (although in reading those notes more
carefully just now, I see that he doesn't claim to have used only period or
reproduction instruments, though other liner notes discuss the London
Classical Players' reputation for using them) and scrupulous attention to
historical accuracy, particularly to tempo, within the limits of what's
possible to know today. He writes, "Our aim is to rediscover these great
masterpieces, not by ignoring all of this evidence, but by placing as much
reliance on it as on our own musicianship and interpretive powers." Read
literally, of course, that sentence means he values his own opinion as
highly as he does the historical record.

For me, one of the most interesting things about Norrington is that he
takes Beethoven's metronome markings seriously and disagrees with the
musicologists who are convinced that Beethoven's metronome was inaccurate
and that his marked tempos all need slowing down. The "Eroica" on that
record sounds lickety-split to me, probably because I've heard a lot of
performances of it, but it's so well played that it doesn't sound rushed;
and the Overture to "Prometheus" doesn't sound fast to me, probably because
I don't have any clear memory of other performances. I have Norrington's
recordings of Beethoven's 4th, 5th and 9th Symphonies and they're fast, too.

Anyhow, I'm curious about the rationale behind advertising "complete" and
not performing complete.

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

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