Klarinet Archive - Posting 000640.txt from 2004/08

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Period Performance in Wagner?
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:51:40 -0400

On 23 Aug, "Larisa Duffy and David Dow" <duffyl@-----.ca> wrote:

> ----- What would stipulate period accuracy in the music of Wagner...
>
> What instruments are being deemed as historically accurate and valid in a
> performance of say Rheingold?
>
> Do we know exactly if say Wanger condoned the use of say Alexander(of
> Mainz) horn over the traditional Viennese horn?

There are some details of that nature that have interested various sections
of the orchestra.

But it's the general thrust of the move back to earlier instruments and
earlier styles of playing (less vibrato in the strings, for example) that
makes a difference. The sounds are less loud, but perhaps more concentrated.
The trombones in loud passages have more 'snap'. The clarinets are more
focussed in the low register, and that makes for example the brooding, ring
motif more sinister. The flutes sound 'simpler', and the oboes more
plangent.

Simon Rattle said that he finds there is a wider palette of colour
available in general. *We* find we have different problems, and therefore
different solutions.

You say, 'historically accurate' and then you say, 'and valid'. But there is
no 'valid' in the context of 'historical accuracy'. The two ideas live in
different worlds.

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

... The future is like the present, only longer.

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