Klarinet Archive - Posting 000232.txt from 2007/02

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Kell
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:01:27 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:
> The reasons why I wouldn't do that myself are rather complex, and are to do
> with what I think I'm DOING when I play the clarinet in a piece like
> Stravinsky's. I find that there is a contrast between my philosophy and
> Kell's in this regard, and this contrast has a suggestive resonance with
> other aspects of his playing, as well as with my reactions to those other
> aspects.

The question which you seem to be getting at is, "When the musical text
contrasts with your personal sense of musicality, what do you do?" I
remember you once posting a quote from Charles Rosen along the lines of,
"It is the performer's duty to choose whatever option he thinks is the
most musical but it is also his duty to do everything possible to
convince himself that the composer was right."

Since we're talking about Stravinsky, here's an interpretation that
might also be looked at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Solo-Karl-Leister/dp/B000007N90/

I was quite taken aback when I heard the first movement, because the
rubato is quite extreme, to the point of drastically changing the
rhythms of some parts of the piece. In the third, as far as I can tell
from the streaming download, huge amounts of the dynamic and phrasing
marks are just ignored.

Another interesting encounter for me was finding an old recording of
Menuhin playing the last movement of Beethoven's violin concerto. It
was much, much slower than modern performance practice, with heavily
Romantic phrasing and lots of rubato. Beethoven was being made to
conform to performance practice ("Beethoven, arr. R. Wagner") rather
than performance practice being adapted to Beethoven.

A scientific tale which can be related concerns economic experiments to
test the predictions of game theory. Almost invariably the predictions
are violated. Many economists have reacted along the lines of, "This is
because people are behaving illogically, they should behave logically
and rationally and then they would match our predictions!"

Contrast that with a scientific version of Charles Rosen's statement...

-- Joe

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