Klarinet Archive - Posting 000246.txt from 2007/02

From: "colin.touchin@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] kell and time distortion
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:20:09 -0500

Thanks Keith! - that works for me. In fact we admire Sinatra's (and many
others') artistry for doing exactly what we're discussing here - suspending
and wilfully altering the tempo of his line against the pulse of the rhythm
section, and we have our favourite interpreters of lyrics who deliberately,
consciously, almost automatically bend the rhythmic values of the
composer's notes.
Popular music of earlier generations may well have been delivered in
similar fashion. There's a great Paderewski recording of him playing
Chopin where the left-hand is almost perfectly metronomic and the right is
as free as you could imagine.
I've Kell's Saint-Saens Sonata recording and it's the most inspirational
interpretation - he does things with time that are fascinating but never to
the detriment of the musical logic and structure - he uses time as a further
flexible parameter just as tone, articulation, dynamic, attack, etc.
This type of daring performance makes us understand the music and the
nature of performance in a new way, refusing to be constrained by
convention and lack of imagination (though some conventions are of
course better observed than flouted).
Because our current traditions prefer unanimity of rhythm and precision of
ensemble, performers are driven to explore wider tonal and dynamic
nuance, and perhaps outrageous articulation styles, to "be different" - if we
allow that bending time is a valid extra resource of our interpretations, the
pressure's off in some areas, and maybe performers and listeners can
more comfortably enjoy individuals at play. Simon Rattle conducted a
most compelling Mozart Gran Partitta with his CBSO players in 1986 which
bent time in certain places to great effect and always with a lovingly
musical intention: I hadn't believed it was possible or right to do that with
Mozart, but they brought it off, just as I believe Kell does in Saint-Saens.
Cheers, Colin.

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