Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-10-18 21:14
Brycon, I'd certainly agree as to the difference between NMA and "urtext" editions because the former gives you much more detail on how and why the editorial decisions were made, but would think it overly harsh to say that the Henle editions, e.g., represent false advertising for "rubes," given the stuff out there that goes to nothing like the same trouble to reflect the original.
Also not so sure that Mozart's slurs must all be observed with a sort of piety, though I think performers should know about and consider them. At least until well into the 20th century, there's always been a tradition of soloists taking liberties. That's extensively documented and taught in the literature on "ornamentation," and it seems clear from the original versions of the Weber concerti that Weber knew and intended that the performer would do a lot of things he hadn't written. The slow movement of the Brahms quintet, to give another example, was written with nothing like the number of dynamic changes performers play it with. Given that Mozart would hang out drinking with Stadler and knew from experience that the fellow was anything but pious, it's hard to imagine he'd expect Stadler meticulously to observe his slurs if the latter felt like doing something different in any given performance.
I think there are legitimately two schools. One says that we are not Stadler and didn't know Mozart, so we should rigorously adhere to what we do have on paper and can objectively confirm. The same school would probably follow the Bärmann versions of Weber exactly, as they mostly seem to do in Germany. The other school suggests that we try to put ourselves as much as possible into the frame of mind Stadler, Bärmann, Mühlfeld and so on might have had when they played these works, which means learning about the conditions, performance practices and aesthetics of the period in question and approaching the works in that context, so that if performers would take liberties, then we try to take them in the same way, in the same spirit, and to the same extent. The two approaches can produce very different results, but neither is simply playing the pieces however one feels like playing them.
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
