Author: brycon
Date: 2019-03-03 03:30
Quote:
They are questionable. Some musicians feel they are unreasonable and injurious to the music they're marked upon, and some well-founded authorities deem them mistakes, either on the part of the composer or in the understanding of music historians since that time. Others feel or believe the indications are valid and authoritative, and they prescribe playing - or trying to play - the music at the indicated speeds. Results vary.
Norrington generally takes the marked tempos. Eliot Gardiner, too, sticks pretty close to Beethoven's markings. For me, their symphony recordings are pretty persuasive (and, it should be pointed out, not all of the composer's markings are blazingly fast--the military march in the 9th, for instance, is pretty slow).
But yes, it's possible that with certain instruments and/or certain approaches to playing, these tempi don't work. The things that the Viennese action of Beethoven's piano did easily maybe aren't so easy with a Steinway D. Similarly, less vibrato in the strings combined with lighter-sounding and less-sostenuto wind playing all in a more modestly-sized performance hall would allow for quicker tempi.
As a performer, though, turning your metronome up, playing Beethoven the way you've always played it, and then tossing up your hands and saying "meh, just doesn't work" is intellectually lazy. In other words, there's an element of confirmation bias in a lot of these posts on tempo. As with everything Beethoven wrote, we should take seriously his tempo markings and think about what they might mean in terms of expression, character, and so forth. If you're still committed to the slower, though, you can transfer the things you learned when considering the faster tempo (e.g. more contrapuntal clarity and less sostenuto playing) to your preferred speed.
Quote:
(Please, brycoon: if you transfer arguments concerning today performers to COMPOSERS like Beethoven, you will get of course complete nonsense).
The point was simply to say that the quicker tempi you hear today perhaps aren't an aberration: at least one important performer left us with evidence that he too preferred faster tempi.
What evidence do you have that slower tempi have been the historic norm?
Moreover, what about slower tempi in Weber "hits the nail on the head"? Again, seems you just prefer the interpretations with which you grew up (which is perfectly fine but don't pretend you have some musical justification for the decision).
Post Edited (2019-03-03 04:06)
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