Author: brycon
Date: 2019-12-10 00:54
Quote:
The trouble is how his music is often played: too fast usually well above tempo markings- technically rather than poetically and lyrically.
Whose tempo markings? Weber's? The tempo markings of the era (Hummel's and Czerny's, for example) seem to indicate things were played rather quickly.
Also, although Weber's Freischutz is in some respects a Romantic opera, the clarinet concertos are rather Classical. The F minor is more sturm und drang, like Mozart's d minor concerto, than full-fledged Romantic. And I think Charles Rosen was right to begin the Romantic era with Schumann and Chopin rather than with Schubert or Weber, both of whose music bears a much greater similarity to that of Mozart and Beethoven than to what followed (Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation).
I like slower performances of the Weber pieces, and I also like faster ones. For me the character of the pieces can come across in a variety of tempos. But at the same time, I can't imagine a diva soprano with a virtuoso coloratura aria asking the orchestra to slow things down and approach things "more poetically." The drama in virtuoso opera and concerto performances comes from pushing the envelop (with tempos, cadenzas, improvised ornaments, etc.): "Is he/she going to make it? Or are they going to crash and burn?"
(Within certain parameters, of course: playing the first movement of Weber 1 at quarter-note=180 would obviously sound goofy.)
Post Edited (2019-12-10 01:01)
|
|