Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-10-29 14:36
Graham wrote:
>> If the art of interpreting music is to appear to get to the core of it without anyone being able to tell how that is being achieved, then Temmingh, not Bruggen, is the one to listen to...It's nice for the listener to be able to say that he can understand what is going on and then imagine that it is musically more enlightening to do so. I prefer a bit more mystery, or perhaps more subtlety.>>
That sounds good to me; I used to enjoy quoting CDF Schubart's remark about the harpsichord playing of CPE Bach: "One is aware of witchcraft without noticing a single magical gesture."
Of course that doesn't mean that there should be no magical gestures; it just means that some music is spoiled by too great a reliance on them, and some other music simply doesn't need them at all, and is diminished by any appearance of them. A 'gesture' necessarily implies a gesturer, you see.
In that regard, it's interesting to notice WHERE Bruggen gestures, and the effect of those gestures on the rest of it.
I'll listen to Temmingh -- a quick look seemed to indicate that he doesn't play the same Fantasia no. 3, right? -- and of course I'll be very happy to agree with you about his excellence, if I find I do.
I'm unlikely to agree with you in dissing Bruggen, though. I have to say that considerable, and sometimes heart-rending personal experience with "good technical clarinet players," and the business of trying to give them "a couple of lessons on the phrasing and pacing of it" ALWAYS leaves them falling considerably short of (indeed, nowhere in the league of) an artist like Bruggen:-)
By the way, ned wrote ([]s mine):
>> It's [only] Tony Pay's opinion that Bruggen has a drinking problem.>>
...wanting, I imagine, to characterise my remark as what it was: namely an arguably ill-considered throwaway line.
What I in fact said was, capitals again mine:
HE HAS ALWAYS HAD THE SAME AGE/YOUTH/UNIVERSALITY THAT YOU CAN SEE IN THIS CLIP. (And that's even when he drinks too much, nowadays.)
Someone who sometimes (hence the 'when') drinks too much nowadays -- and that includes me, by the way -- doesn't necessarily 'have a drinking problem'. That's a generalisation that is often used, like other generalisations, to beat up on people; and what I did was very far from that. As is fairly clear from what I've written, Bruggen is something of a hero of mine.
On the other hand, what diz wrote DOES make the generalisation ("Bruggen has a drinking problem"), which is arguably far more damaging to Bruggen. He goes on to say:
>> I've many "problems" myself, but I'd be horrified if a colleague mentioned them in a public forum ...>>
Well, allow me to horrify you: one of your problems is that you -- again arguably, like me -- have a big mouth:-)
Tony
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