Noskowski String Quartets

[Alan Howe]

Acte Préalable have announced the release of Noskowski's String Quartets 1 & 2. It's available to order from MusicWeb International here (and will be sent out after Christmas)...

http://www.musicweb-international.com/Acte_Prealable/Catalogue_Acte_Prealable.htm

[Mark Thomas]

Whoop-de-doo! Great news. Thanks, Alan.

[Carl Petersson]

I just can't understand that Noskowskis music is never performed in Poland, even many students at the Academy where I am making my ph.d. have no idea about who it was, and they are polish. I look foreward to this disc though.

[Martin Eastick]

Unfortunately, I am not at all surprised that today's young Polish music students do not know about Noskowski & his music. The same situation is more than evident here in the UK. Over a number of years I have met & spoken with several musicians studying at our main music 'centres of learning', and there seems to be a complete lack of knowledge/interest in most music other than mainstream or contemporary. In fact, I know that tentative interest in 'unsung' British composers of the 19th/early 20th century - e.g. Parry, Stanford, Bantock and many,many others has beem actively discouraged & their music held up for unjust criticism and even ridicule by members of the teaching staff at these illustrous (?) institutions - persons in positions of responsibility who should know better! I can therefore only assume that there is much so-called 'political correctness' going on here, and perhaps then this situation is more widespread?

If future generations of performers are still being 'educated' away from so much wonderful music, the listening public will get even less opportunity to enjoy such music as is constantly being discussed on this forum! It is therefore incumbent on all of us who care about such things to do what we can, and encourage the younger generation (tomorrow's Earl Wild, Michael Ponti etc.etc.) to explore all that repertoire out there, and, if necessary, challenge 'the establishment'!

[Mark Thomas]

Hear, Hear! Martin. But why? Why do the musical establishments of so many countries actively discourage the exploration of their country's wider musical heritage? It is a mystery to me.

I know one very promising academic in Germany whose was very interested in the likes of Raff and Reinecke a few years ago. His doctoral thesis explored unsung romantic symphonies. It was made very plain to him that, good work though this was, he would not progress if he persisted in banging that drum. So he didn't, is now lost to us, but has made a good career for himself.

Is it just a self-perpetuating establishment lazily not wanting to upset the status quo?

[Alan Howe]

The academy is too often interested in the contemporary and the novel - and not only in the sphere of music. Mention any writer, theologian, composer, painter, etc. who is not included in the accepted 'canon', and the response is likely to be derision and rejection.

This forum is therefore important as a place where the musical canon can be challenged. Let's continue to trust our ears and our general musical judgment rather than being misled by an academic establishment too often beset by fads and novelties.

Above all, let's remember that the academics all-too frequently have no clothes...

[chill319]

Bravo to all the above posts.

I remember coming across a passage by one of the early Johannes de Garlandias. He was, if memory serves, in his forties and was complaining (in Latin) about how the denizens of the Parisian court wanted new sounds instead of his (by then) familiar style. This was about 700 years ago. La plus ca change...

At American conservatories piano professors pass on performing traditions, so they tend to be valued for the way they teach pieces that they themselves were taught in a transmission going back to Liszt or one of the other seminal figures. I think a lot of performers feel at sea if they don't have the authority of a performing tradition to lean on. (I single out piano professors only to speak from experience.) My impression at conservatory was that percussionists were as a group the most open-minded, particularly about modern works (for obvious reasons), and that string players were as a group the most closed-minded about works that are not canonized. (Though this was before Kronos Quartet, Gidon Kremer, and other open-minded string players became well known.)

The extraordinarily high standard that Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven set for the string quartet made it a genre into which almost every 19th-century composer poured some of their best and most personal music. As a consumer, it's pretty hard to go wrong with nineteenth-century string quartets.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm afraid that the String Quartets turned out to be something of a disappointment. For me, at least. Very conventional and "safe" for their era and, surprisingly for Noskowski, not even the diversion of some good tunes to take my mind of the lack of harmonic interest or structural novelty. They may be slow burners, but they made little impression on me.