Hurwitz on modern-day performance idiocies

[Alan Howe]

Yes, more humility is needed. As I said, he prefers 'whizz-bang' over considered performances (largely). I like both. I often buy both to get the 'bigger picture'. And I will go on playing both...

[eschiss1]

as to symphonic orchestrations of chamber music, I wouldn't tell Cherubini or Pfitzner -not- to.

[semloh]

I'm with you on this one, John. For me, transcriptions and arrangements up or down in scale often serve to highlight aspects of the music that I had previous overlooked. Of course, many have a significant pedigree (Beethoven by Mahler, Hummel, Reinecke, etc.), and many were done to facilitate playing by domestic chamber groups or instrumentalists in 19thC drawings rooms. My personal bugbear is not so much 'reductions' or orchestrations, ancient or modern, but classical repertoire 're-imagined' by composers who think they can improve on what went before. To me, it's akin to painting extras on the Mona Lisa.

Getting back to modern-day performance idiosyncracies, it's perfectly understandable that each generation of musicians wishes to make its mark, and that means performing in a new way that stands out from the rest - alterations in balance, changes in tempo, preferences for certain types of instrument, and so on. The repository of great performances is brimming over, so the need to be different constantly grows. So much so that a 'straight' performance of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, for example, is no longer enough - it has to be puffed up, reimagined, etc., and we're back to the Mona Lisa!

Grumpy old man retires to his collection of dead conductors...