HIP - a refreshing perspective

[Mark Thomas]

David Hurwitz is often controversial, and he's being so here, but I do think what he says about HIP in his latest video is refreshingly objective. Or maybe it's just that, this time, I agree with him!

[Alan Howe]

The problem with Hurwitz is that he's just one critic - and that means a lack of breadth that a team of reviewers would bring to his Classics Today YouTube videos.

As Mark says, though, on HIP he's pretty much spot-on, especially the notion that, in respect of a particular composition, we must consider (a) the score (of course) and (b) what the composer might have imagined (which may have been beyond the instrumental resources of his/her day).

[terry martyn]

To give a specific example which has immediately occurred to me,the 1962 Reader's Digest recording of Auber's Crown Diamonds Overture demonstrates the lustre that a modern, fully-equipped,orchestra brings to a work that can sound anaemic when played with  period instrumentation and resources. 

Times change.  The world progresses .

[Alan Howe]

And more recently, our debate over the respective merits of the cpo and Naxos recordings of Dietrich's Symphony.

[Maury]

I think it depends on what we are talking about. Romanticism was accompanied by inflation of sound and more bass instruments in the woodwinds and brass as the 19th C progressed. It is only starting with Beethoven that I feel the need for more weight.There is only a limited repertoire for Romantic chamber orchestras IMO. But we should be aware that all the sforzandos were there to wring more volume from the stylistically anemic orchestras of his era. When played by modern orchestras as written it results in over emphasis.

But with Haydn and Mozart going back I feel reduced historical forces allow the music to breathe and dance better. But that is now outside this Forum.

[Alan Howe]

Hurwitz's main point concerns 'what the composer imagined' as opposed to 'what the composer had available to him'. That's certainly a powerful corrective to strict HIP thinking.

[Mark Thomas]

Unfortunately, it's also a licence to speculate unless, of course, a composer recorded his disappointment at contemporary performances of his music. So the HIPers can speculate on his true intentions as legitimately as the likes of Hurwitz and, even where a composer clearly wished for larger forces, valved brass, vibrato etc. the HIPers will blythely disregard it. Look at another, related, movement: before he died poor old Bruckner made a list of what he regarded as the definitive versions of each of his symphonies, his final word on each. What has the Bruckner industry done? Totally ignored its idol's wishes.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes. Hurwitz is rightly contemptuous of the "Bruckner industry". What a shame the composer's clearly expressed wishes have been ignored.

[Alan Howe]

I suspect that some sort of 'via media' is the answer to this particular conundrum. HIP has undoubtedly countered the tendency to over-inflate in mid-to-late 20th-century orchestral performances; equally, however, extreme HIP-ism has resulted in ridiculous performances that bear no relation to the tradition that has been handed down.

In Bruckner, for example, we have Celibidache at one extreme and, say, Roth at the other. I can (just about) tolerate the former's slow, mystical approach, but find the latter's far too superficial and brisk. The best performances - certainly the ones one can live with - are surely somewhere in the middle, both in terms of orchestral sonority and tempi.

In Brahms the situation is similar, but here some more moderate HIP performances have actually reconnected with the more athletic performances of pre-WW2 years, e.g. those conducted by Weingartner which are simply thrilling.

In recordings of unsung repertoire the situation is much more tricky because there is usually no performance tradition to speak of. One partial exception is Raff: Bernard Herrmann's recording of Symphony No.5 from 1970 is probably representative of mid-20th-century practice while, for example Järvi, has triumphantly (if controversially) recovered the work's essential athleticism in a manner which Raff expert Avrohom Leichtling regards as faithful to the composer.

[Maury]

Yes. Hurwitz is rightly contemptuous of the "Bruckner industry". What a shame the composer's clearly expressed wishes have been ignored.

I'm afraid the only remedy to that is never publishing one's works and having them burnt after demise. At best judicious scholarship and regression to the mean is about all one can do or hope for.

[Double-A]

I found Hurwitz's video refreshing.  The idea of a composer imagining his work performed in a way that was not possible in his days had not occurred to me.  And I'd say we don't even have to stipulate novel instruments.  I'd bet that decent amateur orchestras of nowadays make fewer errors than any orchestra available to Beethoven and I can't imagine any composer hearing his work in his mind with execution errors included.

On the other hand, while Hurwitz names a few composers with imagination of that kind there were probably others.  Chopin (by no means a conservative) for example was a master at playing the piano he had at his disposal.  I would expect him to have written for exactly this instrument that he knew intimately.  And so it may make sense to play his music on an instrument from his time.  I also think Mozart is a different case:  In his operas he wrote for exactly the singers he had which is the opposite of imagining the impossible though in its own way just as imaginative.  He wrote his clarinet concerto and chamber music for not just the clarinet but for Anton Stadler, very much for the instrument that Stadler happened to be playing.

[Alan Howe]

Reviewing a new release of Mahler's 9th on period instruments in the September issue of Gramophone magazine, Edward Seckerson writes:
'But when the booklet notes speak of what Mahler might have been hearing in his mind's ear as he put pen to manuscript paper, I for one would imagine it was something far exceeding the sonic limitations of what he was working with at the time'.

Discuss...

[Gareth Vaughan]

Undoubtedly. I certainly agree with Seckerson.

[eschiss1]

And therefore, he was hearing our orchestras, is the logical leap that can't be made...

[Mark Thomas]

Maybe not, Eric, but neither does "something far exceeding the sonic limitations of what he was working with at the time" make any sort of case for using period instruments.