Atterberg Piano Concerto

[Alan Howe]

...from cpo - long, long ago (2001):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMpw0zMCAgw

I'd forgotten I've got the CD. Great stuff!

[Ilja]

The Dan Franklin Smith recording on Sterling is quite good, as well; they play it a bit "sharper" and more like an early 20th century piece than a late romantic one, if that makes any sense. The older Moscovitsch/Frykberg I consider a somewhat distant third; Moscovitsch is fine, but the orchestral playing is positively anemic, and the muddled sound doesn't help. 

[tuatara442442]

And the last complete recording, a really chamber sounding and amateur (a university orchestra) live performance in 2016, making it the most recent and the only live recording.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StPqHvUEAAE
awful intonation from time to time......
The really historical performance Atterberg himself conducted is online for streaming but understandably is only fragments.
Also should be noted is that the third movement shares its second subject with the first of the composer's 2 Hostballader.

[Ilja]

Those fragments of the piano concerto conducted by the composer apply a really sprightly pace, about 20% quicker than the Derwinger in the parts that we have.

Having re-listened to the Smith and Derwinger recordings this afternoon, the Smith (on Sterling) is really quite a bit stronger. The playing is a more urgent and sharper, and the recording is a lot more transparent than the cpo.

[Alan Howe]

Those fragments of the piano concerto conducted by the composer apply a really sprightly pace

78-rpm sides?

[Ilja]

That, yes. But Atterberg's recordings of his own works seem to be consistently quicker than later renditions, also in non-78 mode.

[Alan Howe]

So were Elgar's! I remember the astonishment at Solti's recordings of the two symphonies when they first came out as he had evidently studied the composer's recordings. But the question remains: were older recordings artificially affected by the length of 78-rpm record sides?

[Ilja]

Been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem strange to suppose that the necessity to cram music pieces into the 4 1/2 or so minutes of a single 79-rmp record led to faster average tempi in orchstral playing overall. Nor, conversely, that the creation of media that allowed for much longer recordings (33 1/3-rpm LPs, but also reel tapes and audio cassettes) contributed to the "big slowing down" of the mid-20th century.

[Maury]

There might be some influence from the recording format but that wouldn't affect live performances. I think these broad tempo preferences are more socio-culturally influenced. Now, when there is effectively no limit to recording length, we see another speeding up of tempos, perhaps influenced by the now dominant HIP performances of Baroque music spilling over into Classical and early Romantic works. For myself, I think late Romantic music, because of its heavily chromatic progressions, benefits from slower tempos, the other styles are rather biased to more lively tempos. The amount of low bass also influences the relative speed of music.

[Ilja]

Not saying it's the only influence, but having reference recordings that are quicker or slower might well have helped to influenced live performances as well, I would think. Of course, now that restrictions on recorded lengths haven't really been an issue for some time, so you would expect it to be come a less dominant factor.

[Alan Howe]

Let's not get too far into generalities here. The question is whether Atterberg's conducting was influenced by the limits of the technology of his day.

[Ilja]

Regarding the piano concerto recording, it might have been. But I'm not so sure about the recording of the Sixth Symphony, let alone the Third (where he's not even all that fast) since these were radio recordings.

[Alan Howe]

When were the recordings of the symphonies made?

[eschiss1]

According to https://smdb.kb.se/, Atterberg recorded at least part of his 6th symphony (maybe all or most) with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1928. (12 October 1928 according to Chandos. Beecham's recording preceded it by a couple of months, on 12 August, before its public premiere.) Not sure about the 3rd symphony, will see if I can find out. (It was on some Polydor disc, I think. That was also true of the symphony 6 recording.)

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Eric. So, how would the recording of the 6th Symphony have been made? 1928, as far as I know, was pre-magnetic tape, so I'm assuming that it was done by inscribing the audio signal onto a wax master disc for the production of 78rpm records.