When To Stop Shaving Before A Wax

signs, sounds, history and emotion ...

" starts from false premises if you think it is my intention to modernize the works. On the contrary, cleaning up the dust of tradition I try to restore their youth, presenting them as played for the public When the first spurt of the mind and pen of the composer.
The Pathetique sonata was almost revolutionary in his day and should sound revolutionary. Do not put enough passion nell'Appassionata, who was in his time the summit of the expression of passion. When I play Beethoven trying to reach freedom, the nervous energy and humanity that are the peculiar signs of his compositions, in contrast with those of their predecessors.
Referring to the character of the man and what Beethoven is said of his playing, I have built an ideal that was wrongly called modern and in fact is nothing but life. I do the same with Liszt, and many strangely I approve in this case as I condemn in the "

Busoni plays Liszt - Transcendental Study No. 5" Feux Follets "

These are the words written in 1902 by Ferruccio Busoni Marcel Rémy. So it defends itself from attack caused by his criticism of piano performance. Unfortunately, recordings of Busoni there are not many, but few records, its revisions and the controversies they provoked, reflect a trend typical of the Italian pianist, which is to "rewrite" piano composition. And 'known that he used various strategies to intervene on the perception of the listener using, for example, the damper pedal, pressing the touch, the tone, developing a real sound engineering which will be followed later by V. Horowitz.

Karl Nef said of him: " Busoni is a Croesus in the nuances of touch " and he said: " and the piano has something that is exclusively his own, inimitable half, a photograph of the sky, a ray of light Lunar: the pedal. The effects pedal is still far from being exhausted, because I was still a slave to a harmonic theory petty and unreasonable, it is the pedal as if you wanted to reduce air and water to geometric shapes " (Appreciate the piano, 1910).

sound reason for this research was the desire to reproduce the original effect of music is not as it was perceived at the time of the author, but as it was mentally grasped by listeners of the past. In the era of codification of the tradition, and scholarly research, Busoni, Liszt tried to keep the concept of perpetual rediscovery of the emotional value of the original music, taking it away from the historical context; attempt that could not remain isolated and do not appear provocative at a time even that was beginning to adopt again redesigned and the antique instruments for the implementation of past treaties, and was pointing to the correct philological restoration.

As noted Piero Rattalino well in his "History the piano, "the reconciliation of the aspirations of Busoni and Schnabel and Backhaus's historicism is due to Fischer, the supreme pianist whose greatness lies in having to respect the reasons of history (just consider the fact that he used editions of texts classical philological completely right), while giving new life to the compositions, vitality, and individuality of interpretation aimed at the rediscovery of the artist creator psychic.

Here is a summary of his thinking about running Beethoven:

" may be wrong, but I have this impression, we have become too sophisticated, too educated (...) We distinguish the subtle differences in running shape and color different eras, when Beethoven was still, and after he became deaf, we know this, but the volcanoes, which were emerging suffer Beethoven, the only ones who enlightens him, the cries that broke his heart, no shaking. And here are the sources of the future: forget the piano, style, education, science, and live Beethoven, play the organ, violin, whistle, play the drum, sing on the piano again, stirred again the whole world by dark realm of the written notes to bring to light run, if you like, the Moonlight Sonata as the sob of a dying man, and orchestrated the funeral Maria 26 work in the most modern, you raise today as magic, from the Sonata in Waldestein a romance with nature, to make tomorrow a fight between you and the world, and the next day playing in top form pure music, so when you have to revel aggressive forms, and there is everything here , then put the wings that bring you and others in the realm of fantasy and you can contemplate the house where he was the spirit of Beethoven. Will gain more enjoyment from this beautiful piano, which now owns the entire color range of the orchestra tomorrow and emits sounds that come from other areas "

(Edwin Fischer)

Hmm ... true words .. . he did it. Listen to "his" Concerto No. 5 and Beethoven's Concerto No. 2 Brahms, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler, and I'll agree. I'm sure.

Another question, in my opinion is not negligible, is linked to the divergence between the intentions of the composer and the interpreter. After all, let's be frank, how many times, performing a song, we sometimes have to choose between what is written and what we do?

Feeling "caged" when making music is not just a great feeling.

Gould himself, in an interview with Dennis Braithwaite for the daily newspaper of Toronto Star "28 March 1959, questioned the interpretation problem sull'increscioso said:

" are the lucky few who can say that their way of feeling music is the same as that of the composer. But sometimes I wonder why we worry so much about an alleged tradition of loyalty to the generation of the composer rather than the interpreter. Why, for example, strive to play Beethoven as Beethoven is assumed to have played? Schnabel tried. Despite my admiration for Schnabel seems to me absurd, especially because it took into account the difference in the instrument. He used the pedal in the way that some scholars claimed that Beethoven wanted to, but without realizing that this technical sense of the pedal bought anything on an instrument contemporary. I'm sure Mozart very often that I do not approve of his music. The interpreter must have its own faith, even blind in what he does, must be convinced that he can discover possibilities for interpretation that the composer would never have considered. And 'all possible. There are today examples of contemporary composers, which allows me to shut up the names, which are the worst performers of his music.
I am sure that this is due to the fact that they feel inwardly such and so many things in his music not be aware of not being able to express them. Do not know what they should do a performer to give life to these things, "

(Glenn Gould)

Glenn Gould plays Beethoven - Sonata op.31 n ° 2 (I mov.)

The problem of performance-musical perception, I think, be found in an essential aspect of the matter: music, abstract art par excellence, is the conditioning, that is more linked to the phenomenal reality through which it occurs.

The sense of an image, the meaning of a word whose lexical content has changed over time, they can somehow rebuild through intellectual acts. Not so with music. Feeling like playing a song once is impossible, and certainly we can not understand a phrase, a speech, which was build on an agreement, a "tension" that was then, but now we no longer recognize (or not in the same way). You should "rebuild" a virgin ear, but this is impossible. The composition is more ancient and more emotion-related acoustic phenomenon changes. Has ceased. Console ourselves by saying that what we have lost "original" in a Beethoven sonata is nothing compared to what we lost in the compositions of a thousand years ago.

would be nice to "hear" the third but not as consonant as dissonances prohibited!

Philology then? .. No thanks, or better ... well if it is intended only and exclusively as historical and cultural research, but little share with the music.

Damiano Franco