Classical music thread welcoming your suggestions and why...

Reading these posts I was reminded of the Toscanini quote about the famous first movement of Beethoven Fifth:  “For some, this represents Fate Knocking at the door: for me it’s just Allegro Con Brio”.   The point being that we can become so enthusiastic about a piece of music, or a certain performer, that we overload the language to try and express our enthusiasm.  Music is a language of its own, and it is difficult to place in a language that relies upon words instead of tones to describe it.  I once saw a You Tube of someone explaining a Debussy Chanson in Mandarin.  The attempt was earnest but didn’t survive the translation, and I suspect the recreation of classic Mandarin Poetry wouldn’t survive the reverse.

  Furtwangler had the effect of making Music escape bar lines.  The Orchestra seems to speak in paragraphs not in short phrases.  His Schumann Fourth sounds more like a Shakespeare soliloquy as delivered by a great tragedian than a series of emails (for contrast, try the same work conducted by Yannick Sezet -Neguin.).

  I was readin an article in the Gramophone the other day. A young conductor had been hired to rehearse the Luxembourg Orchestra in Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.  He was a stand in for Gergiev, who was too busy having dinner with Putin or something to actually rehearse prior to the concert.  So this young pup is rehearsing the grousing orchestra until 20 minutes prior to the curtain, at which point Gergiev shows up.  The rookie is amazed that from the first downbeat the Orchestra sounds totally different.

    How does this happen?  What black magic do the really great conductors stash in their batons and transmit to players?  They have a vision and they communicate it, non verbally, to players who speak the language.  And imho, most of the greats phrase like singers

You are right :

 

Furtwangler had the effect of making Music escape bar lines. The Orchestra seems to speak in paragraphs not in short phrases. His Schumann Fourth sounds more like a Shakespeare soliloquy as delivered by a great tragedian than a series of emails (for contrast, try the same work conducted by Yannick Sezet -Neguin.).

 

The "black magic" is linked to rythm and to the source of all rythms as primal pulsation as the heart beat not on a "beat" but on a music of his own...The heart is not a metronome... This is the root of musical achemy...And old jazz african musician say it is "rolli’n" or not, it must not be just extended in a repeated uniform way but spiralling...

What is rythm?

A conductor can direct by imposing an external order( metronome) on the set of timing interpreting written score indication, if there is one, in search for a PERFECT rythm which cannot be written anyway and KEEP ALL totally under his control as a maestro ...Musicians for him are as good as dead soldiers...

This is Toscannini in Beethoven 9th ...Complete perfection... But a mechanical perfect one ,sometimes, all along the piece ...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr2mcEtCxnY&t=633s

 

 

A conductor can direct by listening the music INTERNAL un-written and un-writtenable order first and let this order surge in him and happen by not so much commanding it over the head of the musicians but letting them feel this internal duration extended as an organic rythm coming DURING THE PLAYING ITSELF Which can never be repeated and this at the risk to lose the control or at the risk of IMPERFECTION...

This is Furtwangler genius recognized By Gergyev or Ansermet themselves great conductors and recognizing Furtwangler as a master...

It is easy to prove if we use the circonstances during which Furt’ was recording the 4th of Schumann and ask the sound engineers to never interrupted it anymore and he directed it NON stop IMPROVISING IT for 32 minutes ... One of the greatest maestro recording of all time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4mW2Mc9is

 

The direction of Furt. dont reach perfection at all, and he dont look for perfection at all , as Toscanini aim at and in some admirable way reach ( there is a reason why Toscanini is so great among all maestros ) Furt, aim at something over perfection, called LIFE which is never perfect sound and beat but an imprevisible singing beauty who he is let herself free to speak in his own way to the heart ... The source behind behind the song melody is the archetypal rythm of life...Not the beat of a metronymic measure imposed... So perfect it is...

 

And speaking about music and some work of music any good writer must use METAPHORS and the poetic language and not only the prosaic one with exact knowledge from musicology...I am by no means a knowleageable musician anyway... I am a listener thats all...Not even well informed... But i love some music too much... For sure... But someone can speak well only about what he love over anything else...

In language there is two working levels at the same time: the prosaic and the poetic...None of these levels are to be reducible or prefered to the others...Music is not science...

And anyway the root of all rythm as it is felt even in improvising African rythms, is the body itself and the spoken language moved by no EXTERNAL command but by a spontaneous living each time new improvised order...Each ceremony is a divination and linked to the incoming future... Music is sacred as these old immemorial rythms ...

Furtwangler transform his musicians imitating him in dancers around a never felt before new dance coming from the Beethoven beating heart ashe felt it this day , not from the dead score...Beethoven spoke for each new day... He is not dead...

In a word the wand is a metronome or an improvised gesture coming from the song with always changing suggesting "hues" on the playing spot this day at this hour to the musicians ... The musician listen or not, BUT they never merely obey to Furtwangler because it is not enough to obey for him , they must give their soul to the music WITH Furtwangler and not UNDER him and never only playing the music well and perfectly ; because even written, classical music ask for improvisation especially in time and this improvisation surge FIRST through the conductor ... This is not a beating wand ordering commands , this is more a gesture asking to be ACCOMPANIEDin something completely new and resembling a revelation ..

It is what i hear ...

 

«What is prose ? A sum of dead hidden forgotton metaphors. Nothing more but nothing less»Anonymus teacher commenting Borges essay on old english and Old  Norse language  where a "beard" is "the forest of the jaws"..

Here a very humoristic video of Rubinstein called :

"Arthur Rubinstein being Arthur Rubinstein for 8 minutes straight":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPrXRzw0KU4

I never had never reservation or frustration to listen to him...

In the last minute of this video you will see why this man is a great soul...

 

 

I am very picky with pianists...very difficult... Because i love piano... My god is named Scriabin... Rubinstein is not a Scriabinian for sure...

But this master can play Scriabin with a mastery of colours existing only in the Russian school...And his playing sing without never being mere  "perfection " ...

I dislike crystalline perfection on piano without the soul singing ...

Because as said the famous french poet, René Char : "imperfection is the peak of the mountain "

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSti8gu1VCc

 

Scriabin has always impressed me for his color.  He was vey interested in synesthesia, the pairing of visual colors and tones.  It can be heard to isolate the contours of his work, as it isn’t as driven by the traditional type of sonata form, with the usual ideas concerning development of thematic material.  My favorite Scriabin Piano Sonatas impress more for their musical pointillism, like a Serraut canvass.  All those beautiful musical colors, metaphorically turning in the wind.  It’s fascinating to hear the same piece played by Pianists as different as Horowitz and John Ogden.  Horowitz is like a black and white photograph taken by a master photographer that seems to play with light to achieve multiple shadings of grey.  Ogden plays with the colors more.  It’s hard to recognize that they can be playing the same work.

  I think that your comments about Furtwangler and my previous are discussing the same phenomenon, but here since I am talking about Pianistic color, let me discuss Furtwangler’s use of color.  It’s a pity that he died on the cusp of the stereo era, but he built his sound from the ground up.  Double basses, cellos, low brass all lay a rock solid foundation of sound.  Then within that supple phrasing that we have been referencing he could draw contrasting sounds that were part of the magic, because different choirs of instruments would phrase organically around that firm , enveloping scaffold

I concur with all your observations...

I thank you very much for all your posts and interesting reading...

I did not discovered Scriabin with Ogden nor Horowitz,,,

But Ogdon is very much more to my taste ...

But perfection about colors is not the only difficulty in Scriabin playing ...

The harder task after complete colors control is intensity, the playing must not be MERELY BEAUTIFUL, but trance like and hypnotic.... Scriabin as you know was not only a synesthetes but was a seer who use his art to seize the listener and put it out of his body... I learned to listen to Scriabin with Sofronistky, Zhukov, Neuhaus and many others unknown in the east from the Russian piano school...

( Ogdon a very great pianist is my best by far in Sorabji Clavicem Ballisticum where is more controlled mastery with intensity is there a more perfect match with the composer Sorabji , Scriabin unlike Sorabji does not CONTROL himself completely but let go of everything and immersed himself in a cosmic sea, an experience which is nowhere in the works of the completely cerebral genius Sorabji who i admire)

For example the great version of Michael Ponti which i like a lot in spite of his atrocious sound recording, is not the way i will prefer for Scriabin interpretation at first , because Ponti plays it as delicious beautiful liitle pieces of colors, but his mastery of the playing with his spontaneous IMPROVISATION feeling as in one fell swoop with no back thought impress me a lot , which playings i listened nowhere as it is under his finger, make him my best version out of the Russian school ...It is a pity for the sound , it is almost the worst recording of piano i listened too with alas! many bad sound recordings by Sofronitsky ... But music is not sound...And Ponti is a very underestimated Pianist...

My best pianist of all time with Scriabin is Sofronitsky probably in second Zhukov and What we have from Neuhaus who for example give us a "toward the flame" rivaling Sofronitsky himself ...Neuhaus is a giant but verry few recording available in the east, he work as a teacher and stay in the shadow but i never listened to a combination of supreme esthetic playing with supreme intensity in so perfect balance by any pianists ... Even if Sofronitsky is my favorite pianist because of his Scriabin understanding without match ( except Neuhaus beside him ) , for the piano playing itself not only Scriabin interpretation i had no doubt that Neuhaus is God too as said Richter about Sofronitsky...

This except from french wikipedia about this anecdote is very true:

«Although Scriabin himself never heard Sofronitsky play, Scriabin’s wife claimed that the pianist was the most faithful performer in the spirit of her husband’s works. His recordings of Scriabin are seen by many as unsurpassed. Pianists Svyatoslav Richter and Emil Guilels considered Sofronitsky their master. One day when drunk Sofronitsky declared to Richter that the latter was a genius, Richter retorted that he was God.»

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slv09szFHkM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8MTTrh-Z8

 

The Russian piano school is so powerful and with so unknown masters  that no other school even compare... Think about that in the same evening listening, before 1920 Sofronitsky, Simon Barrere, Maria Yudina, and  young Horowitz on the same piano...

Listen to Simon Barrere, about who Horowitz said Barrere could do more with one hand than most of us can do with two.  For an example of unknown  unique pianist :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1sXWfHaIQ