brahms and joplin are dead and may offer no comment on any of our interpretations
i’m very much alive and would have a lot to say about anyone playing my music. and why wouldn’t i? i’m pretty sure they would too
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ur posts have given me a lot to think about. i think i was being too absolute & gung ho nihilistic in my post lol (& ignoring common sense a bit)
as a clarinetist i could go on about what those people do to artie shaw’s clarinet concerto
my post was very performer-centric bc that’s mostly what i do now, musically. especially being in concert bands where the repertoire is broadly musically uninteresting nd the culture is all abt technique (“musicianship”) - music thats more fun to play than to listen to and ur primarily listening to it as another player
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your posts rule and they’ve kept me thinking about this stuff for days
i think a lot about insularity as it relates to various niches (like performance of written music). it seems that within the evolution of various endeavors and enterprises (whether anyone admits it or not) people may end up “preaching to the choir”, as it were.
this sometimes seems the case with contemporary classical, too. like a lot of those folks seem to write “music for composers”, if that makes sense. it’s more important that it neatly fits into this lineage without embarrassing itself or coming too close to anyone else’s “thing” (diatonicism?? ;_; ) than actually captivating anyone who isn’t already immersed in this world
hell, it’s definitely the case with jazz sometimes, and a million other things
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my favorite composer is and probably always will be bach. only bruckner i think comes close
goldberg variations of any interpretation is likely to cause me to spontaneously cry at the holy perfection of it
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edit: actually this is the same performance… i think? the very beginning sounds identical so i’m inclined to say it’s the same recording
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starting to really get on with brahms.
i find that performance of brahms can really make it or break, moreso with him than most composers (i don’t get too fussy about interpretations of beethoven, for example). for me it works best when there is a certain plaintive quality to it.
brahms has a real flair for difficult, soaring sequences. there are many virtuosic passages; concertos, etc. acting as potential canvasses for persons of dexterous mastery over their instrument, and in the worst cases, this focus can dither away some of the really heartbreaking feelings the best recordings evoke in me. that joseph joachim recording of a brahms piece nonfilmaficionado posted really opened me up to this feeling that i think gets lost in some of the flashier performances
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this is quite something
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there’s another one, mmm
these are magnificent
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idk if this is classical but i do really like it
is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan classical? google ai tried to tell me Qawwali is “semi-classical”
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strong low brass
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Ah, the ‘famous’ chord.
‘Wagner’s music, I have been informed, is really much better than it sounds.”
– 19th century humorist named Bill Nye
I believe I might have written about this a little in the old thread, and it’s probably best that it is gone. The Liebestod is a good listen IMO. Lots of ink spilled all over the place.
I’m linking this full video below because it is a short delightful performance of a sweet Debussy etude, but skip to 1:14 if you want to hear what passed for a joke among the romantic composers.
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The aspect of an ensemble piece large enough to require a conductor that appeals to me is how it makes explicit the layers of interpretation that the piece is going through before it reaches the ‘final’ interpretation in the inner space of the experiencer, in that you have the interpretations of the performers and the conductor out in the open instead of hidden away like you get with the more canonical consumer experience.
Since we’re talking about Brahms and artistic interpretation, this is a great video that touches on that and related subjects:
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