Thoughts on Tempo (Tips on Critical Listening)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2022
- Don't be deceived: faster is not always better. It's not even necessarily more exciting. In this chat, I consider some of the factors aside from mere speed that work together to optimize a chosen tempo, and in the process maximize the music's expressive power.
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What an inspiring talk! Karl Österreicher was good conductor and nearly legendary teacher for conducting. In a talk with me he said a sentence I never will forget: "If the tempo attracts the listener's attention, it is wrong." He advised his scholars very often to gain tempo not by speed but by accent and elaborated detail.
Thank you. I agree with that--tempo should sound "right" without being the major aspect of an interpretation--unless of course you're playing "The Death of Tybalt" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet; in other words, music which is mostly about speed.
Thank you for devoting your attention to critical listening skills, especially for classical music beginners...I've been trying to expose my teenage daughter classical music, and I've found that her awareness of orchestral color is enhanced by watching a video of a performance...it helps in her actually understanding distinctions of sound...I'm looking forward to your future videos on listening skills...
There was issue # 76/77 on Beethoven's tempi (mostly reconstructed by Rudolf Kolisch and somewhat confirmed by Carl Czerny) of the german revue "Musik-Konzepte", when it was run by Adorno's pupils Heinz-Klaus Metzger & Rainer Riehn - a magazine, I often turned to in the library to get orientation in classical music. There was an article on how conductors could dare not to obey the tempo markings strictly. On the other hand they had (if I remember correctly) a list of Beethoven's movements with tempi, that are impracticable.
In the end there were recommendations of recordings. Of course for the symphonies there were Toscanini and Leibovitz as the first ones who observed the tempi. But inconsistent to their overall line to stick to the issue of tempo they also recommended Klemperer.
7:41 "Because keyboard actions were bulky and heavier and more difficult..." Well, isn't that also a case for Donald Tovey's word: "Scholarship itself is not required to insist on the restoration of conditions, that ought never to have existed."? We can be sure, Beethoven wanted more notes on the piano and lighter keyboard actions.
Weingartner, b. 1863, who literally wrote the book on the interpretation of the Beethoven symphonies and who did some "practical" rescorings for the late 19th and 20th century orchestra, was the first conductor to record the Nine. In the 20s and 30s his readings were considered the reference somewhat as Schnabel was for the sonatas. His tempi are almost uniformly on the rapid side.
Leibowitz was the first, along with a few attempts by Scherchen, to try and realize Beethoven's metronome markings. Toscanini almost never did and his tempi are usually slower than Weingartner's. The biggest exception is the 1st mvt of the Ninth which was quite fast. I always thought Weingartner's ca. 15+ minutes to be about ideal.
Just wanted to say welcome back from your much-deserved respite. Your daily videos have quickly become a part of my routine over the past few months, and your output pace is just remarkable. I was able catch up on some of the 1000+ videos that I missed out on from your first two years of posting during your break. I just started going through your 'How to Listen to Great Music' series. Really appreciating the beginner-focused content, and I had fun with the 'listening exercise' video with Beethoven's 5th. Fair points about tempo, for sure. I did find the Kletzki to be just a tad slow for my preferences, but not because of the comparison to the Trevino and Fischer; rather due to my imprinted familiarity with Karajan's '63 5th, which for many years was the only one I'd actively listened to before. Perhaps as I explore more and more versions some of that imprinting will wear off. But I still preferred the Kletzki to the faster, more modern recordings. I just wish I was better at explaining why, and understanding why.
thank you, Dave! may many listener and possibly some musicians listen to your points, and think them over!...🤩
Great video/talk. I’ve been listening to classical and romantic orchestral music for decades but never took a music appreciation course and have tended to relax and enjoy the music without appreciating some subtleties you discuss in your reviews and videos. I’ll be listening to this video several more times in the next 1-2 weeks as it is excellent study material - would not be surprised if it becomes assigned viewing in many music appreciation courses.
Great lesson! Please do more of these interpretations comparing if you find more examples that you are allowed to use on youtube! Thank you!
Another idea would be to let the viewers search for that respective records, although I don't know if this will work as easily.
Another very interesting chat - just listening to the new box of Ormandy conducting the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (please review it - for the recording dates, the sound is pretty amazing) - and it now occurs to me that Ormandy's natural handling of tempi is at the heart of his interpretations.
A pianist on TH-cam recently recorded a piece by Dvořák and chose a slower tempo than usual - which is perfectly fine - but she said that one of her considerations was how the piece might have sounded on a piano at the time. Perhaps (she wondered) Dvořák’s piano had a faster decay. I had to laugh, because this piece was written in the 1890s, when pianos were basically identical to our own.
Many of those old pianos are still being played and sound great.
Tempo matters. Even if tempo is appropriate in some context, we may prefer certain tempo, and to say about 'what is your preferred tempo' is very very very important.
Your last video inspired me to do a blind test of 50 different recordings of the opening of B5 and it was quite revealing. A few top contenders were not available on Tidal (Klemperer, Jochum LSO, Mackerras) but I learned a lot doing this exercise.
Top 5 best:
1. Markevitch (wow what an incredible sounding recording as well as a great performance!)
2. Wand (excellent bass that keeps the tension even during the quieter parts)
3. Stokowski Phase 4
4. Barenboim Telarc
5. Dorati
Biggest disappointments
1. Bernstein NY Phil (Totally slack and uninteresting and I was shocked it turned out to be Bernstein)
2. Gardiner (mechanical and soulless)
3. Chailly (trying to hard to be different)
4. Abbado Berlin Phil
5. Ivan Fischer
Interesting!
Interesting that there were so many negative reactions to Kletzki’s Beethoven 5th. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, as the traditionally expansive mitteleuropean approach is unfortunately out of fashion these days. Perhaps if the excerpts were played in reverse order, the criticism would be a bit more muted. In any event, the Kletzki 5th and entire cycle is great, and tempi are far from lumbering.
I much preferrred version C of the Beethoven piece and found he first two performances too fast for my taste, much as I appreciated the close attention to detail in A and B.
One of the reasons I find some of the great conductors of the so-called "Golden Age" so compelling is that they had a knack of knowing the exact correct tempo for a work that made it sound well, flow naturally and still maintain interest and excitement. (At least on recordings.) Monteux, Munch, Reiner, Ormandy, Walter among others had that ability. I hope there are conductors like that today, but so many of them seem obsessed with either the metronome or showboating.
Generally, I agree with your insight that slower tempos can work wonderfully if the flow and "arch" of the music is kept intact, and if the conductor / performer cares about the rhythms, points of emphasis and the dynamics. Then the "story" really unfolds going forward, and the piece never gets stale. That is why I usually listen to Klemperer's recordings with added interest - and I mean, he GETS that interest whatever I do. While many performances of usually acclaimed artists just do not stand out to this lay listener, left thinking: "it must be me". :)) Even Chailly's Beethoven cycle, of which the conductor was quite proud, having managed to play most of B's metronome markings without sounding like a mess - it does not somehow stir me up, lively and melodic though it is. Even if Beethoven would have been excited to hear it tried in real life, with a lesser talent than Chailly (and lesser orchestra) trying it at unsafe speeds - recipe for disaster.
Speaking of disasters, surely, for every light and squeaky Norrington, there is a deep and ponderous Celibidache, although I feel bad jumping on the bashing bandwagon - Celi's Beethoven cycle minus 1 (literally) is not bad to my ears, not so much as some of his diversions in later Romantic music. That man had his theory right - let each sound be heard - but not the consideration for the composers' unique musical language, and the realization was not always up to snuff. Bottom line, beauty really is not in the extremes, even less "the truth" of anything. Thanks for the talk!
I prefer Kletzki. Good tempo woodwinds were able to be heard, melodic lines had a good pace and not rushed.
That’s as far As I go. Perhaps the first recording came in second. Perhaps.
Great videos. The order you listen to different recordings can affect your opinion too. For instance, if no 3 had been played first then 1 and 2 could have sounded too fast. My favourite is 3 because Kletzki develops the tension in that short extract more successfully, as well as the sound of the strings being a bit thin in 1 and 2 for my ears.
Well the comparison exercise seems to have proven how taxing it is to be a good critical listener (leave alone critic). If you just glide lightly over the music - any music actually, but the Classical in particular - all you should be expecting is exactly superficial impression! And it may be not the piece's, or conductor's, fault.
In your listening test, we had to set our preferences in order, so someone had to get less love. :) My 2 takeaways are: one, Adam Fischer got the least slack, so he is probably to be acknowledged as "universally liked" by fans of different approaches to Beethoven's 5. Two, since we had to somehow support our choices and base them in words, the lesser liked versions got some epithets they did not quite deserve. Goes to prove it is even harder to write critically than to listen!
After all, since you really appraised all 3 versions, I wonder how you would rank them yourself - and not fall into the trap of demeaning the relatively "weakest".
Times Today are Just faster. Everything have to be faster, instant,
Note on classical compositions' bass parts: Mozart wrote in his letter at 11th of April, 1781 that on one of his Viennese concert orchestra contained 40 violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos and 10 double basses with 6 bassoons and every other wind instrument was doubled.
I think that was his description of the orchestra used on the "Paris" Symphony.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I don't know, maybe. I read this letter in new translation and translator Balázs Mikusi (a Hungarian scholar) also mentioned in footnote that this was probably the Paris symphony.
Unfortunately I didn't find data about the Parisian Concert Spirituel from that period and Mozart did not write about that as far as I know.
I think the pervasive error in non-period performance from about the mid-60s on is not the "faster" problem but, on the contrary, the belief that slower is somehow deeper, more profound, more "philosophical" in some way. That seemed to develop as an echt Deutsch approach, possibly under the influence of some German conductors who became cult figures in the postwar era who favored exceptionally slow tempi in fast movements.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. The major German conductors of the post-War era were not notably slow at all in their choice of tempos.
@@DavesClassicalGuide But didn't many follow the Furtwangler expansive tempi? The later Klemperer, certainly. Bernstein's earlier fleeter approach appeared to give way to the slower is more profound zeitgeist that coincided with the growing Furtwangler "cult" which scarcely existed in that conductor's own lifetime. Giulini also got progressively slower. It wasn't only German conductors.
Klemperer is often tremendously impressive but to me sometimes his chosen tempi make little sense in the context of the music as with his heavyweight Mendelssohn MSND fairies wearing lead boots in place of gossamer wings. Or a Mahler 7 that never gets off the ground. Or late Mozart opera. Yet he's magnificent with so much Beethoven and Brahms.
Then there's Kna and
I need hardly mention Celibidache!
@@bbailey7818 Furtwanger was not a "slow" conductor at all--just the opposite, as often as not. Klemperer was one guy. You can't generalize from a tiny number of examples. Many conductors get slower as they age. That means nothing.
A propos of tempo, do you have thoughts about Wim Winters and his analysis of tempo and metronome markings? For me the relationship between movements and the “pulse” is more important than tempo per se.
I think it's important--"more important?" I'm not so sure.
p.s. That "whole beat" business is simply nuts---anti-musical foolishness. Calling it "analysis" is a misnomer. It's just a joke.
@@DavesClassicalGuide thanks. I thought it was much ado about very little.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Have any of the whole beaters made it into the commercial recording world? If so, it might be worth a Hurwitz video! I've only heard their vandalism on you tube.
One proof of the nonsense is that in vocal music, say Fidelio, no human singer born with one set of lungs can possibly sustain such tempi without chopping phrases to bits or dropping down dead.
David, Have you ever listened to a recording
Where you felt the conductor had no idea of
What was going on or just didn’t give a damn.
(Bet you have)
Sure. And the conductor confirmed it to me himself.
Listeners who thought Kleztki's version is slow might want to give Fricsay's 5th a listen! I don't mean that in a bad way, his conception works overall but it is objectively slow. Regarding the base lines, for average listeners like me I feel there is a good chance that I'll be listening to multiple versions but still be unaware of certain parts that are missing(hardly audible), what I am trying to say is that if one wants to listen critically wouldn't hurt to have a score of the work
A good example where a piece loses its magic by period instruments interpretation ist Bach's Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3. I find it great in different orchestral performances from Karajan, Klemperer, Maazel, Menuhin... But even in good period Instruments interpretations like Pinnock's, it loses its special touch somehow. Here I always get the impression that neither the sound of the instruments nor the tempo are in harmony with the piece.
I absolutely do not think faster is better, and often times when listening to music I wish people would play slower. In my own keyboard playing I tend to take many things on the slower side. However, I also really hate the "whole beat" metronome performances that are half speed, and overindulgent playing in general. Quickness isn't necessarily authentic, but neither is sluggishness. After listening to the Kletzki a few more times, I can see why people appreciate it, but I still think it could be a bit faster! I really don't understand the Klemperer/Old German school of playing Beethoven no matter how much I listen, maybe I'm just a philistine!
The amazing thing about Klemperer is the contrast between his often rapid, propulsive tempi ca. 1948-51 and the later often very deliberate ones.
The most errant and BAT-SHIT abuse of "period metronome marking adherence" I think I've ever heard - excuse the profanity, but nothing less will do to describe this atrocity! - was Benjamin Zander's 🔥"hell-on-wheels"🔥 traversal of Beethoven's 5th and 7th Symphonies on Telarc... concurrently making a VERY excellent argument for ignoring the composer's "original bat-shit intent" (Beethoven's metronome must have been seriously out of calibration! 😂) and FINDING THE TEMPO THAT BEST SUITES THE WORK IN QUESTION! Yes, Dave, "FASTER" is not always the best way to go... but it can most certainly be the WORST! Mike D.