Recordings
Henry, Derrick
Recordings HOW TO LISTEN THE WORLD OF CLASSICAL RECORDS IT TAKES no great perspicacity to observe that a high percentage of new classical albums preserve performances of familiar pieces that...
...It disturbs me because I know that a reasonably intelligent and diligent individual can learn to follow a score within a month and can learn the basics of music theory in a semester course...
...Or to contrast the close-up perspective of one recording with the balcony view of another...
...X on a long out-of-print 1937 disc...
...It disturbs me that some extremely perceptive listeners of my acquaintance cannot even read music, and that despite their great love for music are unwilling to take the time to learn...
...And if the music has not been recorded...
...Why do artists continue to record the same pieces when there is so much music of great merit awaiting a first recording, or first decent one...
...Perceptive listening requires informed listeners...
...Of course by the time all these comparisons have been made there isn't much energy remaining to pay attention-really pay attention-to the music itself...
...Don't let anyone persuade you that by learning to read music, by coming to terms with how a piece is put together, that somehow you will lose magical qualities that drew you to the music in the first place...
...But though Jochum's latest thoughts on Bruckner may indeed be worth documenting, far too often the most recent recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or Schumann's First, or the 1812 Overture, or whatever, captures music-making that, while hardly poor or perfunctory, supplies nothing substantive not already better accomplished on record...
...They are both fascinating and pleasurable, and after all, I'm paid to do precisely those things...
...Nonsense...
...Is a book less enjoyable because you read it rather than have someone read it to you...
...DERRICK HENRY...
...Rather, the principal interest in, say, Jochum's current re-recordings of the Bruckner symphonies focuses among seasoned record collectors eager to discover what fresh insights Jochum or his engineers may offer...
...The musicians themselves, the critics, the concert and record audience are, I think, primarily interested in music as communication...
...My speculations follow...
...There is something to be said for the plunker at the keyboard and for even the most unaccomplished amateur musician who exerts the effort to make music first hand...
...These companies will be surprised when their insipid imitations fail to find a market...
...Why shouldn't we have noticed that inner bassoon line ourselves (or was it even intended to be noticed...
...Recordings HOW TO LISTEN THE WORLD OF CLASSICAL RECORDS IT TAKES no great perspicacity to observe that a high percentage of new classical albums preserve performances of familiar pieces that already have ten, twenty, thirty or more recorded versions to their credit...
...Surely not the novice, who, unable to judge the finer points of either performance or sound, should feel perfectly satisfied with any product that adequately transmits the power of the music per se...
...Now I'm not about to urge a ban upon such comparisons...
...We simply play a record as many times as we wish...
...Such a listener even zeroes in on tiny specific passages: a glissando here, an inner voice there...
...It disturbs me because I know that while musical literacy is not requirement or guarantee of sensitive listening, no musical illiterate can possibly understand the finer shades of a composer's accomplishment...
...The analogy is not entirely apt...
...And why do music lovers avariciously acquire multiple versions of a given work...
...Who benefits from this multiplicity...
...Why should we be so dependent on the performer...
...It is making money, so naturally other companies wish to jump on the Weill bandwagon with lucrative products of their own...
...True communication implies exchange...
...No one-not the musicians, not the critics, not the listeners, inevitably not the record companies-is satisfied...
...Hence our incessant quest for the "definitive interpretation"-two words which, when you stop to think about them, are antithetical...
...Everything is so easy today, available at the mere flick of a switch...
...Such a listener buys Solti's latest rendition of Mahler's Second Symphony intent on discerning how it differs from the "classic" Walter or Klemperer versions...
...No longer is it even necessary to read music...
...It makes me worry about our priorities...
...And performing musicians face plenty of problems of their own...
...This raises some questions...
...But we may as well realize that if we genuinely want to learn about music, the responsibility rests not with performers or recording engineers, but with ourselves...
...It's the cult of invidious comparison: sure Aaron could hit, but I saw Babe Ruth in his prime, and let me tell you...
...Yet when these musicians finally get on stage critics complain that their performance cannot hold a candle to that of Mr...
...But these companies lacked the foresight or guts to have commissioned the original and lack the imagination to come up with a viable alternative...
...We (and who among us has not listened in this way) want the recording engineer or the conductor to somehow enrich our understanding of a score, to show us something we hadn't noticed before...
...it cannot satisfactorily be onesided...
...Their agents demand that they play the tried-and-true crowd-pleasers, and their teachers tacitly comply by largely training them in that limited repertory...
...There is something to be said for the armchair listener who attentively follows a record or radio broadcast score in hand...
...Bluntly, far too many musicians and record executives are afraid to take risks, to trust their own artistic instincts...
...Or to hear how the new digital Solti Mahler stacks up to his 1966 analog recording of the work on the same label (London...
...Not many of us are going to take the trouble to sit at a piano and pore over difficult scores...
...Forget those record companies and agents, all in fact whose interest in music is as business, not art...
...I even suspect that there are good musical reasons for all this...
...Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that we "know" a piece simply because we have heard it a hundred times...
...No longer is it necessary to learn a work by painstakingly reading through it at the piano...
...Such a listener concentrates on sound, performance, and performer...
...Well, mat's one piece we won't get to know...
...For just as a Shakespeare play comes to full life only through a vital enactment, so a complex musical score conveys its full measure only when a master vividly translates the printed notes into physical sound...
...A century of recording has generated a new breed of listener and a new way of listening...
...Teresa Stratas's recent album of "unknown" Kurt Weill songs has proved a tremendous success for Nonesuch because it offers an irresistible combination of fascinating and unfamiliar music,excitingly recreated...
Vol. 109 • September 1982 • No. 15
