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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: Your're all Wrong!! posted by BobH on March 10, 2000 at 10:11:55:
Christ Bob, you're never listening are you?I like Mengelberg's massive account of Bach's 'Mattheus Passion' and I'm being flamed because of it, since it shouldn't have anything in common with Bach, but Mengelberg thought about ancient music in different ways than Nikolaus Harnoncourt for instance, he just wanted to communicate the emotions of this great work and instead of two small orchestras on period instruments he used an extended Concertgebouworkest with a lot of choirs, thinking Bach could have had such a thing in mind, but lacked this amount of musicians to play it that way in his own days.
Furthermore he made coupures in this Passion, which was and still is considered to be a deadly sin, but we must not forget the present day audiences are much more used to long listening sessions and that's why Mengelberg didn't cut out pieces of Parsifal, because it doesn't have a boring amount of repetitions, which served as reminders to the church
visitors in Bach's days, but is logic from beginning to end.
Mengelberg had three objectives when conducting music:
-make the music monumental
-innermusic effects should be stressed
-great attention for the detailsFor Mahler's 7th symphony he ordered an enormous timpan which is recently restored and used in Chailly's recording, who also records in stereo and says to see Mengelberg as his tutor, which I by the way can't hear, but he just like Mengelberg plays a lot of modern music which seems to be the only similarity, but that's what Mengelberg did because he could understand an enormous amount of music, trying to find out what the composer would have wanted instead of focussing on the metronome markings. Nobody at this very globe denies the vision of Mengelberg on Beethoven and usually all knowledgeable people agree Furtwangler perhaps was the only one who could transcedentally connect to Beethoven's spirit and that's what's lacking in Zander's performances, because he's a dullard though his tempi are high, but I even prefer Solti who by the way always had better orchestras at his advantage.
Mengelberg said about the Passion: 'This piece of music should be played with an enormous apparatus to be able to give the master what he deserves.' and although the forces were enormous, I don't know how he got 500 choirmembers into the Concertgebouw after having heard and seen his aficionado, gasp, Chailly conduct Mahler 5 with 300 singers on a filled stage, but it's the job of the conductor to interprete the music and everyone is free to choose the conductor one likes most, but we're trying to hold hands with Furtwangler, Mengelberg or in my case Van Beinum because we like them so much, it's because we think he interpretes the notes best and eventually change instrumentation to make the effect clear the composer might have wanted.
Like I told earlier about Mengelberg, he changed something in the score, because his teacher Wullner was via someone else connected with Beethoven himself and Mengelberg also studied the original manuscripts which were owned by a Dutchman of some of the symphonies and made a strong case to make them public heritage, because he thought everyone should be able to study them and everytime you come up with Bennie I get aroused indeed, because he could only study this manuscript and make this nauseating CD because of Willem Mengelberg and now you start attacking us for loving those old recordings?
Ask any pianist what he thinks about the metronome markings at Beethoven's piano sonatas and you'll be surprised, but they will say it's not playable!
Yehudi Menuhin said the performance of the 'Mattheus' under Mengelberg he visited in the late 30-ies was the most impressive musical event he ever experienced and that's what music is all about, make the audience go home in astonishment with a smile on their face, ripened, catharsed and not about what the composer actually has written down, since the music is between the notes.
And this is the last time I go into discussion. Check the archives for Mengelberg's Beethoven, I cited from booklets about Wullner and his ideas about the music and otherwise stick to your boring finely recorded performances with bad orchestras or bad pianists.
Rob
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