Mozart Requiem - Karl Bohm

Natan wrote:

This one by Böhm seems grand to me, probably the best I have ever listened to.

Böhm was a great interpreter of Mozart and, in his time, very highly regarded. Today, with all due respect that naturally goes to him and to all the great interpreters, not just conductors, of his generation, the history of interpretation has moved forward and an execution like this reveals all its years. I think that one can no longer do without wonderful interpretations such as, for example, that of John Eliot Gardiner, while continuing to admire what the "great old masters" have left us.

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I'll just throw it out there Carlos, an interpretation can pass while a composition cannot... or has a shorter duration.

I say, if the interpretation were brilliant, why should it be outdated and not have the value of a good alternative? I am speaking clearly in general terms and not strictly about this case, and I am also referring to the world of interpretation transversally... orchestra and non-orchestra

Eagle wrote:

I'll just throw it out there Carlos, an interpretation can pass while a composition might not... or has a shorter lifespan.

Without a doubt. Music lives thanks to what the performers make of it. With this, obviously, I do not want to place the performer before the composer in terms of importance, but precisely because I believe that music is "alive," I am convinced that it continues to tell us new things all the time and—to bring ourselves back down to earth for a moment—we too, through study, can understand, know, and discover aspects of a piece, an author, or a repertoire that we did not know even fifty years ago. Even in the case of this recording, without taking anything away from Böhm, obviously, today we know that such an approach does not go in the direction intended by Mozart (but he didn't [intend it], at least not entirely, so let it be clear that Böhm is not to blame). Personally, I can no longer listen to interpretations like this because I do not recognize the author; rather, I recognize that a "conception" (which is not his) has been placed before the realization of his score, whether this was done consciously or unconsciously.

Eagle wrote:

I say, if the interpretation were brilliant, why should it be outdated and not have the value of a good alternative?

Excellent objection. If the interpretation were brilliant, the discussion would probably change, but... one would have to agree on whether it is (brilliant, I mean) or not. Do you think Böhm's is? In my opinion no, but, to be clear, I don't think Gardiner's is either, though Gardiner has the merit—in addition to being a highly esteemed performance—of not placing ideas before Mozart that are not motivated by the reading and study of his musical text.

As Alfred Brendel once said, it's not that respecting the text is less difficult or requires less fantasy than not respecting it. The text is nonetheless inexact (this is my opinion, not Brendel's), in the sense that its interpretation is not unique (which is why I consider it absolute nonsense to claim, of anyone, that they "do exactly what is written," because that means absolutely nothing...) and, even while working diligently to get as close as possible to a "correct" interpretation of the notation, there fortunately remains a margin left to the sensitivity (in a broad sense) of the performer. Otherwise, if it were not so, performers who share common editions and studies on performance practice would produce identical performances, but that is not the case, even though their goals are often the same.

Turning back to Böhm's interpretation, it is still part of a way of making music according to which the text actually becomes a pretext, to read a piece under a different light and, so it would seem, bring it closer to our sensibility. In this case, the message is clear: Mozart is read through the magnifying glass of the great composers of the late nineteenth century, and probably at the time of that interpretation, there was a feeling of hearing him more closely, whereas today, at least in my opinion, that interpretation achieves exactly the opposite effect.

Great point of view Carlos

Carlos wrote:

but I recognize that a "conception" (which is not his) was placed before the realization of his score, whether this was done consciously or unconsciously.

This tells us that the performer is never truly free.

Natan wrote:

Great point of view, Carlos.

This tells us that the performer is never truly free.

The only performer 100% free (where by free we mean «to do whatever they want») is the composer performing their own music.

It depends on what one seeks in music. Personally, I feel much freer the more I know the composer, because "my" conception, through knowledge, (almost) comes to coincide with theirs.

Reading Carlos's intervention, I was thinking of another famous Mozartian direction of which I imagine one could say more or less the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJFRl6LjAv4;

I find myself wondering if we won't also grow tired, after late-Romantic rhetoric on one side and rigorous philologism on the other, of the virtuoso middle ways. It is certain that, in a few decades, Mozart will be conducted with even different criteria: it would be fun to wonder what those might be then, trying to understand where today's sensibility seems to turn, looking at younger conductors and, perhaps, those from countries with traditions different from the European one.

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CromaDiBrera wrote:

Reading Carlos's intervention, I was thinking of another famous Mozartian direction of which I imagine one could say more or less the same:

Decidedly, and I confess that, despite my particular love for Toscanini, I have never been able to go beyond the exposition of this recording...