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OPERA
Death and Love
RECITAL
Mighty Manny
SYMPHONY
Showing Many Colors
EARLY MUSIC
A Palatable Repast
CHORAL MUSIC
Bright New Season
CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Beethoven Redux
OPERA
Calamity City
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Outside the Box
CHAMBER MUSIC
Bewitchments
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Reality Rules
RECITAL
Aural Delectations
CHORAL MUSIC
Soloists Shine
TRIBUTE
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Response to Our 11/4/03 Question of the Week
MUSIC NEWS
Napa Opera Chief to Quit
By Michelle Dulak
San Francisco Opera
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
(11/9/03)
By Jerry Kuderna
Emanuel Ax
(11/9/03)
By Michael Zwiebach
San Francisco Symphony
David Robertson
James Ehnes
(11/7/03)
By Anna Carol Dudley
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Emma Kirkby
(11/8/03)
By Ben Frandzel
Volti
(11/9/03)
By Renato Rodolfo-Sioson
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Murray Perahia
(11/3/03)
By Charles Barber
Opera San José
Cavalleria rusticana
I pagliacci
(11/8/03)
By Miguel Galperin
Empyrean Ensemble
(11/9/03)
By Michelle Dulak
Gilbert Kalish & friends
(11/6/03)
By Heuwell Tircuit
Stanford Chorale
Wooden Fish Ensemble
(11/7/03)
By Kip Cranna
Nuccia Focile
New Century Chamber Orchestra
(11/8/03)
By Rebekah Ahrendt
Oakland Symphony Chorus
Oakland Civic Orchestra
(11/8/03)
By Janos Gereben
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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Not So
"Authenticity" in performance is a relative matter of course, but still the caveat cannot be overemphasized. Of course it isn't just a matter of using instruments and a playing or singing style of the period in question, or even concert halls that correspond in size and layout to those of the earlier time. Today's performers and audiences can't possibly get into the mind-set of, say, 200 years ago. Our sense of time and cultural attitudes are worlds different from those of our ancestors, and our listening is altogether influenced by the experience of an enormous repertory both before and since the music being revisited.
Nonetheless, that doesn't diminish the importance of trying to do performances that are as informed historically as is feasible. Even when period instruments are not involved, a respectfully stylish performance should be expected of a modern symphony orchestra. Everyone understands that Schubert isn't to be played the way Wagner is. One reminder of this was the San Francisco Symphony's recent performance of Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, with assistant conductor Edwin Outwater on the podium. Two things: Phrasing and articulation were heavy and clumsy, so that the very spirit of the piece was lost. And the use of the full orchestra, perhaps 70 or 80 of its 100 players, exaggerated the effect of that misguided interpretation.
I don't believe the SF Symphony uses an orchestra of that size for Mozart and Haydn any more. It shouldn't for Schubert either, and probably not for Schumann. Those composers wrote for small orchestras; that's what they had. That's the sound they heard in their ears as they composed and orchestrated. While there's no point in "what if" speculation, it's probable that had they had orchestras of more than 70, even using instruments of their day, with smaller sound, less flexibility and all that, they would have composed and orchestrated differently.
Moreover, the level of orchestral performance in the first half of the 19th century was poor. A description can be found in Ernest Newman's venerable Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 1: 1813-1848, the chapter entitled "The State of Music in Germany" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1933). This was published about 25 years before musicology began focusing major attention on the 19th century, and about 55 years before period instrument orchestras were giving historically-informed performances of music from the first half of the 19th century. One thing we can be sure of: the performances that Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner, Charles Mackerras, and, more recently Nicholas McGegan conducted and recorded were a lot better played than those Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz and young Wagner heard.
While one might assume that for chamber music in the Romantic period, the best players would have been used, that turns out not to be true. Beethoven's Quartets were not for a long time understood and respected because, as Newman wrote, "the problems of technique . . . were beyond (the players') previous experience and their capacity. It is doubtful whether, in the whole of Europe, there was in Beethoven's own day a string quartet capable of dealing faithfully (with one of his quartets)," excepting the Schuppanzigh quartet in Vienna, the composer's personal friends.
Full scores of string quartets were not available, and musicians tried to understand them by reading the first violin part. Even Berlioz, at 34, was "learning" the Beethoven quartets through the first violin parts, and that was at the Paris Conservatoire library! Orchestras were led by conductors habitually reading from the first violin part. Wagner wrote that the Beethoven symphonies were chaotic as played in Germany, not becoming clear until he heard them in Paris between 1834 and 1842, under François-Antoine Habeneck's direction. But even Habeneck, as well as his successors in Paris, Berlioz wrote, conducted from a first violin part.
For a long time, string quartets, including Beethoven's, were regarded and performed as a violin solo with three accompanying parts. Even as eminent a virtuoso as Ludwig Spohr selected his supporting players relatively indiscriminately. This indifference to the "accompanying parts" of chamber works went on through the century. Joachim, for instance, wrote Liszt in 1852 about playing a Schubert quartet with three others who had been randomly selected.
Economic factors were said to have helped keep the level of the German musical culture low, despite all that a romanticized history would have us believe. Karl Maria von Weber, in a guide he prepared to help musicians touring Europe, wrote such reports as Basel's having neither a single good piano nor a hall favorable to the instrument. According to Wagner, the orchestra of 35 players in the culturally famous town of Weimar (with only about 12,000 inhabitants in 1843), could not compare to the orchestra of Leipzig unless major changes and additions were made in it. The Lohengrin Liszt conducted in Weimar when he was Kapellmeister had an orchestra of 38!
Even Leipzig, population 35,000, during the first third of the century, had an orchestra of only 33, and a chorus of 30. In Leipzig, during Wagner's youth, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of 30 players was playing Beethoven symphonies under the leadership of the first violinist, not a conductor. Newman wrote that the orchestras that played the great music festivals were mixtures of professionals and amateurs. Spohr reported conducting orchestras of half-dilettanti, that they were all amateurs at Basel's Musikverein and as bad or worse in Zurich, Freiburg, and Berne.
"Even in London, where the orchestras were large and the players well paid, Spohr found it impossible to get an ensemble as good as the best in the German theaters, mediocre as that must have frequently been," Newman wrote. "In Vienna, as late as 1837, while concerts were frequent enough, there was no concert orchestra of more than third-rate quality." And on and on the story goes, in opera as well as in concert. Berlioz' acid comments all through his criticisms and Memoirs were evidently supported by the opinions of other musicians.
The ironies in this cannot escape the American reader, having long bought into the myths of the great classical music tradition in Europe. The 19th century performance level on this side of the Atlantic might not suffer in comparison after all. The difference lay more in the amount of concert and opera activity in Europe, supported, as it was, following custom, by local courts, principalities, and cities or states.
One point in all this is that, when we hear an early music orchestra today performing Beethoven or Mendelssohn or Schubert, we are hearing an idealization. To be sure, the sound of the early instruments is different than that of the modern ones, significantly, and that is interesting. (The hand [French] horns and the trumpets with crooks and slides [the valve trumpet and horn were not introduced until 1835] and the woodwinds differed in construction and sound from the modern versions.) But the likelihood is that today's modern players on those period instruments are much more expert than their ancestors (excepting the stars and virtuosi of that day, to be sure). And today's musicians have known the music of the Classic and Early Romantic eras, and even their own parts in it, all their lives. It's mother's milk to them. The players during Beethoven's time and in the ensuing four years struggled with the "contemporary" music of their era, Beethoven especially. And many of the older players, being conservative by nature and probably not better educated than workmen or tradesmen of their time, doubtless resisted new styles.
Bearing in mind history's report of the low general performance level for the first third or half of the 19th century, I have nurtured a theory that this might explain some of Schumann's famously criticized orchestration. He might just have consistently doubled the instruments to protect himself — or, rather, performances of his works. So if a second horn in a particular civic orchestra couldn't cut it, the part was being sounded in the second bassoon. Whether true or not, in principle his symphonies benefit by being played by orchestras considerably smaller than the full modern band.
While period-instrument performances of Romantic music seem to have tapered off in recent years, they're still going to be with us. They may have a very good influence on performing style by modern orchestras. Amusingly, the program notes never seem to comment on the actual performance level of those days, so that many may think that the earlier audiences heard something like what the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century or the Philharmonia Baroque have just played. Not really. Not at all.
(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
©2003 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved
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From September 1, 1998 to October 7, 2003, we have published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials 1586 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 47 symphony orchestras (333 reviews), 72 chamber groups (171), 33 new music ensembles and programs (177), 34 opera companies (226), 26 choral groups (97), 15 music festivals (70), 32 early music ensembles (107), 21 chamber orchestras (72), 5 musical theater groups (13), world music (14), recitals (286), youth music (10), Other (10).
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