Thoughts on Tempo (Tips on Critical Listening)

Video quality	The size	Download

Информация о Thoughts on Tempo (Tips on Critical Listening)

Название	:	Thoughts on Tempo (Tips on Critical Listening)
Продолжительность	:	21.10
Дата публикации	:
Просмотров	:	4,3 rb

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
Comment from : 1984robert

Times Today are Just faster Everything have to be faster, instant,
Comment from : Tar Eldarion

thank you, Dave! may many listener and possibly some musicians listen to your points, and think them over!🤩
Comment from : Tito Ceccherini

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
Comment from : Michael Davis

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, faultbr brIn 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!brbrAfter 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"
Comment from : Big G

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
Comment from : JA C

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
Comment from : Mason

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
Comment from : B Bailey

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
Comment from : Martin Haub

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 impracticablebrIn 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 Klempererbrbr7:41 "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
Comment from : Sulsfort

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 exercisebrbrTop 5 best:br1 Markevitch (wow what an incredible sounding recording as well as a great performance!)br2 Wand (excellent bass that keeps the tension even during the quieter parts)br3 Stokowski Phase 4br4 Barenboim Telarcbr5 DoratibrbrBiggest disappointmentsbr1 Bernstein NY Phil (Totally slack and uninteresting and I was shocked it turned out to be Bernstein)br2 Gardiner (mechanical and soulless)br3 Chailly (trying to hard to be different)br4 Abbado Berlin Philbr5 Ivan Fischer
Comment from : mehmehmeh

Great lesson! Please do more of these interpretations comparing if you find more examples that you are allowed to use on youtube! Thank you!brbrAnother idea would be to let the viewers search for that respective records, although I don't know if this will work as easily
Comment from : l lucrescu

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
Comment from : Alex Mad Dog

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
Comment from : edwin baumgartner

A pianist on YouTube 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
Comment from : Matthew Benton