The ‘Beyoncé of classical music’ suggests music for pre-sex

Furzwaengler says:

It’s interesting that you mention Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu. I have long thought that this is one of Liszt’s very finest piano compositions, up there with the B minor Sonata, and all too sadly neglected.

As to the matter in hand, however, personally I would go with Scriabin’s 8th Piano Sonata…..that relentlessly repetitive thrusting motif which grinds on and on….well, you get the drift I’m sure.

Seeker64 says:

I simply don’t think in such absolute (read: authoritarian) terms.

Great art can pretty much stand for itself in successive ages (as amply demonstrated throughout History) without being considered as some sacred Holy Grail that needs to be preserved in some sort of unadulterated purity (or, more to the point, from becoming “degenerate”).

We know too well where it leads when certain people attempt to turn their own mental crutches (or, if you prefer, neurosis masquerading as morals) into everyone’s law: the very suppression of art and freedom through the reassuring security of dogma.

No one is shoving Ms Buniatishvili’s harmless performances down your throat. If indeed she is wrongheaded and butchers the classics for her own purposes, she will simply be forgotten in due time as she will fade away in a few years and the greatness of the music will remain without the need of anyone’s pathetic, uncalled for, narcissistic and self-righteous grandstanding.

Seeker64 says:

There’s no need for such an apocalyptic state of mind because the phenomenon is far from new or even dominant in any new way.

I remember, in the late seventies, early eighties, records such as a disco version of Beethoven’s Fifth were big hits or, even worse, an atrocious WHOLE ALBUM that topped the charts for many weeks that was called «Hooked on Classics» which sold MILLIONS of copies. If I remember well, two more volumes closely followed…

You couldn’t cheapen or diminish classical music more than that and nothing since then has in my opinion ever gone lower as an attempt to «democratize» it: about a 100 of the most famous classical themes were linked non-stop to one another without any development of any sort with a completely artificial and annoying 4/4 beat in the background. Pure, cynical, demeaning commercialism at its worst. In order to go lower than that you would need to «play» the classics with fart sounds.

So, what’s left of it now? Maybe you could even argue that it introduced some people to classical music who otherwise would never have bothered. Who knows? Who cares?

You might begin to have a point if someone remotely suggested that it was the way to the future that should be repeated forever at the expense of real, serious and dedicated musicians but it never happened of course and never will. Needless to say the classics have indeed survived to this slaughter and thrived more than ever after with advent of CDs. At worst some of the mystique has since been lost but that’s far from tragic. In the end you must trust the people’s intelligence more than you do even if the most idiots (or entertaining) on and offstage are always the noisiest. The novelty appeal never lasts that long…

William Ford says:

Erwin- staying home and listening to CDs is one of the many reasons symphonic concerts have been declining attendance (at least in the US). If we don’t go, how can we expect them to survive? Even the great pianists of the past had to start somewhere!

Erwin says:

Dear SEEKER64,
Yes, there ARE still some great performers, but the number is getting less and less, as I’ve written before.
The examples you mention don’t strike me as particularly outstanding, though they are (sometimes) enjoyable and of good quality. The Belcea Quartet is very good indeed!
I gave you enough examples of why the world of classical music in general IS crumbling down, and I could mention many more…(the ongoing crisis in modern composing and the larger and larger gap between composer and audience/society is another one, see http://isj.org.uk/from-revolution-to-irrelevance-how-classical-music-lost-its-audience/).
And I disagree with your analysis about “lost paradise” or “opening up”, it has very little to do with that.
In order to be able to understand how I think, I should mention that I studied music professionaly for 5 years at a good Conservatory in Europe. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how the great composers should be interpreted. No doubt that made me a very critical and, I hope, an informed listener. And for the rest it also boils down to personal taste and preference, of course. But I don’t think I “idealize” the great performers I heard when I was about 20-30 years old. They WERE simply more profound, more convincing, more moving, more human, more tasteful etc. etc. than what I hear nowadays (although the technical level today is sometimes higher), and that is IMO true for instrumentalists, singers and conductors.

Erwin says:

To: M2N2K
Your comment shows again how incredibly personal listening to classical music is. I completely with your statement “the priority is to hear the music being performed in the best possible way, which for me means – as interpretationally interesting and technically pure as possible while staying reasonably true to composers’ styles.” But this is *exactly* why I mainly prefer to listen to these “more individual” performers of the past, who were often closer to the composer’s intentions and who, at least when they were pianists and violinists, were very often on a much *higher* technical level, if you define technique as something that is much more than only “playing the right notes”.

M2N2K says:

Without a doubt, technique is much more than playing the right notes. It is also the ability to play them the “right” way whatever that is in the context of a particular piece and its interpretation. We don’t know exactly what all those dead composers’ intentions were but we do know thanks to logic and common sense that the more individualistic the playing is the more likely it is to stray farther from the text which is the only credible expression of those intentions that we have. Therefore less of the ubiquitous “individuality” allows performers to stay closer to the text and, perhaps even more important, to the spirit of the music (which comes from nowhere else but the text itself) – provided of course that the playing is of a very high quality in terms of interpretation and realization.

M2N2K says:

No one here attempted to “explain art by logic and common sense” – only to make distinctions between listeners’ preferences. The crucial question in this is “how much?”. How far from the text should one go in search of that “true spirit” before one ends up playing or singing something that distorts the piece or even sometimes works against the expressive content of it? There is no argument between us about the fact that text is not everything. All I am saying is that to me the text should be the basis of the interpretation of composers’ intentions and not the basis of expression of the performer’s individuality. In certain exceptional cases the interpretative imagination of the greatest performers is so original and powerful that even seemingly excessive liberties they take are forgivable because they manage to reveal aspects of the music that we did not know were there. But those are exceptions that do not undermine the general rule: composer is the boss and the only way we have to get to the piece’s artistic content is through the text. Perhaps one of the main reasons I feel that way is that my teacher was one of those great musicians of last century who, in spite of unmistakeable individuality of his interpretational approach, was several decades ahead of his time in understanding ultimate importance of always being true to, and respectful of, the musical text. Before the end of 18th century, composers did not feel a need to be specific and literal in including many instructions for the performers of their music, but that is only because for the most part they were the performers themselves or at least were participating in performances of their compositions by directing them as conductors or otherwise. The more performers were becoming separated from composers which was happening increasingly in the 19th century, the more detailed composers’ instructions became, including, among many other things, tempo, articulation, volume, even the character itself. That is not an accident but an indication of the extreme importance of everything that is part of every piece’s text.

M2N2K says:

We are indeed very close on most of these points except for the conclusions, which is probably less surprising that it may seem considering the subjectivity of the matter. Still, it seems rather remarkable to me that after describing criteria with which I can hardly argue, because it is so similar to mine, you manage to arrive at a nearly opposite verdict. Mine feels more optimistic and I am quite pleased about that.