# Composers saying a conductor plays their piece perfectly and like they imagined



## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Hi Everyone, this is my first Post on this Forum. I'm 17 years old and I love classical music and i'm very interested in talking about recordings as well. I have seen some instances of Composers like Sibelius and Rachmaninoff saying that a conductor/performer conducts/plays their piece exactly like they wanted/imagined. In more detail, I read on HvK's wikipedia page that sibelius said to Karajan that his performances of Sibelius' symphonies are perfect and exactly like he wanted. Rachmaninoff said after a concert of his 3rd piano concerto performed by Horowitz (which wasn't recorded) that it was perfect and like he wanted. Now my question is do you take these statements into account? On trout's blog I saw that Algerich was at number 1 of rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto and horowitz second and regarding karajan's recordings of Sibelius symphonies, it isn't general consensus that those are the definitive interpretations. So it seems not everyone does take into account the way the composers want the piece played. So do you think the composers opinion should stand above everyone else's because it's his composition or do you think it doesn't really matter?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

The composer's intent is important, but not the ultimate say in the matter I think.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Sibelius said that of a number of conductors ... HvK, Beecham, Ormandy ...


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Copland and Bernstein were pretty simpatico when it came to the latter's performances of the former (personally, though, I liked Copland's own conducting performances of his pieces better than Bernstein's).

I think it matters, but is not the final statement on a performance. Just like a Shakespeare play can be reinterpreted with new emphasis that speaks to a different audience, so to can a musical composition.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

EvaBaron said:


> So do you think the composers opinion should stand above everyone else's because it's his composition or do you think it doesn't really matter?


It has some value, but the opinion that matters most is my own opinion.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

Composers like to have their pieces performed.
They're usually well-disposed to conductors who further that ambition.
Fair enough.


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## John Zito (Sep 11, 2021)

It's interesting trivia, but as a guide to my own listening, I pay no attention to it. This also goes for composers performing their own works: Rachmaninoff playing Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky, etc. For me such recordings have no special claim to being better or worse than anyone else's.

I suppose the reason is that, once a composer stops working on something, it becomes this living, breathing thing with a life of its own, and it contains in it much more than just what the composer meant to put there. So for really great music, no single interpretation will ever suffice to give voice to everything that the music has to say. It's inexhaustible. And I'm not just talking about the most "rarefied" stuff like the _St. Matthew Passion_ or a Bruckner symphony. The same goes for the jazz standards or a great Broadway musical. Someone can always come along and find something we didn't know was there.


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## Tarneem (Jan 3, 2022)

oh boy I got a lot to say about this subject and honestly I don't know where to start

"So do you think the composers opinion should stand above everyone else's because it's his composition or do you think it doesn't really matter?"

to answer this question perhaps we should remind ourselves of the *Death of the author theory*

when a novel is published, does it belong to the author or to the reader??? this is a very controversial question and caused a lot of heated debate. for example let's say that I published a novel about a guy called David, while you are reading the novel you pictured David as a blond guy, but after a while I (the author, the one who created David) declared that David actually has a black hair. so is David blond or does he have black hair??? does David belong to the author because he created it him, or does it belong to the reader and the author has no authority over the way how we view his novel???

the *Death of the author theory * may apply to artistic mediums like novels, movies or plays, but it absolutely doesn't apply to music. music is much more subtle than words and it is much more effective. and it accepts endless interpretation and I don't think that anyone has the right to say which interpretation is right and which one is wrong.

since Beethoven, composers do have the tendency to write a lot of notes in the musical score as an effort to control the way how their pieces are performed. I don't think this tendency is wise, the musical score should keep some level of mystery and it should have the flexibility to appeal to as much people as possible. take J.S.Bach for example, he is very stingy about writing instruction on the musical score. and I do believe that this is one of the factors why his music remain popular until today, the performer has the freedom to play the score however he/she want without getting accused that he/she are disrespecting the composer.

an outstanding performing is not about playing the piece right, but it's about playing the piece wrong in the right way. listen to Gould and you get what I mean lol


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Sibelius was an easy to please guy, and if you performed a piece of his and did it reasonably well, you'd be BFF with the big old baldy. Karajan was objectively good of course, but he praised other conductors too whose interpretations were the polar opposite of HvK.
It's not hard to see how this works. I'm a composer myself, and after the usual rare and mediocre performances of my works, the first thing I do is rushing to the players and telling them they did a truly wonderful job and thanking them from the bottom of my heart. Little white lies like that are the oil that keeps the gears of the musical world working.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Then there are the ingrates, like Stravinsky. Both Monteux and Ansermet did a lot to promote Igor's work, giving premieres, making many recordings. Then at some time in the '50s he started bad mouthing them, claiming they didn't understand his music and got tempos wrong, etc. Of course when he took up the baton himself he realized just how hard it was to conduct his own music, going so far as to re-write some of it to make it easier for him to conduct. I don't pay attention Stravinsky's opinion, Monteux and Ansermet are excellent.

A wise composer will be happy his music is played, even recorded, and say nothing negative. John Williams could say a lot about the many recordings of his more well-known movie hits, but he remains silent and gladly collects the royalty checks.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> Then there are the ingrates, like Stravinsky. Both Monteux and Ansermet did a lot to promote Igor's work, giving premieres, making many recordings. Then at some time in the '50s he started bad mouthing them, claiming they didn't understand his music and got tempos wrong, etc. Of course when he took up the baton himself he realized just how hard it was to conduct his own music, going so far as to re-write some of it to make it easier for him to conduct. I don't pay attention Stravinsky's opinion, Monteux and Ansermet are excellent.


That's very interesting!
I mentioned Monteux' Chicago Sacre in another thread today, and it's remarkable how mellow and soft-edged that performance is. I wouldn't say it's bad or unidiomatic, it's a very valid and convincing interpretation, but it differs greatly from most modern hard-hitting performances, and from Stravinsky's own recording too. Maybe he thought that Monteux was too easy-going and the music needed more expressionist drama?
But then again, Monteux conducted the world premiere in 1913, and Stravinsky seems to have been pretty satisfied with that performance. Or was he just happy about the "succès de scandale" that made him overnight famous?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

William Walton famously told every conductor who played one of his works that it was "the best I've ever heard it" -- expressly so they would program it aqain.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

RobertJTh said:


> That's very interesting!
> I mentioned Monteux' Chicago Sacre in another thread today, and it's remarkable how mellow and soft-edged that performance is. I wouldn't say it's bad or unidiomatic, it's a very valid and convincing interpretation, but it differs greatly from most modern hard-hitting performances, and from Stravinsky's own recording too. Maybe he thought that Monteux was too easy-going and the music needed more expressionist drama?
> But then again, Monteux conducted the world premiere in 1913, and Stravinsky seems to have been pretty satisfied with that performance. Or was he just happy about the "succès de scandale" that made him overnight famous?


Monteux recorded "Le Sacre" with Chicago?? When?? Never heard (or heard of) that recording...
He did record it with Boston in the 50s...


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Phil loves classical said:


> The composer's intent is important, but not the ultimate say in the matter I think.


Yeah. I doubt Bach would say that Klemperer was performing the St. Matthew Passion the way he would've wanted it to be performed, but I love Klemperer's Bach.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Wagner remarked that a great work of art will contain meanings that the artist himself doesn't suspect. If you listen to the recording of Copland rehearsing his _Appalachian Spring_, you hear him tell the orchestra that a violin glissando they play isn't in the score but that he likes and approves of it. The simple truth is that music offers many more possibilities to the interpreter than its composer ever thinks of. I suspect that most composers are as pleased as Copland was to hear fresh ideas about their work, so long as the basic character of the work is not violated.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Heck148 said:


> Monteux recorded "Le Sacre" with Chicago?? When?? Never heard (or heard of) that recording...
> He did record it with Boston in the 50s...


Argh, Boston of course. Teaches me not to go on a posting spree at 2 am.


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

That's really funny and smart!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

EvaBaron said:


> Rachmaninoff said after a concert of his 3rd piano concerto performed by Horowitz (which wasn't recorded) that it was perfect and like he wanted.


Welcome to the forum.

Rachmaninov certainly liked how Horowitz played his music, but said it was different than how he would play it. I guess its not hard to understand what he meant, because we can compare their recordings. When I first heard Rachmaninov playing his own music, I was struck by how straight he played it. Horowitz is just something else.

Rachmaninov liked to work with Horowitz, and asked RCA to record them performing the _Symphonic Dances_ and _Suite #2_ together, but this was declined. Music for two pianos would have been a perfect vehicle to display their contrasting approaches to playing.

I think that often composers have people they like to work with - for example, Rachmaninov also liked Stokowski and Ormandy - but sometimes they can be surprised when they hear a piece played in a way they had never imagined. I mentioned an anecdote which speaks to this on another thread:



Sid James said:


> - When Bartok heard Yehudi Menuhin play one of his violin sonatas, he said "I did not think music could be played like that until long after the composer was dead." It sounds strange but Bartok meant that as a compliment, Menuhin reflected that the composer was not a man of idle words.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EvaBaron said:


> Hi Everyone, this is my first Post on this Forum. I'm 17 years old and I love classical music and i'm very interested in talking about recordings as well. I have seen some instances of Composers like Sibelius and Rachmaninoff saying that a conductor/performer conducts/plays their piece exactly like they wanted/imagined. In more detail, I read on HvK's wikipedia page that sibelius said to Karajan that his performances of Sibelius' symphonies are perfect and exactly like he wanted. Rachmaninoff said after a concert of his 3rd piano concerto performed by Horowitz (which wasn't recorded) that it was perfect and like he wanted. Now my question is do you take these statements into account? On trout's blog I saw that Algerich was at number 1 of rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto and horowitz second and regarding karajan's recordings of Sibelius symphonies, it isn't general consensus that those are the definitive interpretations. So it seems not everyone does take into account the way the composers want the piece played. So do you think the composers opinion should stand above everyone else's because it's his composition or do you think it doesn't really matter?


That's exactly what Steve Reich said about Amadina's performance of his music for 18 Musicians -that the performance fulfilled his dream.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

*Paul Wranitzky (1756~1808)*
"Both Haydn and Beethoven preferred him as a conductor of their works. Haydn insisted on his direction of the Viennese performances of The Creation (1799, 1800), and at Beethoven's request he conducted the premiere of that composer's first symphony (2 April 1800)." https://www.google.ca/books/edition...top_of_p_14/ZXhgCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA62


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

This also brings up the interesting point of composers writing for specific performers, or how much the composer is involved with the performer while writing said work. I know quite a few composers will be commissioned to write something for a specific ensemble or musician – and some will consider the sound of that individual or ensemble more than others, I think. One extreme case would be Scelsi, where he was working individually with performers, and had an assistant who actually transcribed what he was doing into notation.


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> Then there are the ingrates, like Stravinsky. Both Monteux and Ansermet did a lot to promote Igor's work, giving premieres, making many recordings. Then at some time in the '50s he started bad mouthing them, claiming they didn't understand his music and got tempos wrong, etc. Of course when he took up the baton himself he realized just how hard it was to conduct his own music, going so far as to re-write some of it to make it easier for him to conduct. I don't pay attention Stravinsky's opinion, Monteux and Ansermet are excellent.
> 
> A wise composer will be happy his music is played, even recorded, and say nothing negative.


One of the amazing and wonderful aspects of classical music is that a given work can be interpreted in an infinity of different ways, unexpected by the composer him/herself. What's important is if the given "interpretation", i.e., rendition, of a work connects with _you_, yourself, and provides you with the kind of transformative, transcendental experience I've described in previous posts.

Such was my experience many decades ago with an LP presentation of _Le Sacre du Printemps_, conducted by Ansermet leading L'orchestre de la suisse romande. I didn't know at the time that Ansermet would be considered a "phenomenon". And whether Stravinsky would approve of the recording or not was immaterial to me. I fell into a kind of love with it, it helped accelerate my appreciation of classical music (and of course that work in particular), and it transformed my life forever.


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