# What makes a performance really alive?



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

(No doubt this has been asked before.)

I was wondering what you all feel make a recorded performance really alive. Some _*feel *_dull or routine. Perhaps safe would be a better word. Others are alive and communicative. This is regardless of whether interpretively they tell you something new or not: it is a matter of making the interpretation (however it is) rewarding. It might be about having real "fizz" or panache. It might be about a sense of concentration (and the building of structure over the arc of the work). It might be about seeming to have real magic in less demonstrative music. For me _*any of these*_ can work brilliantly in the same piece (perhaps that is why I often have many favourites in much recorded works?) but they are difficult qualities to define. Even more difficult - so much so that I am not even sure whether it is some sort of illusion (perhaps common for recordings that first introduced a piece to us) - is a sense of atmosphere.

I don't know, what do you look for and find most rewarding?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing to think about is the relation between the players and their instrument, the place they are performing and the other musicians in the team. Each instrument is different, different timbres and overtones etc. Each place is different, with different resonances. Each team of musicians is going to respond differently in the moment of performance. Maybe one thing which makes the performance come to life is when the musicians are taking all this stuff into account, being creative with it.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I follow what my ears and mind tell me, and don't spend a lot of time over-analyzing.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

For me it's not the quality of playing, unless it's horrendous, but all interpretation, and in orchestral music the balance comes into play. I think a good interpretation is able to make certain details stand out, or draw certain associations to form character not readily apparent. Articulations also separate a great performance from a regular one.

I thought this was a nice excerpt of an article on orchestral balance.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/917473?seq=1


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Is it easier to define what makes a performance seem "not alive" (or "dead" as we say in English :lol?

I think a dead performance feels like a run through: maybe it is under-accented, dynamic range is compressed, tempi are moderate. Picking up on post#2 perhaps you don't get any sense of interplay between instruments.

However, I'm wary of suggesting the above, because I often find that middle of the road performances are my favourites. For example, a piece may be performed really fast or really slow, but I often prefer ones which are well away from the extremes in interpretation, and more at a sort of consensus speed.

Hence, by suggesting that a run-through is dead, I don't mean that a piece should be over-accented, full of extreme variations in speed, etc, in order to be alive.

As a result, I am not really sure that I've said anything interesting at all, and maybe the answer to my question is No.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It's the rhythm - is the music moving forward? Are the attacks clean, together and precise or are they smudged. Are the tempos appropriate? Too fast can be just as damaging as too slow. And then there's phrasing and balance. It all comes down to an inner voice telling you, "yeah, that's how it should go". Whether it's solo piano, guitar, organ or full symphony orchestra that pulse keeping the music alive needs to be there.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Rhythm, tempo and phrasing are of course, crucial....
but it goes beyond that - alertness, aggressiveness [this does not necessarily mean faster or louder], ensemble...
It can be difficult to pinpoint - 
I remember reading an interview with [dare I mention the name!!] - Jimmy Levine - he was describing his years as understudy with Szell at Cleveland - 
He said that he'd hear repeated performances of the same repertoire, over and over....all were good, the orchestra was great, Szell was a superb conductor - but certain performances just stood out at superior, magical - above the rest....and it didn't necessarily happen at the big, major venues - Severance Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall, etc....it might happen in some high school auditorium when the orchestra was on tour....there was something special - an alertness, a communication, a "spirit" that simply elevated that performance above the other very good ones....


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

"What makes a performance really alive?"

Love for the music.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

If a listener senses a real joy. If an interpretation spontaneously prompts a word like delicious.

To give an example, how about Solti's recording of Bartok's Dance Suite with the CSO. I also sense real joy in Solti's Haydn 93 with the LPO. Old Georg is loving it in both. (By the way, I am not a Solti Fanboy.)

I need to listen to check, but my recollection is the Walton's 1st symphony with Previn is alive in his LSO recording and not alive in his RPO version. From memory I think this was about rhythmic "snap".


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Eclectic Al said:


> If a listener senses a real joy. If an interpretation spontaneously prompts a word like delicious.
> 
> To give an example, how about Solti's recording of Bartok's Dance Suite with the CSO. I also sense real joy in Solti's Haydn 93 with the LPO. Old Georg is loving it in both. (By the way, I am not a Solti Fanboy.)


Yes, that Solti Bartok Dance Suite is a firecracker performance - it is the very first piece I ever heard Solti/CSO play live - at Carnegie Hall in 3/70...



> I need to listen to check, but my recollection is the Walton's 1st symphony with Previn is alive in his LSO recording and not alive in his RPO version. From memory I think this was about rhythmic "snap".


Yes, you are so right - the LSO Walton #1 is a great performance - the LSO is just jumping all over the rhythm, very alert, aggressive....all of those percussive interjections are popped out, punched in with a purpose...everyone playing "on the front of the beat"....very exciting...


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

MarkW said:


> I follow what my ears and mind tell me, and don't spend a lot of time over-analyzing.


Of course, analysis can be interesting from those who can do it. But I was merely after something more impressionistic - like what qualities have you noticed in performances that really rock your boat. Maybe you can call that over-impressionistic but given that much of our time here is spent talking about our favourite recordings I don't see why. If it makes it easier for you or anyone else then there is also the option of posting about qualities they dislike in performances (that cause them to reject a performance).


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

For me, a relatively recent convert to YouTube "live" concert videos, this is the ultimate live experience. The concert-hall or other You-Are-There venue, with live performers and audience, brings a whole new level of satisfaction, joy, exultation to any piece of music. Close to a Night-and-Day phenomenon.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A performance is really alive when it makes me forget that I will die. Experiencing living music allows me to escape the bounds of mortality in moments of self-forgetting.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

When I think of performances coming alive I don't think of classical music. Jazz performance is what I think of: the spontaneous improvising soloist.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> When I think of performances coming alive I don't think of classical music. Jazz performance is what I think of: the spontaneous improvising soloist.


That's why I talked about the musician responding to the particularities of his instrument. That seems to me a characteristic of some improvisation.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Just found this comment from Anthony Braxton on this excellent CD

"As a culture, we are slowly moving away from target linear experiences that are framed as stationary constructs that don't change on repeated listening, to a new world that constantly serves up fresh opportunities and interactive discourse," Braxton says. "American people have made it clear that the new times will call for dynamic inter-action experiences."









https://firehouse12records.com/album/3-compositions-eemhm-2011


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

*I was thinking about this just yesterday.*

I have three recordings of the 1st Brahms piano trio, and the one by The Eroica Trio is my favorite because it is the most "alive." I was thinking about why, and the first thing was energy, and the second was a sense that they were really in synch with one another, answering each other, know just where they were going. It's a great recording.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The topic and what some have addressed relate to this film of Herbert von Karajan and Yehudi Menuhin discussing the interpretation of music. Menuhin's paraphrase of Lao Tzu, "it is the intangible which creates the essence of a thing and not the tangible" is gold. So too is Karajan's comparison of an orchestra changing direction during live performance to a flight of birds, which brings to mind what Mandryka said:



Mandryka said:


> ...Each team of musicians is going to respond differently in the moment of performance...


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Just found this comment from Anthony Braxton on this excellent CD
> 
> "As a culture, we are slowly moving away from target linear experiences that are framed as stationary constructs that don't change on repeated listening, to a new world that constantly serves up fresh opportunities and interactive discourse," Braxton says. "American people have made it clear that the new times will call for dynamic inter-action experiences."


A lost art today is live improvisation, or at least it is not often done . So to make it "really alive" for Classical concertos where the cadenza is left to the soloist to improvise as was often the case for say Mozart piano concertos, it should be improvised and it will be different from concerto to concert.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> A lost art today is live improvisation, or at least it is not often done .


There are different sorts of improvisation, and I don't think Braxton was really talking about free improvisation. His own compositions are notated, including the EEMHM compositions on that CD.


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## advokat (Aug 16, 2020)

Leaving aside improvisations for a moment, an example from my today´s listening to Beethoven´s piano sonatas. I have listened to various recordings from two full cycles: the first one by Kovacevich, the second one by Andre De Groote. Technically, nothing is wrong with De Groote performance, but it is not alive, and the one by Kovacevich, on the contrary, is very much so. I do not know how to define it, but one feels it. I have heard a well-know pianist use the term "apparatus". By this, I understand, he meant a unique linkage between the fingers and the mind, which takes years to develop, and which some develop more than others, for unfathomable reasons. May be this is the difference.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> "As a culture, we are slowly moving away from target linear experiences that are framed as stationary constructs that don't change on repeated listening, to a new world that constantly serves up fresh opportunities and interactive discourse," Braxton says. "American people have made it clear that the new times will call for dynamic inter-action experiences."


I'm afraid I have no idea what this means.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I think one reason I've gotten so into bossa nova lately is that it just feels so... alive. When I thought about why, the first thing that came to mind was how much _fun_ the performers seemed to be having with the music they were making.


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