# Quality of performances and the passage of time



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I read, from time to time, people posting to say that today’s musicians can’t match those of the past in their depth of feeling or understanding of the music. For that matter, when I think back to the performances I heard as a youth, I’d have to agree in many cases.

But still – how much of our perceptions is really due to a decline in the quality of performers, and how much to the decline in our own ability to hear the music with new ears? How can we expect, after all these years, to recapture the sense of wonder in the music that we experienced when it was new to us?

Thoughts?


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## Harrowby Hall (Aug 8, 2017)

If your avatar is any indication of your own chronological age then your question is based on a very false premise. We do not listen to music with "new ears" - some of us listen with very old ears.

As we age so our hearing deteriorates and in particular we lose the ability to hear higher frequencies. Thus in later life we do not hear the bright tonal quality of musical instruments we could hear when younger. Perhaps the loss of hearing capabilities enhances our listening experiences in later life - perhaps our brains "replace" the sensations we no longer experience with an idealised version of them.

If you are talking about the technical quality of instrument playing, then I think that you will find most experts would agree that the technical ability of young musicians entering the world of music is greater than it has ever been. There is unlikely to have been any "decline in the quality of performers".

There are two other factors to consider. One is memory. Memory is not a fixed store of events and sensations, it is an active, continual re-assessment and re-organisation of material, continually being regenerated. It is not, therefore, an accurate representation of past events but a re-creation based on intervening events, sensations and values.

The other consideration is perception. Perception is not an inert recording process, like photography, but an active, creative process affected by mood, circumstances, attention and environment. Our interpretation of an event may well differ from that of someone standing next to us. We listen through a fog of tinnitus. if we are truly engaged in the process of listening we may be temporarily unaware of our hearing deficiency. Our brain is reprocessing the listening experience.

All that said, there are musical experiences which we treasure. I recall Elgar 2 under Sargent in 1966, I recall the _Symphonie Fantastique_ under Stokowski in 1968. My recollections of them exist in a kind of framework of burnished gold. But in reality, I remember the effect the performances had on me rather than the performances themselves.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

Harrowby Hall said:


> If your avatar is any indication of your own chronological age then your question is based on a very false premise. We do not listen to music with "new ears" - some of us listen with very old ears.


I'm not sure Ken's age has anything to do with the topic - or why his question (he asked three!) is based on a false premise. There is no doubt that some members here are of the opinion that the conductors and performers of the mid 20th C are the unrivalled masters, and some won't even accept that the poor recording quality of, say, the 30s-50s is an impediment to enjoyment of their masterpiece interpretations.

But the rest of your post is admirable, espcially this:



Harrowby Hall said:


> Memory is not a fixed store of events and sensations, it is an active, continual re-assessment and re-organisation of material, continually being regenerated. It is not, therefore, an accurate representation of past events but a re-creation based on intervening events, sensations and values.
> 
> The other consideration is perception. Perception is not an inert recording process, like photography, but an active, creative process affected by mood, circumstances, attention and environment. Our interpretation of an event may well differ from that of someone standing next to us. We listen through a fog of tinnitus. if we are truly engaged in the process of listening we may be temporarily unaware of our hearing deficiency. Our brain is reprocessing the listening experience.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I think that Ken’s age is definitely applies to the question that he is asking. As I understood his question, he is asking if those of us who have spent decades now listening to legendary performers play have not become a bit jaded. Perhaps we cannot evaluate new performers and place their abilities in a proper context because we inevitably compare them not only to legendary recordings, and also to our memories of concerts of days past—and as #2 implies, those memories are tinged with nostalgia and emotion and are less than reliable.
My first thought was that the question may not apply to younger people who are learning music and are not so saturated with the sounds of past performers.
Then for the rest of us geezers, speaking for myself , I am constantly comparing New to Old. I think the technical abilities of performers in the non Operatic fields are very high today. It may be different for Singers. What has changed is the proximity of the players to the Composers. Listening to a student of Leopold Auer play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto isn’t the same as hearing a wunderkind born in the 21st Century. The older players, many of whom played with teachers who were closely linked with the Composers, inevitably Sound more idiomatic.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

I suppose that we are only talking about performances of music written after ca.1750. My main interests are about Early Music (music written before 1750), and there is no doubt that performers of Early Music have become very much better during the last 50 years, not the least thanks to musicology and instrument builders.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> There is no doubt that some members here are of the opinion that the conductors and performers of the mid 20th C are the unrivalled masters,


Are you sure? I mean, who?



MacLeod said:


> and some won't even accept that the poor recording quality of, say, the 30s-50s is an impediment to enjoyment of their masterpiece interpretations.


I'm one of those, I can enjoy pre-war recordings. But this is irrelevant to the thread really. Surely no one would say that generally pre war performances were better. That would be a very unusual thing to claim.



MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure Ken's age has anything to do with the topic


It's hard to think of what else , apart from age, and a conservative and reactionary nature, could bear on his opinion that when he thinks back to the performances he heard as a youth, he'd have to agree in many cases that today's musicians can't match those of the past in their depth of feeling or understanding of the music.

(The point about understanding of the music seems astonishing to me! As if we've lost some understanding . . . What could have caused this alleged loss?)


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I don't think there's been any decline in the quality of performers - just the opposite. 50 years ago if you wanted to hear first-class orchestral playing you went to the big cities with great orchestras: New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and the 2nd tier groups in Los Angeles, Seattle, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, etc. Nowadays you can hear fine orchestras in Cheyenne, Denver, Tucson, Phoenix, El Paso, Portland, Des Moines, Omaha, Akron...and the list goes on and on. Our music schools discovered how to train musicians and there are so many more highly trained ones than there used to be and they want to play - where ever it takes them.

I do think there has been a tremendous decline in the quality of conducting. From the technical standpoint, today's baton wielders are fine - brilliant maybe. But their musical understanding is sadly lacking because of the way they are trained. Coming up through the opera pit, or the ballet, really did make for better conductors in some intangible way. The Golden Era conductors who came up through that system will never be matched. The likes of Toscanini, Walter, Szell, Reiner, Dorati, Solti, Scherchen, Paray, Ormandy, Beecham, Boult, Kleiber, Mravinsky...what giants we used to have.

It is hard sometimes to keep music fresh. How do you refresh that sense of wonder? How many more times can you hear the Eroica or Pathetique without being bored? Well, there is a way that works for me: I buy recordings that I never heard before, but not so much new ones (although I do buy some of those) but older recordings. For Beethoven, I picked up an old set on Ebay conducted by Carl Schuricht. Amazing! What vitality and excitement the French orchestra must have had. Brahms - the very old recordings by Felix Weingartner made when Brahms wasn't even dead 30 years. Or the thrilling Brahms set with Bruno Walter from New York in the early 50s; there's not one conductor alive today who can match those for musicianship and electricity. There are many ways to get these older recordings: LPs at a local recycle bookstore for hardly anything. Used cds on Ebay, Berkshire Record Outlet.

Then there's this: I abstain from some music for a period of time. In my last case it was Mahler whose music I dearly love, collect rabidly, and listen to frequently. But it was becoming routine. So I took a two year hiatus from all Mahler. When I was ready, I took out a set that isn't one of the venerated cycles, but one that is honest, well-played and conducted, and well recorded: Inbal on Denon. I heard things I don't know if I'd ever heard before. It was thrilling to rehear these works after a two year absence. Right now, I'm staying away from Wagner and maybe sometime in the fall I'll take the operas off the shelf and once again discover why that music is so essential, at least to me.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

mbhaub, for this reason, I never dwell on any piece or composer too long, in order not to spoil it. I really love Bruckner, but I listened to all his symphonies 4-5 times and then deliberately moved on to other composers, in order not to spoil it for myself. And now, that I have Bruckner, Prokofiev, Tchaikovski, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Dvorak, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Schumann, Schubert, Mahler, Bartok etc, each having written several symphonies, I recycle my listenings, never dwelling on one composer or piece for too long. You need to save good music to be able to enjoy it for a long time


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I suspect that we all 'imprint' on the first recordings that we encountered and particularly enjoyed. For those over (say) 50 and who have been listening for decades, that means it was probably those conductors and soloists who were active and had a substantial reputation in the 60s and 70s. 

As to the question of quality of conductors, I doubt that they are any better or worse than they were, the difference is that now we only pay attention to the really good ones from 50 years ago and forget those who were only mediocre whereas with those who are currently active, we see the entire spectrum.

Singers, however, seem to be a slightly different matter, there does seem to be fewer of the quality of the past and that may indeed be a function of them coming along too fast ... but I will leave that to the TC vocal experts to discuss.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There does seem to have been a dearth of heldentenors for a long time.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I symphathize with Ken, mainly with the pianists. There is obviously many pianists with great technical ability. But the focus is more on technical ability. Many interpretations are built on simple and extreme contrasting in speed and dynamics, than in nuance. Last night I heard Trifonov barrel through Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata 1 (his Chopin is much better I admit), and Yuja Wang on no. 6, with no regard for character. No need to mention Lang Lang. 

One reason for this is, as I gather from a history of great pianists documentary, that the old masters whose had their learning and techniques from the composers themselves or passed down from them have been dying off. Claudio Arrau was the last of them according to that documentary. The music interpretations are now reboots of the old. Maybe over time, these young pianists may acquire more maturity. But if the paying audience prefers performance antics, and short skirts, over depth, then that could be an obstacle.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I’m afraid that a couple of people here may have mistaken my meaning in the first post. I am bemoaning not the claimed deficiencies of newer performances, but our own inability to hear today’s performers with the same open ears we may have had in our younger years. To mangle a phrase, “The fault, dear listener, is not in our performers but in ourselves.”


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

Recordings are the blessing and the curse of classical music. On the one hand, recordings have made it possible for the masses to appreciate and enjoy more classical music than any king or queen living in the 18th or 19th centuries. On the other hand, recordings have made it so that the entire repertoire has been spoken for. 

There was an episode of the old black-and-white Twilight Zone where Jack Klugman plays a young pool master who has devoted his life to the game of pool, at the expense of anything else in his life, but the one thing he can't do is compete with "Fats", the late, great "Fats" (portrayed by Jonathan Winthers) who was a legend. The point is simple: you can't compete with the dead, and that's what recordings have done. 

By an accident of birth, there was a "Golden Age" of classical recordings (approx. 1950s-1980s) that saw the likes of Toscanini, Bernstein, Ormandy, Szell, Karajan, Heifetz, Horowitz and many others whose careers overlapped with a new technology that made classical recordings listenable and available to the masses. The ones who came just a little while after this "Golden Age", are condemned to compete with the dead, and that is a nearly impossible task.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> *Are you sure? I mean, who?*
> 
> I'm one of those, I can enjoy pre-war recordings. But this is irrelevant to the thread really. Surely no one would say that generally pre war performances were better. That would be a very unusual thing to claim.
> 
> ...


I started to compose a reply to this last night, but had to go out, so didn't complete it...but I needn't have worried - I should have just said, "Wait, they'll be along in a minute." I may have set the decade range a little too early - I don't know, I'm not the expert on who did what when, but it's easy enough to find online, the opinion that the old is at least as good as, if not better than the new:



> *Artur Schnabel* recorded a set of Beethoven complete solo piano music in the 1930s whose insights have never been surpassed.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...st-interpreter-of-Beethovens-piano-music.html

Obviously, I'm not about to go searching through every post to find the comments from those who, over time, have said they prefer Furtwangler to Alsop (or somesuch).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> I started to compose a reply to this last night, but had to go out, so didn't complete it...but I needn't have worried - I should have just said, "Wait, they'll be along in a minute." I may have set the decade range a little too early - I don't know, I'm not the expert on who did what when, but it's easy enough to find online, the opinion that the old is at least as good as, if not better than the new:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...st-interpreter-of-Beethovens-piano-music.html
> 
> Obviously, I'm not about to go searching through every post to find the comments from those who, over time, have said they prefer Furtwangler to Alsop (or somesuch).


Well in some sonatas at least I think that Schnabel's insights have never been surpassed, but this is, i think, very different from saying that today's pianists "can't match" (Ken's phrase) him.

The difference is between a conception where each new generation brings its own insights, no more or less valuable than those which came before. And once which thinks the past is better than the present.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

More an existential question than anything I suspect. Today will become just another one of the "good old days" for a future generation. I do not believe for moment that the quality of music / performance / recording has diminished in the contemporary. Individual aesthetic values maybe well be subject to historical leanings and preferences. But in absolute terms, music is as good as it's ever been and it may well be better. IMO. Of course, it would be helpful to have a yardstick against which to measure quality of performance that exists outside of subjective preference and historicity of understanding.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

To be sure, musical tastes change over time, and performance habits that used to be the norm are no longer acceptable or desirable.

100 years ago string portamento was expected, now it sounds awful to our ears. When a conductor does ask for it, it comes as a surprise and can make a moment very touching. But listening to old recordings where it was common it is annoying and disturbing.

There was a time when vibrato in horns was common - not today! Even Russian orchestras by and large no longer use it.

Many conductors of the Golden Era had no inhibition about making cuts or retouching orchestration. Even the so-called literalists did it: Toscanini, Szell, Reiner...

However - I have heard enough of great conductors past and present, recorded and live, to be concerned about what's happening on the podium. Yes, it's very subjective and impossible to make a score card for. There are too many "maestros" who can't just let the music flow - everything has to be turned into a Mahler-like creation. Too many don't understand musical architecture. They don't know how to voice a chord, and in many cases can't tune a chord. There's just too many who have been thrust upon orchestras and the public without having the necessary skills and talent. There are of course exceptions and some conductors doing fine things. But it's a job that takes years of experience to master. The certain something that lifts a conductor to the "great" status is a whole other matter. I remember hearing an interview a few years ago with a member of the Vienna Philharmonic who was asked who the orchestra's favorite conductors are. He replied, "they're all dead". I feel sorry for todays conductors who have to deal with a civilization which has marginalized classical music. They have to know not only the essential European repertoire, but have to master some extraordinarily complex new music. They have to have the psychological ability to deal with 90 musicians who collectively know more about music than that whipper snapper does. It was probably easier for the older generation who could fire players easily.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Becca said:


> .......
> 
> Singers, however, seem to be a slightly different matter, there does seem to be fewer of the quality of the past and that may indeed be a function of them coming along too fast ... but I will leave that to the TC vocal experts to discuss.


I'm no devotee of opera or CM singing in general, but I agree with Becca's comment. Whenever I hear the latest exciting young tenor being talked up, I reach for my Bjorling CDs.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Hearing music with a sense of wonder is still possible later in life. My jaw dropped in wonderfication when I recently heard Nicola Benedetti do the Shostakovich 1st Violin Concerto. Music itself in general? Perhaps it’s like sex. Nothing is ever exactly like the thrill of the first time in one’s youth but it can still be awesome.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> ...I have heard enough of great conductors past and present, recorded and live, to be concerned about what's happening on the podium. Yes, it's very subjective and impossible to make a score card for. There are too many "maestros" who can't just let the music flow - everything has to be turned into a Mahler-like creation. Too many don't understand musical architecture. They don't know how to voice a chord, and in many cases can't tune a chord. There's just too many who have been thrust upon orchestras and the public without having the necessary skills and talent. There are of course exceptions and some conductors doing fine things. But it's a job that takes years of experience to master. The certain something that lifts a conductor to the "great" status is a whole other matter. I remember hearing an interview a few years ago with a member of the Vienna Philharmonic who was asked who the orchestra's favorite conductors are. He replied, "they're all dead". I feel sorry for todays conductors who have to deal with a civilization which has marginalized classical music. They have to know not only the essential European repertoire, but have to master some extraordinarily complex new music. They have to have the psychological ability to deal with 90 musicians who collectively know more about music than that whipper snapper does. It was probably easier for the older generation who could fire players easily.


What the conductors and orchestras seemed to have that the modern day lacks can be described as personality. Bernstein made the New York Philharmonic swing. Ormandy's hand created the "Philadelphia sound" that as one commentator said: "turned the strings to silver and the brass to gold". Szell wielded Cleveland's orchestra like the master chef he was, serving up the music with exact proportions. Karajan put the gloss, shine and wax on the Berlin Philharmonic. Toscanini's NBC Orchestra played brisk and lean.

Whether you care for their style or not, there is a personality that comes to the fore, even when the orchestra is in the hands of someone else because those great luminaries of the past were as much orchestra builders as they were conductors. While today's sound technology and playing may be superior; it's the way that modern conductors are jet-setting around the world playing musical chairs with the orchestras they conduct that may make the sounds they produce seem generic.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I've been listening to classical music for about 50 ! years ever since I was a teenager, discovered classical music and became a classical music freak . Live performances , and I've played who knows how many concerts myself as a horn player , recordings on LP, tapes and CDs .on youtube . 
And you know what ? I don't find performances of the present day inferior to those of my callow 
youth . I've heard antique recordings by such legendary conductors as Artur Nickish , Felix Weingartner, Franz Schalk , Walter Damrosch and others , and frankly , the orchestras don't play nearly as well as those of today . 
Pablo Casals, who lived from 1876 to 1973 , stated that in his youth , "orchestras did not play in tune ". Nor do they "sound" more distinctive . I reject the notion that all or most orchestras "sound alike ". They do not . It's a physical and acoustical impossibility for orchestras to sound alike ,because they consist of different musicians pklaying different makes on instruments in concert hals with different acoustics . 
There are many older orchestral recordings which ARE superbly played , but I don't think the playing is technically any better than today's orchestras .
I have enormous admiration for such legendary conductors as Furtwangler, Walter, Klemperer, Toscanini, Beecham, Mengelberg, Monteux , Munch , Talich , Asermet, De Sabata , Barbirolli, Szell, Boult, 
and others . 
But we have plenty of conductors who are giants today : Dohnanyi, Haitink, Blomstedt, Barenboim ,Muti, Levine, Ashkenazy, Mehta, Neeme Jarvi, Jansons, Nagano, Rattle, Chailly, Gergiev, Gardiner,
Inbal, Janowski, Ozawa, Previn, Rozhdestvensky, Slatkin , Dutoit, for example. And there are quite a few others .
A number of conducting giants have passed away recently : Maazel, Abbado, Boulez, Mackerras, Masur , Carlos Kleiver, Giulini, Harnoncourt , Berglund , for example . But their memories are still fresh . 
There are so many great opera singers, pianists, violinists , cellists et al today . While it's understandable that many people have their preferences from the legendary names of the past in classical music , I'm convinced the golden age of classical music is NOW .


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

superhorn said:


> There are so many great opera singers, pianists, violinists , cellists et al today . While it's understandable that many people have their preferences from the legendary names of the past in classical music , I'm convinced the golden age of classical music is NOW .


I am not sure that I'd go so far as to say that the golden age is now as compared to 30 or 60 years ago, but I would say that things are the same ... only different


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

mbhaub and Boston Charlie make good points on the subject....
There is a definite loss of "personality" amongst orchestras, tho the very top ones are able to maintain a unique sound, mainly because of the student "feeder" system - bringing in young musicians who have studied with incumbent personnel.

There is no doubt, tho, that there are way more very fine, technically excellent musicians around today, then in the past century - Conservatories are turning out many, many fine players, and these musicians have greatly enhanced the quality of the so-called 2nd or 3rd tier orchestras. These are very fine orchestras, capable of producing fine performances of the most demanding repertoire. I'm not sure that the very best musicians of today are any better than the very best of past years....but there are definitely more very good players around than in the past...the technical skills are very impressive.
I do find a certain homogeneous - generic sort of sound developing - and I think it has much to do with current audition procedure, and with the constant switching, jumping from one orchestra to another....
modern audition process encourages very safe, accurate playing in the preliminary rounds - "color everything inside the lines", nothing outrageous, don't **** anybody off - play everything safe, straight....in later rounds, finals, of course, let it all hang out, expression, tone, dynamics - swing for the fences - but to get to the finals - play safe...
This leads to a style that will please any and all audition committee members, whether in Atlanta, Oregon, Indianapolis, or wherever....a certain homogenous "Bb" style is bound to result....
in the past - the conductor had sole power of hiring and firing - if he heard a musician whose playing appealed to him, he got the job...the conductor had a clear concept in his mind of what sound he wanted the orchestra to produce....he knew exactly what he wanted, or did not want...his choice was not eliminated in any preliminary round by an ad hoc committee...
I tend to agree with previous comments about present conductors - there are many very good ones, whether they leave the same mark as past masters remains to be seen...However, very many who are holding positions seem to have no concept of orchestral sound or how to achieve it....I've seen conductors totally ignorant of section balance, tone, how to perfect ensemble - entrances, releases, etc, or correct intonation....so many times I've witnessed conductors correct the wrong pitch, or try to change the correct one in favor of the wrong one...
It's true that many of the podium giants of the past were superb orchestra builders and trainers - Reiner, Monteux, Szell, Dorati spring to mind - remarkably successful. they achieved this thru many rehearsals, concerts, auditions, hirings/firings, etc - the music director spent lots of time in front of "his" orchestra...conductors of today are busy jet-setting around to all sorts of different venues - it's how it is done today....good for the career, but not necessarily so good for building an orchestra.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

The biggest thing that I have noticed over the last 10 years or so is that I don’t keep up with the modern artists so much, I think the BBC proms have deteriorated at least that which is shown on our TV, I agree that the young up and coming musicians are technically better than say 100 years ago but I can’t say the same about some of today’s composers.
I heard Chopins P con 1 last night on the radio I thought it was Perahia but it turned out to be Lang Lang, it sounded good to me??
To sum up in general I agree with Ken, its my fault.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Heck, audition committees don't encourage any homogeneity of sound . They have very specific criteria for any applicant . Aside from does a player have the technical chops and god intonation., they want a player whom they feel has the kind of sound both the orchestra and the specific section should have . 
You can play very well, but if you don't have the kind of sound and style of playing both the committee and the music director want, you won't get the job . Reports of how 
"homogenized" the sounds of orchestra are today have been greatly exaggerated . It's an acoustical and physical impossibility for orchestras to sound alike, because they consist of different musicians playing different names of instrument sin concert halls with different acoustics .
Dennis Brain would never have won an audition of the New York Philharmonic , because his sound and playing style was totally different form the traditional New York horn sound .


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

superhorn said:


> Heck, audition committees don't encourage any homogeneity of sound . They have very specific criteria for any applicant . Aside from does a player have the technical chops and god intonation., they want a player whom they feel has the kind of sound both the orchestra and the specific section should have.


only if the specific sections are doing the choosing, but that is not how the present process works....now it sounds to me like they want an homogeneous sound, that is pleasing -



> You can play very well, but if you don't have the kind of sound and style of playing both the committee and the music director want, you won't get the job.


what the committee, and the conductor want are not necessarily the same, in fact, very often, not....but the conductor does not get involved until the later rounds. 
For the very top level orchestras, yes - the particular tone quality, and style of performance - articulation, dynamics, etc are most important...in fact, they will often invite particular performers to perform a series of concerts as an audition....these are accomplished principal musicians who already hold positions in major orchestras...they are, essentially, exempt from the preliminary audition rounds, by virtue of their proven artistry in their incumbent positions

IMO - there should be different audition committees for different instruments, at least for the first round - string players audition strings, woodwinds audition woodwinds, brass, the brass, etc...that way - the unique tones and styles can be preserved...but that is not how it is usually done audition committees are drawn by rotation from all the orchestra membership, to hear all auditions...Why should a violist be choosing who plays 2nd trombone?? why should a horn player be choosing who gets the assistant concertmaster chair?? shouldn't the sections involved have the primary say??



> Reports of how "homogenized" the sounds of orchestra are today have been greatly exaggerated . It's an acoustical and physical impossibility for orchestras to sound alike, because they consist of different musicians playing different names of instrument sin concert halls with different acoustics.


In past years, you could pretty easily identify orchestras by their sound - specific principals and sections had very characteristic sounds - you could tell Chicago from Boston, from Philadelphia from Vienna, or Leningrad, etc...
Now - can you really tell, just on hearing, whether you are listening to Seattle, Atlanta or National Symphony??

I doubt it....the homogeneous sound, that will be acceptable to the audition committees is growing ever more similar.



> Dennis Brain would never have won an audition of the New York Philharmonic , because his sound and playing style was totally different form the traditional New York horn sound .


Right, my point exactly, that was then, this is now....now the emphasis is on presenting a pleasing sound, that is NOT unique, but rather is pleasing to everybody.....


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

I would say the average, repeat again _the average_, declines steadily. It is expectable since the appeal of classical of music the mass nowadays is nowhere the same as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, when the media set their eyes on Nellie Melba, Enrico Caruso, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky as much as they do nowadays with Lady Gaga, Chris Brown, Snoop Dogg and so on. It can be the same when we compare the second golden age from 1950-1960 to our days. The craves for public attention created competitions; competitions and pressure, in turn, elevated the standard (survival of the fittest duh!). An example in opera, the fact that immense artists such as Eleanor Steber and Eileen Farrell struggled to make their names, yet the like of Anna Netrebko are roaming freely at the MET and considered "the assoluta of the century" speaks volume (just go Youtube and search how three of them sing _"Depuis le jour"_. A modern "diva" like Netrebko is nothing compared to the "smaller" names in the past). Eleanor Steber and Eileen Farrell were great -the audience too recognized that- but the competitions were too fierce for them.

That being said, I think "the creams of the crop" of each generation are comparable. I recently read an old music review, probably in the 40s-50s, lamented that the pianists at the time couldn't perform Brahms as well as *Alfred Hoehn*(1887 - 1945), a legendary historical pianist. However, when Glenn Gould and Emil Gilels came on the scene a decade later, judging from their recordings, I must say that their playings of the concerto were at least as good as Hoehn's. Or the other day, I was amazed listening to Arthur Jussen, a very talented youngster playing a Brahms Intermezzo. I am optimistic that he can reach the level of the golden age artist in his prime.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

My view is the “right” way (true to markings) and/or best approaches to the music in a large extant have already been done. The modern performers now can only try to live up to the music now, or go off on a certain tangent, which could be interesting in ways, but might not embody the music they are performing as a whole. To be an original interpreter, you have to exaggerate certain things, which may work in an immediate way to an effect, but lose focus as a whole. The last part doesn’t need to be true, but is just that much harder on the part of the modern interpreter.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2018)

My son gave me two LPs for Christmas and I had to go out and buy a new turntable to listen to them. One was this:

View attachment 101437


First two symphonies, Tapiola, Belshazzar's Feast, Robert Kajanus conducting.

Now, I don't know who the "Symphony Orchestra" is (was?) but at times they sounded like a college orchestra. They had "personality" alright!


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Performing style taught in conservatories and universities today is far different than it was 60 years ago and worlds away from what it was 150 years ago. Today, people are taught to play technically. This is why every new phenom that comes along in the recorded world has technique to burn. Yet the reason many of these same people don't make very good art is because they don't understand the music they are playing. This is what has changed in musicmaking over the past generation, especially as it relates to period performance practice.

I have been a singer for 50 years, was never professionally trained but sang in (and was trained by) directors of church, university and community chorales. The best teacher, in my opinion, is not the one that teaches you the notes or how to adapt to tessitura; it is the teacher that understands music and what it is saying. Music is a language that is interpreted. That used to be the main force in teaching advanced students. I'm not sure it is any longer.

I once saw a video of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau teaching singers. It at first seemed strange to me that he never once commented on their volume, diction, pace or any other technical area. His focus was 100 percent on the poetry of the score and the way the singer presented it. This is what music education used to be for advanced students. 

Today that has changed to technique, so today's newbies play extraordinarily well but sometimes don't communicate its messages very well. This is one reason that, in the 21st century with more musicians of higher quality than ever before in history, many listeners seem to discern a decline in the overall quality of musicmaking.

There are a couple books from recent years that touch on some of this. One is "Lost Secrets of Master Musicians: A Window Into Genius" by David Jacobson wherein he compares teaching at the Curtis Institute to the way people like Heifetz and Gould were trained and communicated music. It probably isn't fair to compare students to the greatest musicians in history but the broadness of his points goes beyond that.


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2018)

In general I agree and indeed especially in the HIP performance practise,very annoying.I am in favor for the historically based performing but it is becoming a rigid ,horrid pigs race.
Indeed all the poetry seems to squeezed out and rasping their violins suggesting that there is an inner fire.
Technically impressive but no soul.no romantic feeling because that is forbidden and against the rules.
As puppets on a string all playing a lifeless dance,it is a pity,really it is.
It is impossible to sing along with the ensemble and there is no invitation anyway in their way of playing to do so.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I have heard period performance I enjoyed and some interpretations I found more pleasing than the traditional way. I am at odds with the dogmatic approach to period performance, however. There are hundreds of factors not considered when 21st century groups try to recreate what they believe to be an 18th or 19th century sound. One is the quality of performance venues, another is the quality of the musicians themselves, and a third is the quality of the scholarship. I would say, for the most part, the first two are generally better today -- so how can music from two centuries ago sound like it did then? Who would know.

On the scholarship end I have great misgivings. Anything that makes J.S. Bach sound like a sewing or any other kind of machine is, in my opinion, absurd. We know so much about Bach and all of it leads us to a genius of volcanic temperament, extreme humanity, powerful devotion to God, and a musician for the centuries. 

Among many other qualities, Bach could play all the instruments, sing all the parts, he reworked his own and other composers' music to ends he wanted, he wouldn't write opera because it wasn't worthy of God, he wore out one wife and married another, fostering 20-some children, and he wrote the art of fugue for no reason other than his own intellectual exercise, never intending it for performance. He even spent a night in jail over a music dispute. How could the music of a man like this ever be as wishy-washy as period specialists make it? This was a man made of the same fire and ice, blood and steel as Karajan's characterization of a famous performer.

Another is the case of Antonio Vivaldi. Other than he worked much of his life at a school for disposed girls (whom he taught to play instruments and play his compositions) almost nothing is known of his life. So what "scholarship" led anyone to think the average Vivaldi concerto is played at 135 to the quarter note? There is no historical evidence for this whatsoever but it has been taken for granted for a generation and has wrecked performances of his lovely and inventive music for more than 30 years.

I know, from listening to and performing classical music since the 1960s. that patterns of performance are trendy and not always related to scholarship or anything else anyone ever learned through research. Much of the time, it is more monkey see, monkey do. When Roger Norrington redid Beethoven's symphonies at speeds no one had heard in a half-century in the 1980s, this was the outcome of his research into Beethoven's own metronome markings. Much of the time, I think, new performances using today's ideas are simply nothing more than going along with what is perceived to be correct today.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

To me, it's far less important for an orchestra to have a "recognizable sound" of its own than to be able to alter its sound and style to the period and nationality of the music . People talk about the distinctive Ormandy/Philadelphia sound, but they tended to apply that "Philadelphia sound " in a kind of one size fits all manner , rather than changing for the music itself . An orchestra should be like a chameleon , able to be as flexible and versatile as possible .


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

As someone who has listened to recorded CM for decades, I can say that I find it easy to appreciate the present-day pianists and violinists as the equals or even superior to the so-called greats of the long past. Some of those so-called greats were actually not that great. Also, recording quality prior to the late 50s IMO was pretty poor by today's standards. Today, a smaller company such as Hyperion routinely puts out recordings of astounding technical quality.

Two areas where I have nostalgia for the past (as has been mentioned by others) are the iconic orchestras and opera singers that I think were, in general, superior to those of today.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

There another trend in HIP that it seems not too many people are aware of: performing music of the Romantic era with period correct instruments and scrupulously following the score. The Anima Eterna Orchestra has a series that has really opened my ears. Recordings of Scheherazade, Symphonie Fantastique, some Debussy and the Beethoven symphonies are amazing. They don't follow the usual HIP practices of abandoning string vibrato totally, but the sonority of the period instruments (or imitations) is remarkable. There is a difference between the French basson and the German fagott. Trumpets and horns tuned with crooks rather than valves are really different from modern valved instruments. Very valuable series.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

HIP was an interesting idea in theory , but I've always been skeptical as to how authentic these performances are . We're hearing what the music MIGHT have sounded like in the past . 
But the period instrument movement has been carried to absurd lengths . 20th century orchestras of the 20s and 30s barely sound different to our mainstream orchestras of today . 
Bruckner and Mahler ? Herreweghe's Bruckner symphony recordings sound somewhat thinner than say, the Chicago symphony , but otherwise, barely different . 
The law of diminishing returns is kicking in .


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