Comments on: Sugar and Music

By: Alban

Alban — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:07:11 +0000

I must admit that in the past few years (or even decades) I have not really listened to any of them, actually I haven’t listened to recordings in quite a long time. I love going to concerts, and maybe from retrospective it is pretty impossible to judge these old cellists anyway – I am a different musician in a recording studio, so why not these guys as well? And mind you, Feuermann died about 50 years or so younger than Casals – who knows in what kind of musician he would have developed if he had lived a bit longer. What I just meant was that if people nowadays would play as straight forward (and yes, pretty quick) as Feuermann and also Casals (his Dvorak is about 5 minutes faster than what we do today, I think), he would be considered superficial and boring. The big gesture is missing in most of the old guys, and I like it, I am afraid…

By: Guido

Guido — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:04:19 +0000

It is late night here too (I’m only an hour behind here in Cambridge!). That makes perfect sense – Vibrato is such an intrinsic property of Feuermann’s playing that its impossible to imagine his ‘sound’ without it. I actually don’t enjoy alot of his recordings – most cellists adore his Dvorak concerto, but I can’t take all that virtuosity for its own sake (where he speeds up in the fast passages where most cellists would be struggling anyway). This is just my own experience of the music of course – other people love it, and it does not diminish his status as one of the greatest string players of the last century. For me though, Casals just had something which Feuermann never quite attained…

By: Alban

Alban — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:16:25 +0000

oh, I am saying late at night because here it is 1:15 pm… (Berlin time)

By: Alban

Alban — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:15:52 +0000

you are absolutely right, Guido, Feuermann does vibrate every single note, for the longest time he was my hero in doing that and I still have the tendency to vibrate every note as well, which is sometimes good, sometimes can be annoying…
Anyway: my complaint about “too much vibrato” is not so much the frequency but rather the quality of the vibrato. With Feuermann it is much rather a general colour of his playing, but since the amplitude of it is so narrow, it never bothers me, it never sounds hysterical and tasteless, but (at least for me), it does sound subtle. No, it is definitely not the vibrato I have a problem with, it is the exaggerated musical expressions, the rubati which fall completely out of proportions, or dynamics, when people see a little hairpin (?) and do a huge crescendo to ff instead of just a swell – do you know what I mean or am I a bit too confused so late at night?

By: Guido

Guido — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:41:53 +0000

interesting that you mention Feuermann as a model of subtlety, taste and sophistication, and then talk about people playing with too much vibrato – Feuermann uses more vibrato than any other cellist I’ve heard – basically every note, apart from when it is too fast to vibrate – he even vibrates some of the octave passages in the Dvorak that most cellists wouldn’t be able to do even if they wanted to!

By: Alban

Alban — Thu, 17 May 2007 08:25:18 +0000

But this exactly what I mean. Swaying does more than maybe really playing more expressive, and yes, you are right, excess is sometimes just the thing. Go crazy at some point, loose your control, your composture, yes, I am all for it – but if it’s all the time and whenever we feel we want to say something, it becomes flat and ,sorry for the comparison, goes in the direction of Mexican soap opera, if you know what I mean (the over-the-top crying and sreaming all the time – how believable is it? Actually not at all – same in music :))

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:13:47 +0000

Well said, very well explained.
It reminds me of a well known principal clarinetist….he told me that he has his “expressive face”, which is this ridiculous swooning and swaying and bug eye look. When a conductor asks for something “more expressive”, he plays the same way but does the face and the swaying and they are happy.

I admire your approach, playing and philosophy. And your snobbish preference for European pastries over Starbucks, I couldn’t agree more. But Alban it must be said; sometimes excess is just the thing 🙂

By: Alban

Alban — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:51:58 +0000

Miklos Perenyi is a wonderful musician and cellist, but he plays indeed very introvert (which I like very much), much much more so than me. Under normal circumstances you would call my playing rather extrovert – just not self-indulgent… But yes, it is very sad, that the critic didn’t realize what musician Perenyi is. Projection or not projection, this is not so much the matter, but what we do with the music (as long as we are not completely drowned). Thanks for the comment, best wishes from Seoul,
Alban

By: Neil Bennison

Neil Bennison — Wed, 16 May 2007 04:41:51 +0000

We had something similar happen in the 2005-6 season of Nottingham Classics. Miklos Perenyi gave a very subtle and intimate performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto and one music critic felt that it didn’t project enough, yet every note could be heard. Maybe a case in point of our tendency to want to see more heart on sleeve?

By: Alban

Alban — Sun, 13 May 2007 23:30:09 +0000

but this is the wonderful thing about music, it is entirely subjective. There are indeed people who don’t believe so, they believe there are certain “objective” standards by which you can judge a piece of art or a performance. But then you have these standards, you apply them to a performance, and even if all standards have been met, it might have not fulfilled you at all, or vice versa: no standards met, but you were touched. And each member in the audience experiences it in a different way. Rather fascinating…