Interpretation and Showmanship II

Liselapois got me thinking further along the lines of showmanship and its connection with authenticity and tradional.

Often accompanying the "showmanship" is a pulling of the piece slightly out of shape - i.e. a certain amount of rubato. This is fine in its place, and when directed by the composer, but if you are going to add rubato to places where the composer did not specify it, then the whole system of printed music breaks down. There is no point for the composer to have written any more than a shell of a few notes, and certainly no need for s/he to have concerned themselves with adding dynamic and interpretive marks. It is only a small step from here to say "why don't I add a few notes here and there", and before you know it the piece collapses as it was originally intended (stand up Colin Matthews and your Pluto movement - what a waste of time that has turned out to be).

But on the other hand you do have the argument that, had Mozart or Beethoven had access to a modern concert Grand Piano, they would have increased their interpretive directions - more dynamics, longer sustain etc. And if you are determined not to indtroduce these modern techniques then why do you not perform the piece on on original fortepiano? If you are performing a Classical piece on a modern piano, should you not do the piece justice by subtly shading it here and there according to your own preference? I have some recordings of Bach's Das Wolltemperierte Klavier, played by Andras Schiff on a modern concert grand, and he subtly shades the music with his own interpretation. I find these immensely more pleasurable and tolerable to listen to than on the harpsichord or the clavichord, yet this is completely inconsistent with Bach's wishes.

And again, I confess to a little inconsistency. I think you should be far more strict with a performance of Mozart, and the Classical era in general, than of Bach and his Baroque contemporaries. Bach's era was defined by music primarily written for an event - either religious, such as a cantata, or secular, such as a suite for dancing. The very act of transferring these pieces to the concert hall fundamentally alters their purpose and marks them as something other than what they are. Therefore, any other subsequent changes pale in comparison to this - music that was intended as purely functional has to be altered in order to become entertaining in its own right. However, the whole point of the era in which Mozart was writing was that the music was refined, balanced and elegant, suitable for both the aristocracy and the emerging bourgeosie, and above all, in a great many cases, intended to be listened to (think of the emergence of the Symphony - purely "entertainment" music, and as such, unheard of in the Baroque era). Mozart was, of course, ahead of his time, and introduced far more into his music, thinking about the responses in his listener and deliberately trying to confound, surprise and move them, through techniques which he wrote into his pieces. He knew the effect he wanted to produce in his audience and crafted his music so that it would produce this effect.

Now if a modern performer (such as Lang Lang in the performance I mentioned earlier) comes along and overlays their own interpretation through showmanship, then it disrupts the careful balance that Mozart worked out, and instead of Mozart dictating our responses, the performer is indicating to us where we should feel emotion. And this is what I have a problem with - I do not wish the performer to dictate my emotions to me. It makes me think of Shostakovich's description of the last movement of his Fifty Symphony: to paraphrase, "where you are beaten around the head and told 'your business is rejoicing', until you stagger to your feet and walk away saying 'our business is rejoicing'". If I am to be beaten about the head and instructed to rejoice, I would prefer Mozart administer the beating.