Tim Hu asked:

>An insert in August's Gramophone lists comments from James Galway and
>concertmaster Thomas Brandis on their experiences with Karajan.
>
>JG: "He started to do the slow movement (of Mozart's Flute/Harp Concerto)
>but..it was totally the wrong speed, which meant he had never heard a
>recording of it, and he hadn't looked at the score before."
>
>TB: "Except for some modern pieces he didn't particularly like, he knew
>all his scores by memory. His memory was immense."
>
>Could both be right?

I'm assuming that the problem with K.'s tempo was that it was too slow;
that was the charge most leveled against him in his later years.  It's
obvious that James Galway didn't agree with K's choice of speed.  Perhaps
he was right that K's speed didn't fit the style of the music or didn't
show it to its best advantage.  But his references to the score and other
recordings miss that point.

The statement 'which meant he had never heard a recording of it' does not
tell us anything at all about the 'rightness' of K's speed - it only means
that it wasn't in line with the current consensus - and conventions shift.

There is also no contradiction between K. knowing the score and deciding to
interpret the piece in a different way. Not only do many tempo indications
give wide latitude (what is 'andante' in different contexts? - sometimes
closer to adagio, sometimes closer to allegretto), but in the end K was at
liberty to take a different speed to the one indicated if he thought it
would do the music greater justice. Whether it did in fact do so is another
question.

Galway would have been better to say 'I don't think K. understood Mozart's
music or style very well' or 'K was too focused on beauty of sound at the
expense of momentum' or something like that.

Felix Delbruck
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