In response to Bob Draper's comments on my posting about Mozart:

>Surely the former argument goes for the works of many composers.

No doubt.  I was here specifically comparing Mozart with Beethoven.
What I meant is that Beethoven's works often have such a strong logical
pull that even an indifferent performance will make some sense - obviously,
this will be less the case in his late works.  You are right, in by far the
greatest number of composers that is not the case.

>there are dozens and dozens of versions of most of the Mozart ouvre so
>the word must be being spread correctly somewhere.

Is 'the word' meant ironically? If so, you misunderstand me: I am by
no means a proponent of the objective truth in musical interpretation.
However, there are performances where the details 'click' together more
cogently than in others, after hearing which the piece makes more sense and
its merits are more clearly apparent.  Indeed, such performances have for
me often directed me completely away from my previous understanding of the
work.  Which performances do so for different people is, of course partly
a subjective matter.  While I agree that statistically such recordings must
be available in the case of Mozart, in a given instance they are not always
easy to find.

>Here's another thought.  I don't think the works of M stand up as well as
>works of other composers to period performance.  We are so used to hearing
>the piano concertos in artificial way on modern instruments that many
>people have a false view of their value.  Not wishing to sound facetious
>but, I wonder, when you read the score, what performance do you hear in
>your head modern or period.

You are right of course: the specific sound we imagine will of course
depend on what we are used to hearing, we are to that extent always bound
by convention.  My point is that when I read a score, I nevertheless have
the time and freedom to ponder the meaning of a phrase in its context, I
can think about what the relative structural importance of various parts
is, I can 'experiment' in my head.  When I hear any actual performance, my
thoughts are inevitably channeled in a certain direction, and I am to an
extent dependent on the insights of the interpreter.  Compare reading vs
seeing a Shakespeare play.

Of course, knowledge about how works were understood in the composer's
own time is one of those crucial 'angles' that combine to enrich our
own understanding of the work, and that is where in principle the HIP
recordings have a vital educative function.  Coming to Mozart from a
perspective entirely formed by Wagner and Liszt will of course lead to many
misunderstandings.  In practice, however, I find that HIP recordings are
neither indispensible nor do they always fulfil their promise: first of
all, another valid option is, once one has taken into account what a work
meant to contemporaries, then to 'translate' that understanding into the
modern idiom.  Indeed, I would say it is the preferable option in general.
With respect, I think that HIP performances of Mozart are in a way more
'artificial' than thsoe on modern instruments because they are like a
museum - they are consciously divorced from today's culture as they were
not when Mozart was alive.  Secondly, while HIP groups play on 'authentic'
instruments, in the case of Mozart and Beethoven many of them thend to
combine this with an ethos which is modern in its literal dogmatism.  They
are metronome-bound in the case of the Beethoven symphonies, apart from a
few timid 'historically sanctioned' ornaments they do not vary repeats, and
if at all, they play rubato in the modern Artur Rubinstein manner whereas
Mozart by all accounts played rubato much in the manner of Paderewski, with
broken hands and a regular accompaniment.  They thus deny me the total
historical angle they are trying to represent.

If the HIP groups could shake off their 20th-century inhibitions, I am
very willing to think that Mozart would thrive under their approach.  Have
the Quatuor Mosaiques recorded any Mozart? I freely admit that in their
Haydn quartets I found their sparing use of vibrato much more subtle and
enjoyable than the conventional modern approach.  Far more importantly,
however - they had musical imagination.

Felix Delbruck
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