Correct me if I am wrong but I have grave fears that Wilson Pereira has
completely misunderstood me by quoting me side by side with JEG:

>Satoshi Akima  wrote:
>
>>Most HIP performances do not utilize fast tempi well (...).
>
>It's interesting to add to this debate what John Eliot Gardiner
>says about the subject...

As for the rhetoric that follows, I have heard all this before.  However
I did not disagree that Beethoven's own markings were 'correct'.  My
criticism was that of their IMPLIMENTATION.

The question goes back to that of what tempo actually in its essence really
is.  In my mind it is not merely something mathematical-physical in any
Newtonian sense.  That is only part of the story.  Tempo in music is the
Becoming, the Coming-into-Being, and the Unfolding of musical Ideas.  If
the musician fails to have a profound understanding of the Idea it does not
matter how slowly or quickly it is played: the tempi will always sound too
fast or too slow regardless.

When I first heard JEG's cycle I was most impressed, but with every year
that has passed the cycle becomes less and less satisfactory, whereas
Harnoncourt's cycle seems only to grow in stature.  Similarly, every time
i return to Furtwaengler I rediscover just how profound Beethoven really
is all over again, banishing all fears that he might be superceded by
musicological 'progress'.  No matter how 'correct' Beethoven's metronome
markings are, I cannot but feel that Furtwaengler's tempi are just perfect,
just as I feel that Baremboim's tempi feel wrong even when his 'tempi' in
a metronomic sense are just as slow.

The problem with the JEG cycle is indeed once again that of 'tempi'.
His tempi seem too fast and superficial.  This is not to say his adoption
of Beethoven's metronome markings was wrong.  It is to say that their
implementation is a complete failure.

On the other hand if you listen to Hermann Scherchen conducting the 8th,
he too is very fast in a purely metronomic sense.  In fact Scherchen is
even faster than JEG, yet compared to JEG his tempi sounds almost leisurely.
That is Scherchen's genius.  By contrast JEG simply sounds too fast and
facile.

Similarly if you listen to the 1928 recording of the 9th by Oskar Fried the
tempi are often not much slower than that of that of JEG:

   1st Mvt: 14'01 (OF)   13'05 (JEG)
   2nd Mvt: 10'05 (OF)   13'05 (JEG; with repeats)
   3rd Mvt: 13'59 (OF)   12'05 (JEG)
   4th Mvt: 23'30 (OF)    21'24 (JEG)

Especially in the 1st and 3rd movements JEG sounds like he is
disproportionately faster than what the timings indicate.  In the Adagio
Fried, and Toscanini (who takes 14'25) do a far better job of making a
faster basic tempo sound convincing.  In the opening movement Fried manages
to sound incomparably more expansive than Hogwood, who clocks in at 13'56
- a mere five seconds faster.

Similarly listen to Huberman's performance of the Beethoven violin concerto
and the Kreutzer Sonata.  The old school tempi are very much faster than
what we encounter today, yet they seem perfectly natural, as though he
didn't know any different.  Another artist to listen to, of course, is
Arthur Schnabel in his cycle of the Beethoven Sonatas, whose faster old
school tempi contrast markedly to the slower new German school of Edwin
Fischer.

Schoenberg (is it a coincidence that he was close to Scherchen?) had
something fascinating to say about Beethoven's metronome markings.  As a
conductor he revered Mahler and wrote of "those great artist of the past
who could venture far-reaching changes [in tempi] of every kind without
ever being wrong, without ever losing balance, without ever violating good
taste...".  Realizing this art was being lost Schoenberg later incorporated
a whole repertoire of previously unmarked broad tempo modulations, of the
kind found in Furtwaengler's recordings, into the score of his 'Verklaerte
Nacht'.  It seems to me as much an expression of the same old school
ideology when he expressed his preference for faster tempi in Beethoven.
Schoenberg wrote:

   In the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven writes quarter-note=60.
   That's awkward...Nobody plays it at 60 quarter notes a minute, but
   at the most 30.  Obviously only bunglers with no inkling of what is
   involved if one is to bring out the calm and the cantabile of this
   movement without such a slow tempo - only they, being bunglers, are
   forced to take a slower tempo; and even they are unable, when the
   tempo later quickens, to avoid an allegretto character.
                        About Metronome Markings, 1926
                        (quoted from "Style and Idea", trans Leo Black)

All this from someone who, according to Dika Newlin, detested Toscanini
as a Beethovian and who had far greater praise for Klemperer's Beethoven!
I think that JEG and many other HIP performers should take Schoenberg's
word of advice and take the Adagio at quarter note=30.  They are after all
mostly 'bunglers' who are better off doing it this way.  Unfortunately,
I would probably be the first to complain if they did take the Adagio as
broadly as Furtwaengler: that unlike him, they were playing 'too slowly'!

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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