Satoshi Akima ([log in to unmask]) replis to me:

>It seems that Scherchen suffered from being too far ahead of his time in
>more ways than one.  Listening again to the Mass in B Minor I was again
>astonished how he really makes the Et resurrexit dance.  There is not just
>stifled academic pontification about how elements of stylized Renaissance
>dance forms can be found in Bach's music but a real jubilant moment of
>joyful apotheosis.  He makes John-Elliot Gardiner sound too heavy and flat
>footed by comparison!

And not just in Bach.  Scherchen's Beethoven is often incredibly fast, the
first movement of his 1958 Eroica, for example, is faster than all of the
HIP conductors and only matched in my experience (for newcomers, I'm the
lunatic who has lost count of the number of recordings of this piece that
I own - it must be something around 150 by now) by Albert Coates - in 1926.

Not only does he beat the metronomists at their own game, he achieves the
virtually unthinkable in the first movement of the Pastoral, being faster
than just about everybody else, but still sounding relaxed.

>...  Yet again it illustrates that as an eloquent advocate of Schoenberg's
>music how Scherchen was way ahead of his time - and in fact till remains
>ahead of our own time.  Maybe his time will come!

I read somewhere (probably in one of the Tahra notes) that Scherchen's
musical education proceeded historically:  he encountered Bach before
Mozart and Haydn before Beethoven etc.  I can't recall if this was by
design, but what unique insights it must have given him.

Deryk Barker
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