Discophage

I am a music lover and record collector living near Paris, France. I very much enjoy doing comparative listening, and when I dote upon a composition, I can become obsessively accumulative. My record is with Bach's Goldberg Variations, of which I have more than 70 different versions - I haven't yet listened to all. But on average, I will "limit" myself to 10 to 20. I am equally interested in modern (e.g. first half of 20th Century) and contemporary music, off-the-beaten track repertoire and the well-trodden music territory from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras.

Comparative listening is, I find, a way to deepen one's knowledge and understanding of a piece, by gauging the various interpretive possibilities explored by the performers throughout the piece's recorded history. I also like to assess how a given performer fits in (or out) of a given interpretive tradition. I don't think there is anything like ONE interpretive "truth" (and musicians or listeners who claim the contrary are in my opinion ignoramuses - Lord, forgive them, as they know not what they are saying). A composition is rich of the variety of its interpretations, and even the one the composer himself has imagined (inasmuch as this can be known), as important and significant as it is, is not the only and final word.

I try to make my reviews as "objective" as I can, first establishing "the facts". Typically, when listening to a recording, I will first try to assess how faithfull a realization of the score it is (and even considering the essential ambivalence of such litterary notions as "Allegro" and the likes, it is surprising to see how many liberties interpreters take with the printed page), how effective a realization of a certain interpretive tradition it is - and if at variance with one or the other, how well or not it works musically - and this is certainly where my subjectivity is most at play. But ideally I'd like my reviews to be sufficiently descriptive to enable the reader to draw opposite conclusions from mine.

Much bickering among music lovers, fans and even performers themselves takes place, I think, not just over matters of taste, but because the issue remains confused of what the legitimate goal of the interpreter really is. Many interpreters and listeners (and composers !) take for granted that the legitimate - and only, really - goal of the interpreter is to realize the composer's intentions. Thus, incredible intellectual contorsions have been exercised to explain why blatant travesties of the letter of the score (especially regarding tempo choices) remain realizations of the composer's intentions, or "spirit", or what not.

But such contorsions needn't be anymore, once you realize that realizing the composer's intentions is only ONE of the interpreter's legitimate goals, but that another one, no less legitimate, is to realize a potential contained in the score that even the composer had no hint of.

I don't think Furtwangler or Klemperer or Barbirolli were anywhere close to realizing Beethoven's intentions. Beethoven, who, like Stravinsky, was extremely finicking about faithfulness to his scores's indications, to the point of obsessiveness, would have been thrown into a fit hearing their interpretations. But it doesn't make these less legitimate : they certainly realized a potential of Beethoven that Beethoven didn't have in mind, but yet that was entirely revelatory and illuminating. They realized, certainly not the intentions of Beethoven, but, in their own way, a certain "spirit" of Beethoven's scores.