Posted by Rick Denney on December 14, 2000 at 16:06:31:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Bruckner and the Art of Interpretation posted by Richard on December 13, 2000 at 23:44:57:
And one problem, it seems to me, with American orchestras is that they worship at the altar of the Chicago Symphony, and try to match that power with less skill. I've never heard the CSO play Bruckner live, but I've heard several lesser orchestras overblow it to the point of pain.
(I have heard the CSO play Mahler live, and the sound will never leave me, at least I hope not).
But, just as the CSO can parody its own power, so too can the European orchestras parody their own emotion, if they are not careful.
All orchestras, it seems to me, have a tendency to take the best of what they once did and try to do it a little better next time. If they define "best" as the ability to play loud, then they get louder. We have heard much about that phenomenon. If their prime directive is to play with "feeling," then they challenge themselves to "feel" it more than their predecessors. So, the performance practice migrates from the original to something else, which may or may not be better. We call this process "tradition." Revolutionaries defy tradition. But sometimes the revolutionary defies tradition by returning the music to its original practice (Norrington's Beethoven comes to mind), if that can be determined. So, the occasional European comes along and shakes up that tradition, perhaps with an American orchestra, which establishes a new tradition on this soil.
The good news is that it gives us competing approaches so that we can hear them all and appreciate the special qualities of each.
Rick "Viva L'Difference!" Denney