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Originally Posted by JChang
I don't necessarily agree with you on this, Gustav. For example, Dmitri Mitropoulos and Leonard Bernstein, definitely serious musicians, were in favor of "rearranging" Beethoven's C# minor string quartet but I don't think they were disrespectful to Beethoven.
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If they did that, maybe they had some reasoning as to why they did it. Maybe they wanted to fit it in a performance, or just curious at what it would sound like with a full orchestra. Nevertheless, it's a travesty that they did that, since Beethoven knew what he was doing, and if he wrote for "a string quartet", then it's nobody's business to change that.
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Originally Posted by JChang
Schubert's "Death and Maiden" rearranged by Mahler (your hero yes?) also comes to mind.
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he is not my "hero", whatever you meant by that. I am not some teenager who goes about worshiping the great composers, i merely listen to their music and draw pleasure from it. In fact, i don't even have a "favorite" composer, all i might have an urge for Beethoven this week, or Mozart the next, but never am i fixed on one composer, and actually "worship" him/her. Mahler did alot of "crazy" things, he re-orchestrated Beethoven's 9th, and Schumann's symphonies too, but that was because he was a composer and conductor He sometimes knew musical insights better than the composer did. Mind you, even the great composers make mistakes, in Beethoven's case, he is imagining the music in his head (he was deaf!), and subsequently he might've made some mistakes here and there. But, a good conductor can see it and correct it, and bring about a nice performance without any problem. In Schumann's case, his orchestration has always been criticized as being "too heavy" "clumsy", Mahler basically went back and changed A LOT of the orchestration of his symphonies, but it also changed the character of the works somewhat, so i am not so sure about Mahler on that one. A better example, would be Szell, he "Changed" stuff when he recorded Schumann's 4 symphonies (one of my all time fav recordings btw, if you don't have it, get it), but he was trying to make Schumann sound as smooth as it can be, so it was all well intended, and moreover, he preserved the original character of the works well, unlike the Mahler re-orchestrations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JChang
But I can understand the purist sentiment. In fact, the Vienna Phil members were against the idea of playing the C# minor quartet when Bernstein initially proposed it (they eventually liked it, hence that awesome recording).
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Well, good music sound good no matter how you play it
But, there is more going on in a piece of music than just playing the notes. htere is also this thing called "tradition". The Wiener Philharmoniker is all about "tradition", and me too. So, in my opinion, no one should or have the authority to change anything the master wrote.