Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Sat, 2 Jan 1993 17:32:34 EST
From:         Tim Johnson <ST402711@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: tous les matins du monde

>All I can say is, if "early music" on "period instruments" is
>crass marketing move anywhere in the world, then we have proof
>positive that the despicable anti-intelectualism of the last
>12 years is finally gonna take a breather..

  Not that this is the place to argue it, but I don't think
that the anti-intellectual atmosphere is a recent trend, or
as insinuated, a trend ushered in by republicans.

  But to the musical content - how do you sell one more
cycle of mediocre Beethoven Symphonies?  Record them with
"period instruments."

  Okay, okay.  Selling Beethoven's Symphonies is certainly
a step above another platinum record from New Kids on the Block,
but then, I would argue that this particular trend (increase
of sales of classical music) is directly linked to the development
of the CD - and is a trend which has taken root and been fostered
(heaven forbid) over the past 12 years.

  On the period instruments craze, Pinchas Zuckerman (who doesn't
play a period instrument) was recently quoted as, um, unhappy
with the idea.  Excerpts follow. (warning - he is passionate about
this)

                        -Tim

---------------------------------
The following information is taken without permission from, "A Conversation
with Pinchas Zukerman" by David Nelson from the March/April 1991 Fanfare.

     "Since I had no setlist of questions to ask, I invited Zukerman to go off
on any tangent that suited him.  'If I may just go off for one minute here,
I think what is happening to the industry is an absolute and complete farce. I
don't blame people for making money.  But all this Norrington/Hogwood
nonsense.  That is absolute and complete asinine STUFF.  I mean it has
nothing to do with music, it has nothing to do with historical performance.
Zero.  It's nothing, it means nothing.  Companies and the damn reviewers like
Rockwell have made this into some incredible, symbolic, twentieth-century
discovery....  i can only tell you from my
own experience as recently as six weeks ago, i was touring with the English
Chamber Orchestra and spoke to a number of people that have done their
Classical Players recordings with the so-called 'great' Norrington, and
finally at the end of a long conversation they said, 'Listen, Pink, we are in
complete agreement with you.  But you know, it's paid our bills.'  I said,
'I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!  I've been saying it all along.'  They're paid
twenty pounds extra for doing it, so they get the best players to do it.
It is a complete and absolute farce, it is FUCKING AWFUL.  Excuse the French.
And I am in an absolute rampage at this point (he was) to make sure that
people at least understand what they are listening to....
It is awful.  Now they're embarking
on the Fantastique.  Imagine!  Norrington has done a recording of the
'original' Fantastique.  you know what that's like!  Ha-Ha!  It's like an
impregnated cow that's gone wrong."  (DKN: "I believe he's said he intends
to go through Schumann and Brahms.")  "Ah, God, and people unfortunately
are going to buy it, and the critics are going to say, 'isn't this
incredible.'"    He then discussed another famous conductor of period
instrument, who, for reason that will quickly become obvious to any lawyer
will go nameless here.  "THE MAN DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO READ A SCORE.  He
goes and conducts Dumbarton Oakks--he can't get through without making
mistakes and that's on tour.  Now, this, I'm telling you, this is real,
from the horse's mouth.  Players and people who work with this guy.  He
is a complete nincompoop.  He's a historian, and you know what?  HE SHOULD
STAY A HISTORIAN!  Nobody wants to hear that stuff.  I don't.  There are
only four or five hundred people in the concert hall to hear it in the
first place."  (DKN: "Um, it's probably too late to warn you that Fanfare
prints almost anything.")  "I don't care!  Go ahead!  Do it!  You can do
anything you want!  You called me, I'm giving you an interview, and I wouldn't
hide anything from you.  There's no reason for me to.  This is what I believe.
In fact there is a tape I did in Rochester when I was there conducting the
Rochester Philharmonic.  If you can get the tape you'll laugh.  It's an
intermission feature.  The guy talked to me for a long time about this and that
, and at the end he finally asked what I thought about authentic instruments,
and I said to myself, 'Do I do this or not?'  For the next half hour it is
wild what comes out my mouth.  I couldn't stand it.  He was so adamant about
it, and finally, you know, I asked him if he ever went and heard one of those
things live.  he said, 'No," and I said, "Then how can you, as the manager
of the station--you are responsible to y our listeners to give them the
authentic and the real stuff.  you should have live recordings here from
concerts and all you have are the records, and you are so adamant about
this and you back it up with such authority?  how can you do that?  That is
wrong; you are falsifying everything that you just said.  Everything is false
which you just said.'  he said, 'Well you don't necessarily have to hear it!'
I said, 'I BEG YOUR PARDON, you sure do the way you talk about it.  Such
great authority--you've never heard it.  You have to go and hear it first.
I'm not asking you to play it.  Just go and listen and hear what it really
sounds like, andif yu really like it, play it.'  I just heard a group now
in Cologne.  I went to a rehearsal and I see six, seven, eight dancers in
eighteenth-century costumes doing little minuets and such to Mozart's music,
and I thought is this taped?  So I opened the door, full house, and there
is a little orchestra, and they're playing all the authentic instruments,
and I thought, 'Oh, no,' and I tell you what that sounded like, the oboes
and the timpani with the skin, and the trumpets like a pipe, you know,
that you and I would throw out.  We wouldn't use it for a water system.
And the fiddles and guys holding them.  I thought, the one thing I never did
was play on a gut 'E' string: I could never find one.  So I waited until it
was over and the orchestra comes off, kind of a young orchestra, so I
stopped one of the girls and asked to see her violin; she didn't mind.
She had the bow, not truly a Baroque, it was sort of a late-eighteenth-
century bow, so more like a classical bow, but she had it so tight.  There
was a gut 'E' string but the 'G' string was a regular, not what I play on,
but a regular wound gut."   (DKN: "Like a Thomastik?")  "Yeah, it was, I
think it was a Kaplan, something like that.  So I said to her, I said,
'Excuse me, but this is not authentic (laughs).'  She said, 'YES IT IS.'
I said, 'I'm sorry, young lady, but this is not.'  She said, 'It's gut
underneath.'  I said, 'no, but this is already silver wound.'  So she
already didn't like me.  So I played a few notes on the 'E' and it sounds
like a cat trying to puke, it sounds so terrible.  And I loosened the bow;
you get more give so the sound becomes less piercing, a little softer.
And she said, 'No, no, no, you mustn't do that.'  I said, 'Excuse me, but it
is a nicer sound.'  She said, 'THAT'S NOT THE REAL SOUND!'  I said, 'What
do you mean, that's not the real sound.'  She just said, 'Oh, please,' took
the violin away from me, and ran away!
    "What I contend is that I can do on my fiddle, tuned to so called 440,
make it sound exactly like they make it sound, without changing a goddam thing
and you'd never know it.  And that's what I contend, that there's no
difference.  And you know what?  There's no argument about that.  They know
that.  So they don't even talk about it, the don't argue about it, they
don't talk about it.  Yes, I agree with them when they say they think that
there are players in this century that have abused the music.  There's no
question that there are players that have gone way out with all kinds of
portamentos and vibratos and slides, but, you know what?  It still sounds
better that what they do!  I mean, Jascha heifets:  I don't exactly agree
with his exact way of playing Mozart but it's still Jascha Heifetz, and
I dare say that in seventy-five years people will listen to his rendition
of a Mozart concerto rather than some idiot that played it with an
authentic instrument, you know.  There's no question about that."
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