Vibrato
Thu, Mar 7 2013, 11:05AM
#2
RE: Vibrato
I know what you mean, Brumas. I used to be exactly the same and still have trouble with heavy vibrato in singing. It may well be because my listening started with the baroque. If I had been brought up on Puccini and Wagner, it probably would have seem perfectly natural and beautiful.
What I find is that I have simply got more used to it over the years. Also, even in the Romantic or Wagnerian repertoire, you can find wonderful singers who control their vibrato. You just have to look for them. You can certainly get plenty of Mozart sung with fairly minimal vibrato - John Eliot Gardiner's Figaro, for instance. Or the Arnold Ostman series - really pure singing, especially from the women; hardly any vibrato at all. After a while, you get to know who uses vibrato and who doesn't. (Alison Hagley, Arleen Auger, Lynne Dawson, Sylvia McNair don't use much; nor does Miah Persson or the amazing Camilla Tilling.........) My God, Camilla Tilling's Kyrie Eleison in Mccreesh's Mass in C Minor, is beyond belief - and almost no vibrato whatsoever.
After Mozart, you generally have to accept a bit more vibrato, but even there I have usually been able to find recordings I can really love if I look hard enough. (Pappano's Madame Butterfly, for instance, or Kleiber's Tristan, or Karajan's Don Carlo.) Not everyone bellows or warbles or screams..........It is just a question of finding what is right for you.
Thu, Mar 7 2013, 11:38AM
#3
RE: Vibrato
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. And somehow, vibrato in Wagner has never really bothered me, perhaps because it is a different musical language from Italian romanticism altogether. But on the whole, my interest in vocal music stops with Mozart and picks up again in the late 19th/early 20th century. It's not just the vibrato, but the direction opera went into after the Viennese Classics that I just don't apreciate. I love Wagner, and Debussy's Pelleas is a pure gem. So, perhaps my problem is not so much with vibrato but with the kind of music that is usually performed with a lot of vibrato...
Thu, Mar 7 2013, 12:15PM
#4
RE: Vibrato
I thought the Mutter/Orkis was disappointing, too, Chris. You are quite right: mannered. Very self-conscious. Also, Orkis is just not in the same league as a Pires or a Melnikov. As a certain "shadow on the net" might put it, Orkis is just an accompanist.
I don't want to keep banging the Melnikov/Faust drum, but they are pretty much the top recommendation everywhere - here on Gramophone and Radio3 Building a Library among others.......
Have a listen to No. 10 here.
Thu, Mar 7 2013, 12:58PM
#5
RE: Vibrato
Thanks Jane, I will listen this evening. I suppose my slight disappointment with Faust's Beethoven concerto discouraged me a bit.
Ah! Not enough time to listen to everything: nor enough money to buy everything I'd like!
Chris
Fri, Mar 8 2013, 8:41AM
#6
RE: Vibrato
If you mention to Mutter (and not only) that Herr Orkis is "just an accompanist", she will feel extremely offended. He is a very accomplished, talented and gifted pianist, who, like few other well known pianists, work as partner in Chamber Music groups rather than thriving in solo careers. Mr. Orkis has few solo CDs on specific works of rare repertoire, performed on instruments of the period of the composer. Mutter picked him up for the reason he could cooperate very well with her.
Mutter's Beethoven's Violin Sonatas are superb for perhaps the best tone (almost apolonian) in modern violinsts, an incomparable technic and an authority in what she is doing. Faust is just a very good, accomplished violinst. Like her Beethoven's Violin Concerto, she is always a safe, moderate player; not the daring, passionate, overwhelming one. As for the "top recommendations everywhere", maybe in UK. Elsewhere?..In any case, we should be familiar what these "top" stuff may mean by now: what is in fashion today. Already, in some parts of the world, they start talking about Kavakos/Rava and, in a couple of years, who knows...what else.
Chris, what are your reservations of the Kremer/Argerich or the Suk/Panenka and, finally, how better the Cello Sonatas work for you?
Parla
Fri, Mar 8 2013, 4:17PM
#7
RE: Vibrato
Parla,my delay in response to your post arises because - where are my Argerich/Kremer Beethoven sonatas? They are not on the shelf where they should be. Does anyone else misfile their CDs? Or did I lend them to someone? Anyway, yes I do like those performances, especially Argerich. My only real reservation is that I've never much liked the sound Kremer makes, but indeed they are amongst the finest recordings. Suk and Panenka, my goodness it's years, many years since I heard those: I hadn't noticed that they are available on CD! I assume they are the same performances I knew in the 60s? I remember them being rather fine, beautiful chamber music playing, but on the LPs the violin sound was rather edgy. Sound quality now?
I agree with most of what you say about the Mutter/Orkis set. Mutter has wonderful tone, perfect technique and she and Orkis are hand in glove together. But even at a first hearing (live) I was annoyed by her mannered playing, and repeated hearings only make it worse. It's not just these sonatas: she seems to have lost the ability to play simply these days. Perhaps it will return.
As I said, these sonatas do lie somewhere between solo works and chamber music, though whether that's the problem I don't know. Maybe it's just my problem! The cello sonatas do seem to have been more fortunate though. From Serkin and Casals, through Richter and Rostropovich, Kempff and Fournier, Gulda and Fournier, not to mention more recent partnerships, they seem to have been lucky on record. Perhaps great cellists make better chamber music players than violinists.
And thinking of Kempff (my favourite Beethoven pianist), neither of his recordings of the violin sonatas (with Schneiderhan and with Menuhin) are so very successful.
Maybe I'm just ungrateful. Anyway back to searching for Argerich!
Chris
PS: Jane, I never got to hear the Faust Beethoven last night: I'd forgotten about the important matches last night! Tonight.
Sat, Mar 9 2013, 3:27AM
#8
RE: Vibrato
To answer, very quickly, your question about the sound quality of Kremer/Argerich, it is very fine and detailed, but not at the quality level of Mutter/Orkis.
I agree with you that there is a larger proliferation of the Cello Sonatas recordings vis a vis to those of the Violin Sonatas. However, I'm not sure if any (complete) recording is that...close to perfect. For me, the two Sonatas (op.69 and op 105, no.2) Du Pre recorded (in 1965) with Kovacevich (on EMI), are the reference standard, which, unfortunately, even herself did not managed to repeat it, in the complete recordings of the Sonatas with the then husband Barenboim, live from the Edinburg in 1970 (again on EMI).
The great cellists of the past were not that perfect in their recordings and partnerships (Richter with Rostropovich sound as two independent soloists; less the Fournier/Goulda). Maybe, the more modest Janigro/Demus sound at least more intimate in their partnership, on Vanguard.
From the middle period (70s-80s), I admire the vigour and passion of the excellent recording (on Teldec originally) of the excellent partnership of Starker/Buchbinder and later of the brilliant one of Maisky/Argerich, in a bright recording of DG.
From the more recent ones, the one which comes closer to the "reference" is the amazing partnership of Wispelwey/Lazic, due to a very impressive SACD recording of Channel as well.
Another very convincing and very well recorded set is the one of Menesses/Pressler, on Avie (and don't dare to say that Menahem Pressler was "just an accompanist"; He was probably the greatest pianist in Chamber Music).
The mercurial partnership of Muller-Schott/Hewitt is good, but, I think it fails to convince that this is a great Beethoven interpretation, while the much praised by the anglophone media recording of ECM, with Schiff/Pereneyi, is a well served and recorded...flop.
Finally, I'm still expecting to explore the bright young ardour of the two most promising soloists, namely the cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Simone Dinnerstein, on Telarc.
As for the vibrato, in the cases of the most brilliant performances, like the Dupre/Kovacevich or Wispelwey/Lazic is the least of my concerns, but in the case of Schiff/Perenyi it exacerbates the situation.
There are quite a few other fine recordings, but they all fail to achieve a greater status, while they can always be a good set of these unique Sonatas, in this medium.
Parla
Sat, Mar 9 2013, 11:15AM
#9
RE: Vibrato
Chris
Some people probably need mannered performances to understand the music. Too much subtlety and they would feel lost......
Everyone is different, I suppose.
Sat, Mar 9 2013, 11:41AM
#10
RE: Vibrato
Parla, thanks for the comments on the sound quality. Perhaps I did not write so clearly: it was the Suk/Panenka CD transfers I was asking about!
I shouldn't grumble really about Beethoven sonata recordings! If only there were half as many fine recordings of Haydn Quartets, or indeed trios!
Jane, I listened to the Beethoven with Isabelle Faust this morning. I liked her quiet playing, but the sound she makes in forte is, well not exactly unpleasant but unappealing (to me, I mean). Interesting to see the video and noticeable that she used vibrato much more when playing softly. So it's back to vibrato. Probably it's getting too late for this old leopard to change its spots!
Afterwards though, I tried her Bartok sonata (unaccompanied). To me, her approach to that style of music, as with the Berg, is much more successful!
Good, thought provoking thread anyway!
Chris
Sat, Mar 9 2013, 11:55AM
#11
RE: Vibrato
Haydn trios? I thought they been pretty well served by Beaux Arts set? Also a 2 disc selection from Florestan trio?
I know what you mean about the quartets. I have never really found my perfect set for any of them. Too much vibrato in one, bad recording for another......and so on. I had really high hopes for the Mosaiques, but the recordins are too glassy and a bit shrieky in places.
Sat, Mar 9 2013, 3:44PM
#12
RE: Vibrato
Re: Beethoven violin sonatas, I'm rather fond of the 40's recording with Szigeti and Arrau. Szigeti's playing may be "old school" in terms of vibrato, articulation and phrasing, but the intelligence of his interpretation is unrivalled and it's a perfect match with Arrau's stylish and aristocratic piano playing.
As for the cello sonatas, I love the "authentic" set with Anner Bijlsma and Malcolm Bilson - refreshing and uplifting but of course it's the polar opposite in terms of interpretation of the Szigeti/Arrau set.
Sun, Mar 10 2013, 6:16AM
#13
RE: Vibrato
It is not that I prefer "mannered" performances, Jane, but I definetely love a better and more beautiful tone of the instrument rather than a subtle but almost neutral or moderate one.
As for the Piano Trios by Haydn, apart from the classic and, in some ways, unrivalled Beaux Arts Trio, as an overall recording (solid, passionate and to the point performances along with an excellent recording), I would opt for the brilliant Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, on Phoenix. For original instruments, the very fine Trio 1790, on CPO, is serving the works as good as it gets, in a warm and realistic recording.
As for the "Haydn Quartets", they are some very fine rather recent recordings, like the Klenke Qu. on Profil, the very fine Petersen on Capriccio, the Leipziger on MDG (a bright recording) and from the older stuff, the elegant and subtle Guarneri on Sony, the classic Amadeus, the passionate Italiano, the Hagen, the Alban Berg and so on(unfortunately, most of them are not easily available now or belong to larger sets).
Parla
For some reason, with instrumental music, vibrato does not bother me at all, yet in vocal music I'm quite allergic to it. I suppose for this reason, when it comes to vocal music, I prefer repertoire up and until the early classical period, with some exceptions. But the kind of high-romantic, vibrato-laden bellowing that one finds in the works of Verdi or Puccini does very little for me.
Also, I recently heard Norrington's rendition of Mahler 5, which was very strange to say the least. At times it even put me in mind of Gubaidulina! It was an interesting listen nonetheless, especially if you're used to the likes of Bernstein.
aquila non captat muscas