Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@mahgister @simonmoon @stuartk 

What I am hearing you say, @mahgister, is that you like a kind of soul wrenching depth in performances. If that is true, and I'm not saying it is, my response would be that I like Dostoevsky but I also like to read other authors who provide lighter fare. Of course, most novels today are written and read by women. Jane Austen is still huge. 

But probably a more important point, directly pertinent to music, is how most performances of music are judged. Is the artist saying what the composer intended? Guess what? In the case of Debussy we don't have to guess. I am posting a piano roll of Debussy playing Debussy. He is not as lyrical (let's say mass appeal) as Entremont, nor as "expressive" as Moravec. I would call him definitive: "It is my music and this is the way it should be played!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3NX_TrxfVk

i like deep experience in books as in music...

But like everyone i read sometimes a novel or a biography for a relaxing lecture pleasure...

 All the jazz i listen to is not deep music...

What I am hearing you say, @mahgister, is that you like a kind of soul wrenching depth in performances. If that is true, and I'm not saying it is, my response would be that I like Dostoevsky but I also like to read other authors who provide lighter fare. Of course, most novels today are written and read by women. Jane Austen is still huge. 

 I dont mind the composer interpretation so interesting it is because it is not always the best... And a work well composed contain information and colors and images even the composer never think about...Music goes deeper than the human brain creative power...It is why it is an experience of the heights and of the abyss and for me cinematographic or/and geometric...

The best interpretation is always the more expressive, the one who make you not only feel the music but "seeing" it ... In the cathedrale engloutie with Moravec we see the cathedral silent  bell tower emerging from the sea.... I dont see anything with others pianist...

If you listen all Moravec albums you will know why someone called him "the pianist's pianists"...

@mahgister 

I happen to agree with you that great musicians can find expression in compositions that the composer was not aware of. But I thought I'd throw out Debussy's interpretation as a baseline.

I enjoyed Furtwangler's interpretation of Schumann's 4th. I have it recorded by George Szell who is a great conductor, but not so great on Schumann's 4th. I think all conductors and musicians excel on certain pieces. I also heard it played at Disney Hall and did not like it at all. I think it was an original version by Schumann without the orchestration help of Brahms. Schumann admitted that he did not understand the orchestra like Beethoven, Brahms and others, and the second versions of his symphonies are far more interesting in the color they get from the orchestra. 

I do not know if you have heard of Igor Levit, a young-ish pianist who I think gets extremely deeply into compositions. Here is a smple of him playing the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I have never heard it played like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EGdL_P2iXE

https://crosseyedpianist.com/2020/07/27/the-composer-intends/

@frogman 

Thank you for that article on interpreting composers. I have a box set of Stravinsky conducting his three ballets. I have heard other interpretations that I like better. Being a great composer does not make one a great conductor which has not only to do with interpretation but the ability to convey to the orchestra that interpretation.

@mahgister 

I have to stop reading "Ever-Present Origin." We can't discuss it here. Maybe you can try a PM and I might get an email to respond to. Briefly, when the author began talking about the awakening of the soul in "archaic man," he just lost me. First, he did not define what he means by soul. And secondly, If there is a soul, I believe it existed long before Homos sapiens. To me, his outlook is very 1966. So much thought has happened since then. Again, if you want to discuss further, try to PM me. Thanks.