Bruno Walter: The Value of True Performance Traditions (10 Best Recordings Preview) 

There's that famous picture with Walter, Toscanini, Kleiber, Klemperer and Furtwängler. Maybe they went afterwards to a bar, and after many beers one of them said "let's start playing with vibrato?". And the others said "cheers!", so musical history was made.

I don't know whether you have done a video on Glenn Gould's opinions of Mozart, but that might be fun.

I will give Roger Norrington this -- in another video, you said that the period music people wouldn't touch Tchaikovsky with a ten-foot pole, because they either consciously or unconsciously know that playing him with that kind of string sonority would sound ridiculous. Well, Norrington made a recording of the Pathetique Symphony where he did exactly that! He stuck to his guns in the face of musical and common sense. It might be the worst recording I have ever heard of anything, which I guess is an accomplishment of sorts.

From that Walter interview, I can now see why you think that Norrington is full of shit. And he is. No music feels right without vibrato. And, to me, Walter's Mozart is so much better than Norrington's. In fact, Walter's Mozart symphonies are my personal faves.

Does Norrington even realize that you can go online today and still purchase Walter's recordings of Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms (and people still purchase them everyday) and you can't even find Norringtons?

What an inspiring start to a new week both affirmative and thought provoking. Thank you Maestro Hurwitz. Whenever discussing Walter I frequently characterise his way by the single German word: "Musizierend" which I believe has no English parallel save for "Music making" as when hearing his performances I usually get the impression that all his musicians register and listen to each other keenly without any sense of being driven as Walter just allows the music bloom like a flower on the terms of nature (which is the terms of the composer). And to follow up on your righteous cruelness towards dead-end-road Norrington I once had a conversation with an Australian conductor on musicians and their qualifications where, when we talked about those lesser gifted who were unlikely to qualify for a permanent position in a renowned symphony orchestra, he remarked; "But then they are always left with the option to change to a period time instrument and specialize in "Authentic performance practice" and end up in one of those ensembles."

Regarding the Norringtonish vibrato-less nonsense about Wienna in the "good old days" it is totally inconceivable for me - and more so a proof of what seems to be Norringtons cultural ignorance - that somebody can believe that in this musical-geograpichal epitome of Central AND Eastern European there would ever have been such a thing as "vibrato absence". Just consider the long standing influx of the rich and vibrato dominated Hungarian & Roma/Gipsy string tradition which probably goes way back to the musical genesis of that Eastern part of the Double Monarchy And would Mozarts largely Czech and Slovak string players excercise less vibrato in their day? Could it be that a part of Mozarts triumphs in that part of the Empire partially owed to a richer and more blooming sound that the slavic string players may have been in command of? Not to forget the Italian string players who contributed to music making within the Habsburg realm; Could you imagine gli´Italiani in a puritanic non-vibrato mode for the sake of Norringtons future fantasies?? No way Roger!

Sir Roger, Sir Simon. They'll knight anyone these days.

16.55 "... a great work of musical art cannot be reduced to a prescription of specific performance practices... the greatness resides in the timelessness of the composer's genius." Brilliant!

A really memorable performance, IMO, comes from a LIVE a performance of FIDELIO that Walter conducted at the MET in 1941 prior & through into the final scene. The sheer passion & commitment in the playing are extraordinary & I feel a large reason for this reflects the desperate threat of world tyranny at the time & how the hope for the world in 1941 comes blazing through in Walter’s awesome conducting of this overture & the concluding moments in the opera. I would be curious to hear if FIDELIO with Walter was featured in spring of 1945 as well & how one might hear a musical triumph to match the Allied victory over Hitler. You tube at has this very performance: February 22, 1941. No sign of a 1945 recording yet.

Glad to hear you say Norrington is the worst conductor of the 20th and 21st century. I've always hated his philosophy about period practice. Him and every historically informed conductor. Can't stand them. Music evolves and doesn't belong in a museum.

It's a shame Walter died shortly before he was scheduled to record Mahler's 3rd. Maybe he could have cleared up the questions about those oboe and cor anglais parts in the fourth movement marked "hinaufziehen". The new "tradition" of playing a glissando just sounds so wrong. If only we had a Walter performance to help.

Yes, that was very thought provoking Dave and I’ll be thinking about for several days at least. Very measured judgment too I’d say.

A fantastic talk about Bruno Walter and music, as an old music listener I enjoyed it enormously.

Take a person who doesnt know music and play mozart for tbem . Norrinton and Walter and see which they prefer. I would bet they pick the warmth and vibratoful Walter. Its more Mozart, whether its accurate or not. Music evolves, instruments improve, tastes change, but the essence is always there with Walter. There is just a " rightness' about all his work. The shape, tempi- everything- makes one think there is no other way it could be done. The only problems were he was often stuck with second rate solists and lousy choirs in his later performances. I think they were rushing him a bit. Still, amazing number and quality of recordings in a short time.

This is absolutely excellent!! Thank you!

There's another point to make regarding the absurdity of Norrington's thesis. It's pretty well-accepted today that contemporary performance practice is highly influenced by compositional practice, with a lag of a few decades. Glenn Gould's anti-romantic Bach was almost certainly subconsciously influenced by the neoclassical aesthetic of Stravinsky and co, and Taruskin has shown how the HIPP movement arose from similar ideological foundations. This would suggest that the use of vibrato was probably at its high point in the early 20th century, when European classical music was at the end of about a century of Romanticism. Vibrato, and the lush string tone it allows for, is a romantic quality after all, far more suitable for the long romantic melodies of the 19th century than anitromantic neoclassical/(post-Webern) serial works of the mid-20th century. It thus makes no sense that orchestral vibrato would come about in the 1940s, when this new aesthetic was well underway. It must have become standard by the late 19th century, when the music orchestral vibrato is most suitable for had been culturally predominant for decades.

It's so good to hear the truth about that HIP-nonsense. But I have an objection concerning your remark (either here or in the subscriber's-talk) that Walter played nearly no contemporary music. He did, in fact: Mahler and Strauss have been "new music" in Walters time. Moreover, he conducted the first performances of "Der Ring des Polykrates", "Violanta", "Palestrina", "Der ferne Klang" and "Das Spielwerk" aso. It's true that he didn't record new music, but this seems to be a matter of generation. Remember that Erich Kleiber championed new music, but he, too, didn't record it, not even "Wozzeck". Toscanini seems to me more interested in recording new music - but who else of the great conductors born in the generation before Stokowski?

Is there any chance you could engage Norrington, Currentsis or the like in a public and formal debate? That would get viral immediately.

Bravo David. 100 percent Truth.

It's obvious that vibrato didn't magically appear in the 1950s, but clearly portamento is much less favored now than before the 40s.

Just out of curiosity, when/where was Mahler played in Germany during the 2nd World War? I read somewhere that Hitler actually loved Mahler's conducting style, after seeing live performances in his youth...is that true too???

Hi David...David again...a couple of points...as one who has performed with "modern" (read late 19th -20th C symphony orchestras), and as one who has done a lot of Period Instrument performances....I think we grew up together when there were a plethora of "lteralist" conductors (whether they were purely literalist or not) in that absolute clarity and adherence to the score as if it were "Holy writ" were the only integrity. Perhaps the Early Music trends were a reaction to this sort of music making or an extension of it? Back in the 1960s-early 70s almost no one could even play 18th C. instruments...and now we have performers that are great on all of them....and yes...there is an incredible difference in the overall timbre of a period instrument ensemble and a modern orchestra....shockingly so! I dont know if I want to hear a R. Straussian sized orchestra like the Vienna Phil. play Mozart or Haydn anymore.....it seems too opaque to me....even Szell....who tried to make a 100 piece orchestra sound like 20 players..... On Mozart....you are of course correct that he is a transcendental genius....but here is my conundrum....there are such purely Galant elements to many of his works that are so obvious.....the first movement development of M's Symphony 29 is almost note for note the same development as in one of J C Bach's Op 3 symphonies, as just one example...so I say that M was also a man of his Time....

There is a nice video of Walter conducting the final movement of Mozart 40 with the Berlin Phil on yt. A proof that the orchestra played with vibrato before 1939.

Wow! You say you played with the Vienna Philharmonic in the 50s ?