Between Performance and Notation: How did Carl Reinecke understand Mozart’s piano concerto No.26 K.537?

Mako Kodama

　Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was a German composer, pianist, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and professor at the Leipzig Conservatory. His piano performances were admired by Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt, and he was reputed as "the greatest and most sincere Mozart player of his time."However, you may be surprised on listening for the first time to his performances preserved on piano rolls, since there is noticeable use of expressive practices such as manual asynchrony, unnotated arpeggiation, and rubato (flexibility of rhythm and tempo), which is quite far from the kind of performance style that is considered good today. 　This research clarifies the features of the performance practices audible in early piano rolls, such as those by Reinecke. It focuses on how he arranged and notated the Larghetto from Mozart's Piano Concerto No.26 K.537 for piano solo, how he performed it on piano roll (1905), and how he described the performance of the movement in his book Zur Wiederbelebung der Mozart'schen Clavier-Concerte (1891). The discrepancies between the three source materials give an insight into the implied performance practices of Reinecke’s time and his tacit knowledge. The research culminates with personal experimentation and reflection on how these performance practices can expand the freedom and possibilities of the author’s performances.

1. Richard Hudson, Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato, 42.

2. Leopold Mozart, Gründliche Violinschule, 3rd edn. (Augsburg, 1787; repr. Br.&H, 1983); trans. by Editha Knocker (Oxford University Press, 1985), 223-224.

3. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen Vol.1 (Berlin, 1753), trans. By William.J.Mitchell (W.W. Norton & Company, 1949), 33-35.

4. Hudson, Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato, 86. See also Bernhard Scholz, Verklungene Weisen (Mainz, 1911), 127.

5. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen Vol.1 (Berlin, 1753), trans. By William.J.Mitchell (W.W. Norton & Company, 1949), 161-162.

6. “Mozart Letters and Documents – Online Edition”, DIGITAL MOZART EDITION, accessed February 13, 2024, https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/letter.php?mid=919

7. Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing, 194. See also, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. Chopin vu par ses élèves. Neuchâtel (Baconnierre: 1970). Trans. Naomi Shohet, Kyrisa Osostowicz, and Roy Howat as Chopin: Pianist and Teacher—As Seen by His Pupils, 3rd ed., ed. Roy Howat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 44-45.

8. Malwine Breé, The Groundwork of the Leschetizky Method. trans. Dr. TH. baker (G. SCHIRMER, 1902), 70-71.

9. Johann J. Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin: 1752); trans. Edward R. Reilly as On Playing the Flute (1966), 2nd ed. (London: Faber, 1985), 123.

Chapter 2: Ingredients that Make the Performance More Flexible in Early Recordings

2.3 Earlier Type of Rubato and Rhythmic Alteration

Richard Hudson shows five aspects of the earlier rubato:

Some notes in a melody steal time from other notes. Sometimes, the lengthening of notes is emphasized, with the shortening of others occurring simply as a consequence.
The accompaniment keeps strict time.
The steady bass imposes compensation on the alterations in the melody, so that the amount some notes are lengthened must exactly equal the amount the other notes are shortened. The shortening and lengthening are sometimes described as acceleration and retard.
The notated starting point of a note may be anticipated or delayed.
Notes in the melody that are written in the score in vertical alignment with notes in the accompaniment are, in fact, displaced and do not sound simultaneously. The amount of anticipation or delay is a measure of this displacement, and dissonances often result.¹

In Ensemble

The crucial point is that rubato comes from performing with other instruments or singers. In the major treatises on performance in the 18th-century, they also mention

the need for the accompanying parts to keep a steady tempo when the soloist or melody part performs rubato. Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) wrote:

Many, who have no idea of taste, never retain the evenness of tempo in the accompanying of a concerto part, but endeavour always to follow the solo-part [...] But when

a true virtuoso who is worthy of the title is to be accompanied, then one must not allow oneself to be beguiled by the postponing or anticipating of the notes, which he

knows how to shape so adroitly and touchingly, into hesitating or hurrying, but must continue to play throughout in the same manner; else the effect which the performer

desired to build up would be demolished by the accompaniment.²

Leopold Mozart believed that true soloists knew how to use rubato freely within their own parts and that it was an amateur's trick to have the accompanying parts change the

tempo to follow them. It was a professional technique at that time for the accompanist to maintain the tempo while recognizing the vertical gap between the soloist and the

accompanist. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) explained that it was the keyboard player's job to maintain the tempo in the ensemble: “My conviction that the keyboard

is and must always remain the guardian of the beat [...] Especially those parts that employ the tempo rubato will find herein a welcome, emphatic beat.”³ His claim also

implies that this was how he performed. Later, in 1911, Bernhard Scholz (1835-1906) recalls his experience of the process of implementing the earlier rubato in rehearsals with

Julius Stockhausen (1826-1906), the baritone who was closely associated with Brahms:

It was a pleasure for me to accompany him with the orchestra or at the keyboard. At first, I tried to follow every small inflexion of his performance; then, he requested

that I remain peacefully and strictly in time even when he allowed himself small deviations here and there, for which he would later compensate. He moves himself with

complete freedom but on a firm rhythmic basis. Through him, the character of the 'Tempo rubato' first became completely clear to me: freedom of phrasing on a steady

rhythmic foundation.⁴

In Piano Solo

However, it is not easy to reproduce the independence of melody and accompaniment in the ensemble as a solo pianist. C.P.E.Bach admitted that “other instrumentalists

and singers, when they are accompanied, can introduce the tempo much more easily than the solo keyboardist”⁵ because it is very difficult for a pianist to make each hand

independent. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote in a letter: “The fact that I always remain accurately in tempo causes amazement to them all. The tempo rubato in

an adagio, where the left hand knows nothing about it, is totally incomprehensible to them. With them, the left hand adapts.”⁶ Here, it is evident that he used that kind of

rubato in his performance. His words suggest that his performance was not only clean and pure, which is considered the standard today but also that the displacement

between the controlled left hand and the freely sung melody created tension; I suspect that this made his performances sometimes even bolder and more intense.

Chopin

As we saw in Christiani's explanation in section 2.2, the earlier rubato was also a feature of Chopin's performance. There is plenty of evidence from his pupils that he used

it frequently and taught his students. One example is Madame Camille Dubois's explanation as reported by Georges Mathias in 1882. Chopin frequently demanded “that

the left hand, playing the accompaniment, should maintain strict time, while the melodic line should enjoy freedom of expression with fluctuations of speed. This is

quite feasible: you can be early, you can be late, the two hands are not in phase; then you make a compensation which re-establishes the ensemble.”⁷ Malwine Breé (1861-

1938), who was a student of Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915) and wrote The Groundwork of the Leschetizky Method (1902), also admits to dealing with the rhythms freely in

each bar: However, she limited it only within the bars: “Rhythm does not depend on a strict observance of the measure, but permits, on the contrary, of freer disposal over the

beats, but only between the boundaries of the bars. Thus, individual beats may be abbreviated to the profit of others, or lengthened at their expense, but not whole measures

in proportion to other measures.”⁸ This statement also implies that the dislocations between the right and left hands occur as a result of the rhythmic alternation in the

melody in each bar.

Inégales

Another perspective that can be thought of as an earlier rubato is inequality or notes inégales, in which notes of the same value are played slightly unequally. The practice

existed from the mid-17th-century to the end of the 18th but can still be heard in some early piano rolls, especially in those of Reinecke. Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) explains:

[One] must know how to make a distinction between the principal notes, ordinarily called accented or in the Italian manner, good notes, and those that pass, which some

foreigners call bad notes. Where it is possible, the principal notes always must be emphasized more than the passing. In consequence of this rule, the quickest notes in

every piece of moderate tempo, or even in the Adagio, though they seem to have the same value, must be played a little unequally, so that the stressed notes of each

figure, namely the first, third, fifth, and seventh, are held slightly longer than the passing, namely the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth, although this lengthening must not

be as much as if the notes were dotted.⁹

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Chapter 2.4 Dislocation

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