In the edited video from the open rehearsal, it will be seen how we worked at some of these questions, but it shows only some glimpses of the work.
Interpreting Mozart today: the piano concerto in G Major KV 453
- by Håkon Austbø
Training and tradition
Traditionally, when performing Mozart and other classics in former times, one used to be quite constrained in the expression. At least, this was true for instrumentalists; we were told by our teachers to play the notes exactly, correctly, evenly and with distance. No rubato was allowed, and long melodic lines had to be rendered as smoothly and evenly as possible with absolute absence of articulation. There were minor differences according to schools. In France one would like the Mozart playing to be clear, perlé, elegant, in the tradition of Isidor Philipp, whereas in Germany, the seriousness was prevailing (Fischer, Backhaus).
This purist approach was probably a reaction to the style of a generation or two earlier, when the late Romantic imprint on performance was still the dominating one, and all music, regardless of style, tended to be played much the same way, with generous display of individual emotions, much pedal and a thick sonority. This way of performing Mozart is still to be heard in Russia and in areas with Russian influence.
It was the time of the first Urtext editions. Still, one didn’t have a very clear idea of what articulation implied. Here are two statements from the preface of Martienssen/Weismann’s edition of the Mozart piano sonatas (Peters, 1960?):
- The slur is missing in non-legato play (sic), characteristic for classical piano-music.
- The thesis that the slurs of articulation of the classical piano-music have been adopted from the violin-music and are therefore not always binding, is today hardly to be advocated.
The first statement seems to refer to an even non legato playing in passages where a varied articulation would often, in my view, be more authentic, not to say more vivid. As to the second, I can still remember discussions in the 60s whether the slurs should be interpreted as bowings, in other words whether one slur should be clearly separated from the next, or not. This discussion was based on two misunderstandings, and therefore the editors’ remark here is most appropriate and interesting. First, string players of the romantic tradition would try to make bow changes as inaudible as possible, contrary to more recent insights. Imitation of this on the piano will therefore be out of style. Secondly, the reason why articulated playing on the piano often sounds jerky is to be found in a confusion of the terms light and short. The last note of a slur should be light and separated from the following, but rarely with an active, short staccato. I’ve often come across this misunderstanding in my teaching.
As an example of articulations/bows that reflect serious stylistic misconceptions, Fig. 1 shows two editions of the bars 47 to 53 in the second movement, Andante, of Mozart’s piano concerto KV 453, the work that this essay is about:
My own articulation of this passage can be heard in the following excerpt:
Ex.1 Excerpt from performance, bars 45-54 2nd movement
When we compare the 1878 Mozart Gesamtausgabe by Breitkopf & Härtel with the modern reference, the 1991 Bärenreiter edition, we see how, in several instances in this short example, the importance of the first beat appoggiaturas is disturbed by including them in the slurs from the preceding bars; slurs totally invented by the editor. There is a profusion of such wrong phrasing marks in old editions of Mozart, and even an edition previously known as reliable can therefore be a source of grave misunderstandings about classical style.
Another delicate point is the distinction between dots and wedges for staccato notes. As it happens, this Bärenreiter edition does not make the distinction, probably due to a choice done by the editors, Eva and Paul Badora-Skoda. Without going into this complex matter, I do think an edition should try to conform with the original notation. The performer should then decide whether we have to do with an active or a light staccato.
Yet another point of confusion was the way to execute trills, gruppetti and appoggiaturas. It was still not established as accepted practice to play trills from the upper note and any ornament on the beat, a practice that few would contest today.
With the rise of historically informed interpretations during the 1960s, many of these questions became clear, along with improved editions. I visited Amsterdam in 1972 to perform with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the same concert as Gustav Leonhart, one of the champions of the authentic movement at the time. The same day, my friend, the harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand, then a student of Leonhart, made me aware of what was about to happen in Baroque performance. In the wake of this, the necessity of a new approach to the classics was emerging, and since I moved to the Netherlands in 1974, I could not escape this influence. Today, I’m grateful to have been in this environment seeking a new way to approach Mozart (and Bach, Scarlatti or Haydn) allowing musical expression without the fear of sounding Romantic [1].
The question of Romantic playing in Mozart is subject to much discussion. Some have stated that Mozart was, in fact, a Romantic. I don’t agree to this, since his music is based on classical constructive principles of balance and contrasts. But this doesn’t mean that his music is devoid of emotion. Emotions such as despair, grandeur and joy are strongly enough present to exceed the surface grace so much cultivated in the French tradition. The challenge, then, is to preserve all this while staying inside the stylistic framework. The authentic movement is today a vast and hightly diverse field, permitting the free navigation inside it, unhindered by dogmaticism and without the obligation to use period instruments.
In short: Obeying to the various traditions wherein my training took place didn’t give me the answers to the problems arising when performing Mozart. But then, traditions are seldom good guides and should be subject to revision. One must collect enough knowledge to develop one’s own approach. Today, a “mainstream” performer may approach Baroque and classical music freely and in accordance with recent insights.
Practice of orchestra rehearsing
A modern orchestra is a factory where music has to be produced as efficiently as possible. A full concert programme must be ready in 3 to 4 days, and if there is a concerto included, it will mostly have to be rehearsed on the last day before the concert. In the case of a standard work, the conductor will hardly spend time on it before that, as he/she has enough work to do on the symphony or whatever orchestra pieces are on the programme.
It is therefore more than welcome if the soloist has a very traditional approach to the concerto. The expectation is that after a one-time through one will need only a few corrections, that things go the way everybody is used to. There is no question, in such a rehearsal, of starting a discussion on the piece, let alone of trying out different ways of doing things. Mostly the conductor will reserve one hour for the concerto at the end of the last day; everyone will be delighted, though, if it’s done in half that time.
Under such circumstances, wanting to do something out of the ordinary will result in a lot of frustration. For me, this has often been the case. When you have tried to explain your ideas on certain questions to the orchestra a couple of times and have been met with just irritation – there is no time for such nonsense! – you soon give it up and try to find other strategies, which often boils down to complying with a traditional interpretation.
In the case of a Mozart concerto, such questions might be: bowings, embellishments, rubato, breathing, in short; all that has to do with musical rhetoric. As there are frequent dialogues with the winds in Mozart, I like to communicate directly with them and play chamber music. This is most unwelcome with many conductors; they hate not to be in control of things. The communication via the conductor thus becomes a detour and makes it harder to shape the music freely.
When the conductor becomes an obstacle, you can better do without. Many soloists have therefore started leading the orchestra while playing their solo part. When planning to program the Mozart concerto KV 453 in The Reflective Musician festival, this was for me a prerequisite.
I had done it myself on a number of occasions, also in Mozart. A problem when you lead an orchestra from the keyboard of a modern concert grand, is that you have to turn your back to the audience and, in order to see the whole orchestra, to take the lid off the piano. The result is that most of the sound disappears in the ceiling. The remaining sonority of the piano is then much harsher and shorter; after all, the lid is part of the instrument. It’s almost like taking the bell off a horn. Some would argue that a Steinway this way comes closer to a Stein from Mozart’s time, but this comparison doesn’t stand to reason.
The answer would be to do it on a period instrument, but then, all instruments would have to be authentic, including the winds, and we end up with a completely different project. One must find a workable solution to this problem, i.e. performing a Mozart piano concerto on modern instruments but with the setting that Mozart himself must have used. He wanted to be in control of the whole process.
Some years ago, I was performing the E flat concerto KV 449 with the 1B1 string orchestra in Stavanger, and the leader, Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch, came up with a brilliant solution: placing the piano in an oblique position, with the violins and violas standing to the left and the celli (sitting) and basses to the right, permitted me to see everyone with the lid open and the leader to have contact with all the players. This way, the sound of the piano was projected fairly well into the hall, and the setup gave a feeling of intimacy like a chamber group. Truly, it was a chamber concerto that we performed without winds, but this was defintitely the way I wanted to try it.
I was in doubt how to place the wind players in this setup. Then the flautist Tom Ottar Andreassen, who helped me rehearsing them, said, “there is no one there who cannot play standing up”.
So we found a setup which can be seen in Fig. 2. In my opinion, it worked remarkably well. I felt a close contact with everybody, and no one was leaning back.
Even though some orchestra players are outside this picture, we had a fairly small group of 21 string players beside the 7 winds. A small string group is better for the balance, since the wind parts are so important. This is often a problem with symphony orchestras, and is emphasized by the fact that the wind players sit at the back. Here, they are brought much more into the center of the event.
The balance between the concert grand and the rest worked out quite well. I didn’t feel I had to hold back in any way. I also decided to play the continuo part in unissono with the celli and basses, often completing with chords in the right hand. The bass is written into the piano part, and I am quite convinced that Mozart himself played it. Whether he added chords or kept his right hand free to conduct the tuttis, we cannot know [2]. With a group like this, I could easily refrain from conducting, except in the wind passages where there is no continuo. It felt much more natural to be part of the group during tuttis. The leader was leading the strings, I was leading the winds and playing with the celli, and we decided on who should give which cues.
Organization of work
But we are anticipating our working procedure in this project. In short, I wanted to have much more time than usual with a symphony orchestra, and to confront the players with aspects of harmony, structure or phrasing. It was important to find a chamber orchestra that was willing to go into this kind of collaboration, and when I enquired the Allegria ensemble about this, they were more than willing to do it. This is a young and ambitious ensemble consisting of string players recently graduated from the Norwegian Academy of Music, and these young musicians have their open-mindedness and their curiosity still intact, not yet spoilt by years at the production line. The wind players were selected among master students of the academy.
The other works on the programme were soon decided. We would have a new piano concerto premiered, and project group member Ellen Ugelvik placed a commission with the young composer Bente Leiknes Thorsen. The orchestra would end with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, a work that they wished to record, and that fitted well into the philosophy of The reflective musician. Berit Cardas, founding member of the Vertavo Quartet, was engaged as leader for the project, and by coincidence, this quartet had been invited to participate in the festival.
The rehearsals were set up as follows: First, a rehearsal with the winds, well in advance to make them conscious of their roles and give them time to practise. Then, a rehearsal with the strings was followed by the first tutti rehearsal and another one for the winds alone, an open rehearsal with public, and the dress rehearsal, before the performance on April 16, 2015.
A schedule like this would be unthinkable in a symphony orchestra. It made it possible to go beyond the superficial work one usually ends up with, and in the open rehearsal my intention was, for the attendance as well as for the players, to discuss some of the important structural features of the work.
The classical concerto form was firmly established by Mozart in the years 1784-85. It was the time of his Vienna subscription concerts, and he was free to experiment with form and content. In his book The Classical Style, Charles Rosen has written very sensible things about this which I do not need to repeat here [3]. Still, I would like to treat some of the elements here that I discussed in the open rehearsal.
The main themes of the concerto contain obvious parallels. Fig. 3 shows this.
There are many more connections, I just show the principal ones. I don’t believe that Mozart worked as consciously as Beethoven on motives. He hardly made sketches, and such connections probably just came naturally to his mind. But it seems that the three-note motive b,c,d plays a role in many of these themes, as well as the repeated notes. Also, the principal themes of all three movements have their anchor points on D and B (I have shown the theme of the C Major Andante in G Major as it appears in bar 64, to make the point). Being conscious of this last point in particular will not fail to affect the performance. I believe the arrival on B in the delightful theme of the variation movement – from where the consequent descends back to D – is felt much more as an important point when the parallel with the first movement is kept in mind. Also, the leap to the high third in the second movement takes on a different meaning.
In the opening of the first movement, the question is whether stress should be put on the high B or on the F-E of bar 4. I would say the last, since it is an arrival point, but one can still put into value the ambitus of the phrase. The consequent here also descends back to D but after having extended the ambitus to the C above. The relation between this C and the B is further exploited in the next phrase (fig. 4):
One of Charles Rosen’s main points in his chapter on concertos is that looking at the place of the various themes in the orchestra exposition, the solo exposition and the recapitulation, and determining which ones are on the dominant or the tonic, is more important than putting labels like first and second theme, bridge, etc [4]. To this purpose, I made the following diagram of the first movement (fig. 5):
It should be clear which themes appear on the dominant in the solo exposition and on the tonic in the recapitulation. All the themes in the orchestra exposition are on the tonic, which makes the concerto-sonata form fundamentally different from the symphony, where the exposition is simply repeated, with the secondary theme group on the dominant (or relative) both times. It is here the privilege of the soloist to enter the dominant field with theme C and the modulation leading up to it, where the principal tonal tension of the movement is established.
Another feature here is the sudden change to E flat with theme G in the orchestra exposition. This Trugschluss is reflected in the development, where the A (dominant of D) goes to B flat in a similar V - bVI progression. Here the winds introduce the theme I, apparently new, in fact a variant of theme G. What now follows is extraordinary: via A minor we ascend to B Major (K), then via an ingenious modulatory trick in bars 207-210, to c minor with the theme L. The whole progression is shown in the graph of fig.6, starting from the D Major closure of the exposition.
The second movement is, structurewise, quite similar to the first in that we again see a sonata form with double exposition, but here each of the five blocks (the coda is one of them) starts with a recurrence of the main theme, with a different instrumentation each time. Every time, the theme stops dead in the fifth bar, followed by a fermata. This silence that follows, is charged with magical mystery, each time interrupted by a completely different episode, creating an dramatic surprise at every recurrence. The exception is the last statement in the coda, played by the winds. Here, the surprise consists of the modulation to the subdominant and the piano introducing the new theme J, in fact a consequent giving to this last statement a long awaited feeling of closure. The frequent returns of the main theme gives the movement a rondo-like appearance, but it is clearly a concerto-sonata form. Fig. 7 shows the outline. I have used a slightly different chronology for the names here: the various episodes get new names rather than B1, B2 etc. In fact, B never returns.
The third movement has a much simpler form: it is a set of variations, not very common in Mozart concerti (the C minor concerto is another example). There is acceleratation of note values from one variation to the next, except in the 4th variation, which is in the minor key and with syncopations, which provide increased tension. After the joyful fifth variation we get a true opera buffa finale, where we may very well imagine the various characters on stage commenting on each other. The main elements are shown in Fig. 8.
Explaining all of this to the musicians in the open rehearsal was an important part of the process. Some would object that musicians ought to know anyway about such rather elementary specimens of music theory. My impression is that even theoretically keen musicians need to be reminded about such things when they play their parts, and my hope was that those who were less motivated for structural thinking might pick up some interest. There is less and less focus on theory and analysis in music education, although this varies from one country to another. Many students see these subjects as a necessary evil to pass the exams, and this was one reason that I wanted to confront the young members of the Allegria ensemble with such facts.
Other choices
We didn’t have to speak much about expression in the rehearsals. That aspect is usually solved while playing and listening to each other, and my role was to serve as model by showing my intentions. Leader Berit Cardas followed up responding to these and taking own initiatives. The intimate setting, along with having worked separately with the winds and the strings on beforehand, made all this easier.
I chose to play Mozart’s own cadenzas, since they are available for this concerto (he wrote them for Barbara Ployer, his student, whom he apparently didn’t trust to make her own). It seems difficult to surpass the quality of both these wonderful cadenzas, and I only added a short one on the fermata before the finale of the last movement.
There is also ornamentation to be added to some long notes in the slow movement. This is particularly the case at bar 39 which I show in Fig. 9, with my realisation in performance:
Ex. 2 contains this passage from the performance.
Ex. 2: Excerpt from performance, bars 39-42 2nd movement
Performance
There was still an important stage before the concert: the general rehearsal in the hall. The acoustic was quite different from where we had rehearsed, and, luckily, it turned out to the better, so that we could keep our setup unchanged.
As mentioned before, I had a strong feeling of closeness in the performance, and of everyone being very alert. If I were to perform a Mozart concerto again, I would certainly try to do it the same way, although it’s difficult to imagine this with an established symphony orchestra.
The comment from the members of the orchestra shows that they felt much the same about this. One of the facts stressed in their statement is that each individual musician gets the opportunity to relate to the musical facts; in fact, to reflect on their playing. Having enough rehearsal time was an important factor here. The group rehearsals (winds and strings separately) allowed everyone to listen better to each other, and the discussions that this way of organising allowed for, gave them a better insight in the work. These things are almost unthinkable in a normal orchestra, as I have already pointed out.
They do have comments about the fact that I had to conduct the winds; this was probably inevitable, since windplayers tend to get behind if not pushed. With highly skilled and experienced players used to playing together, we could have done without. But cues would have to be exchanged anyhow; a result of some of the players being unable to see each other. In a normal setup with the winds behind the strings, this is even more of a problem.
[1] E.T.A. Hoffmann was the first to do so. See Laurence Dreyfus: Early Music, Vol. 20, No. 2, Performing Mozart's Music III (May, 1992), p. 297 [back]
[2] Charles Rosen: The classical style, first edition New York 1971. New edition, Faber and Faber, London 1997. Charles Rosen discusses this question at length in his book (p. 189 ff). He does conclude that one shouldn’t play the continuo, but it is allowed to disagree with his argumentation. [back]
[3] Rosen 97, p. 198 ff. [back]
[4] Rosen 97, footnote to page 210 [back]
Statement by members of Ensemble Allegria
In Ensemble Allegria we work at evolving constantly as chamber musicians and at delivering concerts on top level, and in that work we see the importance of sufficient rehearsal time, not in the least to allow for the music to mature within each musician. By proceeding thouroughly and in due time, each one of us achieves a stronger knowledge and ownership of the music, which influences the performance directly and in a positive way. To have pre-rehearsals as we did in the project ”The reflective musician” is therefore entirely along our line of thought. Another important reason for having enough rehearsal time is the possibility this offers for dialogue between soloist and orchestra, both verbally and while performing.
An important point about playing without a conductor in such situations is precisely to trigger the communication proper to chamber msic, and the opportunity to come forward with own initiatives. If you replace the conductor by a playing conductor, there is a danger that some of this advantage will disappear. The disposition, with an open grand piano in the middle of the orchestra, and with the lid open, caused some challenges to the chamber music situation, since the violins and the celli/basses had trouble seeing each others, even if the violins were playing standing up. This was solved by a conducting pianist, so in terms of coherence it was no problem, but we possibly lost some of the musical dialogue through this. However, in our opinion, whichever solution you choose, there will be advantages and disadvantages, and beyond doubt, the concert in Universitetets Aula was a great success.
