Some Points of View on Performance Style
Some Points of View on Performance Style

Summary/Abstract: It is precisely the difficulty of defining the performance style that justifies the lack of any consistent commentary on the performance theory in modern musicology. I tried to find some critical perspectives on this topic; therefore, in the first part of my essay I will present four authors (two Americans, a German and a Romanian) who approached differently the performance issues. Joachim Kaiser wrote a book that examines the various interpretations that twentieth-century pianists have brought to their performances of Beethoven’s sonatas (1975). Then there is Edward Cone’s book, The Composer’s Voice (1974) which sets out from the idea that, as music is a language, we must answer the question: who is speaking? More than forty years ago, Romanian music critic Alfred Hoffman wrote two essays titled The Style of the Performer and Various Performances of Franz Liszt’s Concerto No. 1. Romanian music criticism has not shown any particular interest in defining specific tools to evaluate performances and perhaps for this reason it has not succeeded in achieving an authoritative voice or issuing authentic value judgements, and it is rare that a critic attempts to go deeper than the surface level and get to the heart of a particular performance. Last but not least, Richard Taruskin has opened up the debate on historical performance, evoking his own experiences (in essays written in 1982 and 1995) and launching questions: What does authenticity in performance ultimately mean? What does it mean to respect the composer’s intentions?The subject of comparing performances is specific to music criticism. From the examples given in the second part of my essay we shall gain an idea of the type of tools an ‘informed’ listener employs when commenting on a performance (of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quartet opus 59 no. 1, Images by Claude Debussy). Finally, a more analytical approach tries to read differently the George Enescu’s Third Sonata for Piano and Violin ‘in the Romanian folk style’.

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