Customer Reviews

Of Music and Music-Making

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Bruno Walter was an incredible musician, conductor, you need only listen to his Beethoven, and Mozart to find the balance of emotion passion and his restraint and affinity for classical shape.He conducted Gustav Mahler as if the ink had not dried yet on the score, and the earliest recordings do have their problems, still he was the closest save for Klemperer of those who survived Europe.Walter also knew howe to build an orchestra as George Szell.
Here discussed is the lifeworlds of music,its precision,passion correct tempi, extrinsic and intrinsic elements within music-making,where is the life force in music resides, where does music come to nourish in life,how to give shape to a musical phrase, how it comes to mean something and how you best communicate this to an orchestra. There is also music that seeks death,as Mozart's D-Minor latter Piano Concerto he did with Rudolf Serkin, the severity/weight is overwhelming.Walter you can say practiced a kind of philosophy in what he did,although never bringing that vocabulary to his/these thoughts; things we seem to know already but need incessant reminding in that music making is one of those realms that can erase itself from view,come to be self-indulged in the moment or gesture especially now with homogenized, digitalized culture all around and its influence on the music world its creation/composition and production; the classical world,the one Walter discusses seems to be receding, in that we come to value less the experience of a symphony,or the timbre of the violoncello; we think we don't need it to nourish our souls and intellect. Walter speaks in great generalities, so you need to bring yourself,the world literature of music to his profound/useful thoughts and views to interpolate with your own experiences.Music it seems we are only left with our own memories, what we can recall is all that exists. At first it all seems obvious, ear,hand and gesture, rhythm,melos and mind yet unknown as you apply what he says to pieces you may know. His thoughts also apply, may apply to contemporary music, for the marks of quality are identical, it was Alban Berg who said you must play Mozart as if it was written yesterday, and Schoneberg as if its was older, meaning to fix a remedy for the familiar.
Walter's influence seems to be always there,as if he never existed he would need to be invented.He knew how to fix a centrist reading of works,not overly impassioned yet not without it either; to soften it up for contemplation.It seems odd that take any conductor and whomever stands in front on the podiumcan summon entirely different timbres from the same identical tones and harmonies. I think Walter can teach how best to expect a minimum and fly further into deeper interpretive readings. He was a transitional figure having to cope with exile and abandonmment. Yet he knew how best to transform this suffering into what he conducted. Still we value the depth of dignity,truth,and honesty for the human spirit and its development.