Here's to the Romantics!

Exploring the Good and Evil in Performance Practice

Time to confess my hypocrisy. 

Those old-school, 20th-century recordings of the Bach violin sonatas and partitas often send my violinist friends and me into fits of contagious laughter. 

Before you severely admonish us for giggling at the undeniably heroic figures of violin-playing such as Jascha Heifetz or Yehudi Menuhin, let me explain…

The laughs come from pure shock and delight - not from derision. (There’s no debating the glory of these epic musicians who left their incredible fingerprints on violin technique and style.) We chuckle out of surprise and from knowing how the modern world would look down their noses at us youngsters if we tried performing Bach the way that old-school violinists did. The style that those 20th-century violin demigods played in is so vastly different from what young violinists today are used to hearing and emulating since music, like any other aspect of culture, is a living thing that grows and changes with time. 

One of these changes is the recent growing interest in the historical performance or performance practice movement (The movement itself is not new.) Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, musicians of this variety seek to perform music in a style closer to how it would have been performed during the era it was written. This has many implications, but a few basics include reducing or eliminating vibrato, playing with period instruments, adding ornamentation, playing with a lighter, more airy tone, or changing the tuning - all of this generally for Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical era music. The past century has seen the discovery of numerous documents that have shed light on how instrumentalists would have played and the type of technique and style they used, and performance practice seeks to restore authenticity to the performance of (especially) early music, offering a different style which gives an auditory snapshot into the music of yesteryears. (Authenticity will forever be a moving target since we have no recordings earlier than the 1800’s.)

Performance practice is a wonderful tool that has led to the creation of completely fresh soundscapes in classical music. Listening to a modern vs. performance practice recording of the same piece is a wildly different experience. 

While performance practice is not necessarily a phenomenon of the 21st century, it has gained much more attention lately. Young musicians are exposed to and often taught the fundamentals of this style, depending on their instrument, focus, and other factors. My violin buddies and I, most of us belonging only to the 21st century, are accustomed to performance practice, especially when it comes to Bach. (Y’know, because we didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree :) Our teachers often encouraged us to aim for a clear, light sound when performing solo Bach and steered us away from extreme vibrato and heavy tone. Many performing violinists of today, particularly those of the younger generation, are starting to follow the performance practice route. This means that solo Bach performed with wide, luscious vibrato, edgy bow attacks, and seductive slides/shifts is starting to become a relic of the past.

Which brings me back to our giggles. We laugh because we like to imagine how modern audiences would react to these types of solo Bach performances. The old-school renditions often get a bad rap. Modern audiences and musicians, accustomed to performance practice which values lightness and less liberality of romantic gestures sometimes point out how ‘outdated’ and ‘tasteless’ the pre-performance practice recordings are. We do indeed know that these performances are not authentic in sound to what the composer would have had in mind, and therefore they are often viewed as less-than.

My classical musician friends and I are all more or less enthusiastic about performance practice and enjoy incorporating aspects of it into our own interpretations of early music. I often gravitate towards performance practice recordings of Bach and other composers. 

This is all well and good, but I too often find myself in the middle of an unnecessarily snobbish comment about non-performance practice recordings or performances. I think there’s a little something that makes me (wrongly) feel superior because I happen to possess some embarrassingly scant knowledge about how early music can be performed with so-called ‘authenticity’ (the same knowledge that pretty much all young musicians have, and more so than me). Honestly, this is shameful when I pause to think about it. After all, the only reason why I have any idea about performance practice in the first place is because of the many incredible scholars and musicians who researched it and were gracious enough to pass on their knowledge to the next generation.

Oh, and here’s where the hypocrisy comes in. Sure, I have a soft spot for performance practice, but there are plenty of non-performance practice recordings that I’m obsessed with and will cherish for the rest of my life. I love them because they are beautiful and they touch my heart, and at the end of the day, it’s the same thing with my favorite performance practice recordings: I love them because they are beautiful and they touch my heart. The other part of my hypocrisy is that I have played Bach and other composers without even the slightest nod to performance practice countless times. I need to relax and ditch the hypocrisy and pride.

There’s room for all of us here. Styles come and go, and there’s no reason for me to bad-mouth ‘inauthentic’ performances, even if they’re not always my jam (and they often actually are). Music does not exist solely to be a history book, nor does it exist simply to be exact, perfect, or true. Yes - it is a history book of sorts, but it also exists outside of all of those things, and that’s why most of us love it so much - for its inexplicable, expressive qualities that aren’t bound to clear facts or science. One of my favorite aspects of classical music is the mind-boggling amount of variety that it possesses. Take any one piece, and you can listen to 1,000 different recordings of it and experience 1,000 different stories all told through the same notes but in the hands of different artists. 

Too much focus on authenticity can lead to elitism and turn people away. In the world of classical music which is already perceived as pretentious and snobbish, there’s no room for looking down on non-performance practice. Of course, no one has to like it, but I believe that there’s room to recognize it as something different and not just ‘uninformed’ or ‘inferior’. After all, if a recording or performance touches even just one person’s heart, hasn’t the music served its purpose?

Another confession: I still get a bit out of sorts when I hear the solo violin sonatas and partitas transcribed for other instruments. I love to complain about this. But since when does Bach belong to me, or only to string players? Bach obviously only wrote for instruments that existed during his life and that he was aware of (because he didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree :) So while there’s no Bach written for marimba or piano, there’s no sense in gate-keeping his music. Music written for organ or harpsichord is of course going to come across with different nuances on the piano, but that’s okay. Music written for violin will of course sound different on the guitar, but that’s okay. There’s room for more than one interpretation. There’s room for all of us here. Besides - isn’t it fascinating to hear those different nuances that reveal themselves through different transcriptions and arrangements? 

I’ll probably still wince a bit when I hear things like ‘Bach’s chaconne from the D minor partita arranged for six cellos,’ but then, why should I care? It’s not about me; it’s about everyone - and allowing music to live and breathe in different forms.

Performance practice is awesome. Let’s not let it create barriers between us. Music is bigger than that. 

Here’s to the romantics who brought out the emotional depth of Bach’s writing through luscious tone, vibrato, and old-school phrasing. There’ll never be anything quite like the splendor of those old-school solo Bach recordings. Leave room for the romantics. Leave room for recordings with seductive shifts in Vivaldi or Bach. The world is big enough for both old-school, rich tone and expressive swells played on gut strings.

And now, it’s time for me to step off my soapbox. Please allow me to introduce you to four of my favorite non-performance practice recordings!

First, one of those glorious old-school solo Bach recordings that you won’t hear in a concert hall of today; Henryk Szeryng’s BWV 1004:

Víkingur Ólafsson’s performance of Stradal’s transcription of the andante from Bach’s BWV 528 Organ Sonata. This rendition of his never ceases to touch my soul. It’s thanks to Ólafsson that I now have this beautiful work as a part of my life; he will forever be one of my heroes.

Ray Chen’s exhilarating performance of Vitali’s chaconne as arranged by romantic-era violinist Ferdinand David.

And, Ray Chen’s recording of Bach’s chaconne - a recording that changed my life.