And why I am not the only one who has been gripped by the heart-stopping playing of principal viola Amihai Grosz, who performs Mahler symphonies as if they were string quartets – and quartets as if symphonies.
Mebbe it\’s just me, but shouldn\’t symphonies be played as symphonies, quartets as quartets?
You know, like waltzs in 3/4 and foxtrots in 4/4, as they were written to be played?
Obviously and Jazz artists should never take standards and improvise on them and all those Medieval and Renaissance composers who took popular tunes and made mass settings out of them were also barking up the wrong tree.
It’s just you, Tim.
In which passage of which Mahler symphony is it possible to distinguish and be gripped by the principal viola?
What Diogenes said. Have a listen to Liszt’s piano transcriptions of all sorts of things, but most mind-blowingly, of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ . Before records and radio and touring orchestras, probably be the only way you’d hear many great orchestral works was when a touring piano virtuoso blew into town. Lucky for us.
IMO the knock-down argument is provided by Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. Thanks for prompting me to look at Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition) on the subject – its account is well worth reading.
and then we have the evidence of Abbado’s recent recordings of Mahler symphonies with a load of people who only play these days as chamber musicians….eg Sabine Meyer. Great musicians, as long as they concede to playing in an ensemble, will always out-perform the rank and file.