Interesting...Just switched on the radio, and heard Strauss's Don Quixote. I listened & thought: "I agree with much of what this cellist does. It's not me, tho'; I play it differently. Who can it be?' I looked it up; it was- me + @mn_orchestra /De Waart in 1990! Does one change?
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Replying to @StevenIsserlis @mn_orchestra
Rachmaninov was an interpretational Platonist. He believed that each work has a unique ideal performance, and that the interpreter's job is to find and to realize that performance. From which it follows that the ideal interpreter plays the same work the same way, every time.
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Replying to @StevenIsserlis @mn_orchestra
I find it striking that Paul Dirac was an expositional Platonist; he believed that each concept has an ideal pedagogical form, which maximizes its intelligibility. When he'd come as close to this form as he could, he'd repeat the resulting explanation verbatim, over and over.
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Replying to @StevenIsserlis @mn_orchestra
Yes, it is a little different, but still very similar. Both Dirac and Rachmaninov believed that there is a unique ideal way to communicate the meaning of a work of art. When one has gotten as close to that ideal as one can, any change in one's approach can only be for the worse.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @mn_orchestra
Doesn't apply to music, I feel. A great musician goes deeper and deeper into a work. Same with composers: early/middle Beethoven is perfect, glorious - and then he goes into other worlds.
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Replying to @StevenIsserlis @mn_orchestra
I doubt that Rachmaninov would dispute any of this. He would simply maintain that in going deeper and deeper into a work, one is getting closer and closer to its abstract objective essence, whose perfect articulation in performance is the function of the ideal interpreter.
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Since we're constrained to the real world, we can only approach this ideal objective essence, not attain it. But its existence implies that our successive approximations must eventually differ from each other less and less. In the long run, only the tiny details are up for grabs.
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I hasten to add that I do not intend these remarks as the expression of my own personal convictions. I am simply trying to convey what I understand of the thinking of those who embrace an ideal, Platonic conception of a work of art, and of the role and goal of its interpreter.
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I do note, however, that in my experience, the difference between a transcendent interpretation and a mundane one does indeed lie in its treatment of the tiniest of details.
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