Beautiful or merely a cover-up?

“Don't strive for perfection, because perfection is in conflict with beauty.” – Nicholas Harnoncourt

If beauty and perfection are in conflict, then the glossy sheen of the modern record industry is a cover-up. For this very reason, when I was a fledgling teenage music student, I became enthralled with the mostly unedited recordings of Kreisler, Elman, Heifetz, Milstein, Rabin, Ysaÿe, Menuhin, etc. Immediately, I then fell absolutely in love with the recordings of conductors such as Celidibache, Klemperer, de Sabata, Furtwängler, Mengelberg, Munch, etc. How could one not be drawn to the arresting virtuosity and astonishing accuracy of Heifetz and Rabin or the tonal opulence of Kreisler and Elman? The recordings of Menuhin and Furtwängler seem to encompass the entirety of the human existence while those historic Boston Symphony and Munch recordings singularly define French music in its entire sensual splendor – notwithstanding his race to the scaffold which probably is exactly opposite of Berlioz’s intentions. Not to be misunderstood, I loved – and still love – the magnificent recordings of Karajan. That gloss that only he could achieve was truly remarkable, but why did every piece have to have the same luster?

Of late, I have been most intrigued by the Austrian Conductor, Manfred Honeck. Music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, he brings a personality steeped in the Austrian traditions to Pittsburgh’s polished ensemble. (He was once a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and his brother is a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic.) Humanity, sensuality, virtuosity, tonal opulence, and even that occasional sheen are all found in his performances. The performance delivered in Berlin by the PSO and Honeck on September 11, 2001 is no exception. I “attended” the performance via streamed video produced by the Berliner Philharmoniker’s incomparable Digital Concert Hall.

Opening with Mahler’s fifth symphony, the orchestra brought Honeck’s viewpoint to life. It is almost as if he was continually selecting portions of Mahler’s narrative and pressing the bold, italic, and/or underline buttons so that the listener heard everything. I was wondering how he was able to achieve such tender playing, raucous bursts, lush sonorities, brilliant passagework, and idiomatic playing all in the same performance. Sometimes the results were rapturous and other times they were perplexing, but is that not the music of Gustav Mahler?

What followed defied my every expectation. After motioning the audience to stop its standing ovation and rousing cheering, Honeck led a performance of Josef Strauss’s Dragonfly which was as Viennese as any you might ever hear. In fact, I have never heard an American orchestra play Viennese music so idiomatically. The final encore, the Waltz from Der Rosenkavalier, would have made Carlos Kleiber – Honeck’s idol – very happy.

In conclusion, the performance was dazzling. Sometimes the intonation erred and a few phrases may have been misshapen, but the performance was masterful. I wondered what Boulez would have thought.

"As for dazzling brilliance, I don't believe in it at all! I can't point to any specific conductor, but how can you be dazzling with disorderly phrasing, with out-of-sync chords and tempos, with muddled entrances? I wouldn't call that dazzling--I'd call it a coverup." - Pierre Boulez

So is this performance beautiful or a cover up? Are recordings which are edited to the point perfection in intonation, phrasing, and ensemble beautiful or are they a cover-up? Or can Boulez’s and Harnoncourt’s viewpoints both be true? Perhaps, Honeck and the PSO have embedded an answer in this performance.