INTERVENTION
posted by James Reel
Pianist Jeremy Denk has had enough of people remarking that performers presenting a score should just “leave it alone”:
To "leave a piece alone" by contemporary standards means perhaps: to do what modern conservatory education tells us to do: play in time, observe markings, play expressively but do not add any extras: present the score, as if there were a perfect "acoustical correlative." This faith in an acoustical correlative is one of the strange cults of our modern classical musical religion, and it too I would like to debunk, but perhaps not today. What I'd suggest is that to "leave a piece alone," by modern standards, may have seemed to Romantic or Classical standards also a definite action, something tangibly "done to the piece;" an immobilization; perhaps something akin to taking a butterfly and sticking a pin through it and preserving it in a perfect display case. Harsh metaphor! But I think we have all heard such performances, preserved mimicries which seem to be right, which have wings on display, but do not fly.You’ll find Denk’s full musing on the value of interpretation—although he never quite admits that’s what he’s talking about—here.
