In April 1962, a 29-year-old pianist named Glenn Gould joined Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall for a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1. The interpretive differences between the two were so deep that Bernstein felt the need to preface the concert with prepared remarks that explained Gould’s “unorthodox” interpretation.
Bernstein was ready for a more “traditional” interpretation of the piece. Gould intended to “downplay” the virtuosic aspects of the piano part, sometimes reducing tempo to a speed that just seemed wrong. Bernstein wound up yielding to Gould’s style, but many critics were not taken by the performance.
I’ll admit that this isn’t the perfect example of a conductor’s interpretive freedom, in part because in a concerto it’s the soloist who takes the lead. However, it is a perfect example of the challenges of interpretation and the multiple ways in which different conductors can see the same piece of music. The reason why a conductor alters the score is because there's no way they can't.
Think about a scene from your favorite play. When you’re reading the script, you’re simply reading words. Not mood, or intonation; cadence or gestures. That's why two actors can convey the same words in two totally different ways. Like so:
Same goes for conducting. In fact, it was during Glenn Gould’s US Television debut — for a performance of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 — that Bernstein introduced the concert by answering questions of interpretation.
He begins with a simple but informative revelation about how differently conductors can perform Beethoven’s Third, even with the strict tempo and metronome markings. And then he touches on something fascinating. If you remember, musical notation developed over centuries, with symbols being added as composers realized their available notational toolbox was inadequate. “Bach,” explained the maestro, “belonged to a time when composers weren’t being very generous with information about how to play their notes.” He likens the instruments identified in the score to a play’s dramatis personae. And like the lines of play, Bach’s score gives up a “pitifully few clues” to performance. And that’s where interpretation comes in. Unless there’s a recording of the composer conducting, we have no idea how it was intended to sound. In a way, conductors are constantly trying to hack into dead composers’ heads.
In a 1993 issue of Performance Practice Review, musicologist and Goucher College president José Antonio Bowen identified three influential conductors who considered the idea of staying true to a composer’s original idea: Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner. Mendelssohn believed that the conductor should not provide any alterations to the score; it should only be considered when confronting logistical issues — like when he had to pare down Bach’s massive St. Matthew Passion in 1829. He also believed tempo shouldn’t change within movements, leading some contemporaries to complain he performed some works — including those of Beethoven — way to quickly.
Like Mendelssohn, Berlioz believed that interpretation of tempo should not be left up to the conductor. But he went a bit further and demanded that the orchestra stay true to instrumentation as well. If he were conducting an older piece that required an old-timey horn, then a modern one would not cut it. That’s especially wild considering Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique calls for sort of doofy, now obscure instruments called the ophicleide and serpent. Modern orchestras try to skate by using tubas, but the spirit of Berlioz is not having that mess.
Wagner was radically different. Bowen calls him the first to “regard conducting as an interpretive act.” Before, conductors were striving for perfect fidelity, believing everything we needed to know was in the score. But for Wagner, conducting was its own creative enterprise. “To interpret Beethoven properly,” he wrote to a friend, “one must be able to create anew with him.” It all came down to grasping the feeling of a work. Remember in the video above how Bernstein explained the challenge of Bach’s “pitiful lack of clues?” Wagner didn’t see a problem at all, and wrote that if you have a true understanding of Bach’s music then you don't need tempo markings. Obviously.
Conductors are constantly trying to figure out how to bring music to life. And when you find a conductor whose recordings you really like, it can be divine. Just ask pianist James Rhodes, who last year in The Guardianwrote the ultimate fanboy article about Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis. Rhodes calls him “the conducting equivalent of Glenn Gould morphed with Kurt Cobain,” and praises his originality and clarity in his recordings of Mozart’s operas. “It’s as if Currentzis has found a wormhole and tunneled back in time into Mozart’s mind.”
Just two years after that Carnegie Hall concert, Glenn Gould, a brilliant pianist obsessed with doing things differently, ceased performing in public. He was only 31. His friend, the soprano Roxolana Roslak, said it was because he could not find the kind of control he needed on stage. After Gould’s death in 1982, Bernstein gave his side of the night's events, and expressed regret that they stopped seeing each other. It might be a stretch to call that concert Gould’s final straw, but it's a perfect way to think about how loaded an innovative interpretation can be.