7 - Performance practice

Summary

Introduction

Is the kind of performance expected by Mozart in his own day valid for later generations of players? We can never really answer this question, if only because so many relevant parameters have changed during the last couple of centuries. For example, the discipline imposed by the microphone and the implications of air travel are two factors which have brought about such changes that we cannot have the option to turn back the clock. Even if we could hear Anton Stadler's premiere of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, we would not necessarily wish to adopt all of its features; like all performers of our own day (on modern or period instruments), we should continue to exercise elements of choice and taste as much characteristic of the twentieth century as of the eighteenth. But the mere fact that the original performance conditions can seem at all relevant now marks a radical shift in our musical thinking.

Period performance of Mozart and his contemporaries has recently been subject to reassessment in the light of the evidence of early recordings. As one eminent scholar in the field has succinctly put it, ‘If early recordings teach us anything, it is that no musicians can ever escape the taste and judgement of their own time’. Was there ever a time when our clean, accurate approach prevailed, as has recently been asserted in relation to Mozart's symphonies?