Fifty years ago this month, the classical world produced a collective gasp so profound it could have shushed the intermission hubbub at the most boisterous of concerts. Audiences shook their heads in disbelief, music critics scribbled venom into inflamed concert reviews and Leonard Bernstein provided a now famous disclaimer from the conductor’s podium in an effort to distance himself from what was about to happen.
It was April 6, 1962. The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould was taking the stage at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein to perform the Concerto in D minor by Johannes Brahms. Gould had persuaded a reluctant Bernstein to take the opening movement of the concerto at an unheard-of slow tempo. Gould had a well reasoned artistic motivation for this, which is partly explained in this excerpt from a CBS Radio interview he gave to James Fassett on Feb. 2, 1963:
“What went on last year was in no way a particularly unusual performance of that particular Brahms concerto except for one factor and that was that our [Bernstein’s and Gould’s] proportions of tempi and our proportions of dynamics tended to be scaled closer together than is usually the case. There was less … divergence between what could be called the masculine and feminine approach of the piano concerto, between the first theme and second theme, between the barking of the orchestra and the placidity of the piano. It was a much more tightly welded unit, what I wanted to do.”
It is ironic, and validating for Gould’s vision, that 26 years after the Brahms incident in New York, Bernstein recorded the same concerto with Krystian Zimerman using similarly broad tempi.
You have to wonder why slow performances create such a fuss. Consider the recent kerfuffle in Ottawa when soprano Measha Brueggergosman dared to sing the Senators’ pre-game anthems at a slow, diva-esque metronome marking. The Austrian conductor, Karl Böhm, sometimes went in for logy interpretations too, but never suffered reprisals, at least for that part of his checkered reputation.
What gives? Who’s right? Why does classical music have a speed limit you mustn’t ever dip below? Let us know your thoughts on this or any other tempo-related music matter.
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