Allegro with a lot more brio, how classical music is speeding up
CLASSICAL music is becoming faster as conductors adapt to modern tastes, leading figures in the industry figures have revealed.
As concert goers have changed, so have the performances, with tempos becoming quicker and more exciting.
Sir Nicholas Kenyon, the managing director of the Barbican Centre, said that there had been an attempt to get away from “reverential performances”.
“We seem to prefer transparent, light, bright sound and it works with the work of many composers; Bach, Handel, Mozart …” he said. “We can demonstrate that ‘average speeds’ have increased in recent decades.
“It’s a basic change in taste from the rather weighty concert style of previous years towards something that is more light, airy and flexible, which to my mind, is a good thing.”
Sir Nicholas added that works such as the British conductors Sir Roger Norrington and Simon Rattle’s Beethoven symphonies did not replace older versions, such as the work of Herbert von Karajan, but complemented them.
He pointed out that concerts today were often more informal, held in smaller halls with smaller orchestras. And the modern tendency to clap between
‘It is no longer a question of worshipping at a shrine but experiencing the music in many different forms’
movements was an example of performance becoming more relaxed.
“It is no longer a question of worshipping at a classical music shrine,” he said. “It is about experiencing the music in its many different forms.”
Sir Nicholas, the director of the BBC Proms from 1996 to 2007, said certain changes were a reaction against what had become the norm in the 19th century, adding: “There is now a feeling classical music takes its place alongside other genres with more varied styles, with flexibility and excitement.”
He was responding to a letter from a Daily Telegraph reader, who asked: “Why do recent recordings of classical music seem to be performed at a tempo appreciably faster than older recordings?”
Sir Roger said “slow” movements in Haydn and Mozart had become faster, which he agreed was “a very good thing”. He added: “It’s extremely important to play the music at the right speeds and we now understand far more about these speeds than we used to.”
Ivan Hewett, the Daily Telegraph’s classical music writer, said: “Since the Eighties, there’s been a very influential trend to get back to a more ‘authentic’ way of performing Haydn and Mozart, which the composers might actually have recognised.”