Off the record: performing practices in Romantic piano playing

Abstract

Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing. By Neal Peres Da Costa. NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. 342pp. (hardcover). Figures and Musical Examples, Index, Companion Website. ISBN 978-0-19-538691-2. $45 The recently published book, Off the Record, by Neal Peres Da Costa is a very welcome and important addition to our understanding of how pianists of an earlier generation performed nineteenth century romantic piano repertoire. The author, who is associate professor and chair of early music at the Sydney Conservatory of Music, has expanded upon his 2002 PhD dissertation (University of Leeds) and has drawn upon a wealth of piano rolls and early recordings in investigating the freedom of expression and individuality exhibited by many pianists of the so-called Golden Age. Oxford University Press has provided a website for the book containing innumerable recorded extracts from recordings discussed in the text, as well as additional musical examples that were either too large to include in the book or merely an appendix to the author's discussion. In his opening chapter, Peres Da Costa presents an extremely well-balanced discussion of the value of early sound recordings and piano rolls. His comments on the latter are especially appreciated since the accuracy of piano rolls has long been hotly debated. His treatment of the subject is both comprehensive and fair, with descriptions of the technical procedures involved in both sound recordings and piano rolls, as well as a careful noting of the limitations presented by each. Peres Da Costa's book is based upon the premise that such early recordings present us with an important historical picture of performance practice during the romantic period. Many of the recordings he considers date from the earliest years of the twentieth century, and some are even from the latter years of the preceding century. This evidence of performance practice and style has only recently begun to elicit sufficient interest from scholars, certainly long overdue. The second chapter deals with what is perhaps the most characteristic aspect of many pianists trained in the nineteenth century namely the practice of not synchronizing the two hands. Peres Da Costa refers to this as dislocation, and it traditionally involved delaying certain melody notes so that they sound after the bass (occasionally before) rather than simultaneously with the bass. This is followed in the next chapter by a thorough discussion of unnotated arpeggiation, also an example of non-synchronization in which notes of a chord are sounded individually (usually lowest note to top note) rather than being sounded simultaneously. Chapter Four is concerned with various aspects of rhythmic alteration, customarily involving a flexible placement of melodic notes that often leads to non-synchronization of the melody and accompaniment. In his fifth and final chapter, Peres Da Costa discusses tempo modification, which involves varying degrees of deviation from strict or metronomical tempo. All of the aforementioned performance practices were relatively prevalent among pianists trained in the nineteenth century, and the evidence for this is found not only in written commentary and contemporary pedagogical texts but also among the multitude of recordings that Peres Da Costa has examined. Yet he notes with justifiable surprise that there are often contradictions between the recordings and contemporaneous written texts. For example, recordings of a pianist might demonstrate significant dislocation of the hands, while the same pianist might have left a written text condemning the practice. The author offers no convincing explanation for this, but his research certainly compels us to consider both the written and aural evidence when discussing an appropriate approach to the performance of music from the romantic period. While I generally have much praise for Peres Da Costa, I do have a few reservations. …