Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Horowitz not playing Mozart repeats?

Starting with Beethoven, the repeats started to become less 'optional,' as he structured his works to be played with precisely the repeats he specified, regardless of the audience's proclivities.

Can you explain a little more about this? Is this your personal opinion or generally accepted by those knowledgable in this area?

One of the most unpleasant concert experiences I ever endured was hearing Alfred Brendel plod his way through Schumann's Symphonic Etudes including every last repeat - played exactly the same way as the first time through.

In the main, writers of the early Classic and Classic periods offer no options in following notated repeat signs. According to Quantz, "If there are two dots on each side of a double bar..., they signify that the piece consists of two parts, and that each part must be played twice." Turk, Koch, and Hummel all agreed with Quantz. Clementi departed, with this observation: The dotted bars denote the repeat of the foregoing, and the following strain. N.B. The second part of a piece, if very long, is seldom repeated; notwithstanding the dots."

...Nicolas Joseph Hullmandel and Antonio Sacchini were among the early composers who omitted the internal repeat signs in a few such movements. Nevertheless, Haydn and Mozart used the double repeat signs in all their opening sonata-allegro movements for the keyboard except Hob. 52 and K. 576 respectively; in these two late works only the expositions are repeated. Clementi omitted the second repeat in Op. 9/3/iii, which he published in London ca. 1790-1795?. In his autograph revision of Op. 13/6/iii, he put a repeat sign at the beginning of the development section (perhaps out of habit?) but none at the end of the movement, which is marked Fine. The length and power of the second part of this movement convince me that Clementi's N.B. applies here. Of course, in reaching such a decision, a performer needs to consider its effect on the listener's perception of the entire form and of the relationships of the parts to each other.

Beethoven indicated repeats judiciously from the start. In his piano sonatas from Op. 2 on, only nine movements in sonata-allegro form contain repeat signs for the second part. The first movement without one is Op. 2/3/i. Here, presumably, Beethoven must have felt that the extensive cosa, which is only about 20 percent shorter than the development section, would have made a repeat anticlimactic. From Op. 57 on, many of the movements have no repeats, although, interestingly, in Op. 57/iii only the development and recapitulation repeat (before the coda). Beethoven returned to repeats for the expositions of Opp. 106/i and 111/i.

...In the face of this evidence, casual disregard of Beethoven's repeats would seem an affront to his formal designs.

>Too often I hear repeats performed when the performer has nothing new to say with them at all. Then it's just boring.

This seems a common argument. But isn't this a bit strange? If we really like a piece, I'm sure most of us listen to the same CD/MP3 many times. Yet if it's played two times, it's boring?

Or perhaps some pianists believe that changes, if any, should be very minor.

I think if a pianist on the level of Brendel decides to play a repeat exactly the same as the first time through, he clearly has decided to do so for a reason. One many prefer repeats played differently, but it's not as though Brendel is unaware of the idea of changing things on repeats or that he couldn't do so if he wanted to.

>Too often I hear repeats performed when the performer has nothing new to say with them at all. Then it's just boring.

This seems a common argument. But isn't this a bit strange? If we really like a piece, I'm sure most of us listen to the same CD/MP3 many times. Yet if it's played two times, it's boring?

I totally agree.

When you play a repeat identical to the first time through, IMO it stops the dramatic movement and progressive flow of a piece.

Unless that repeat can be considered a part of the "progressive flow" of the piece.

For instance, in traditional sonata form, hearing the exposition's resolution twice in the "wrong" key (the dominant) can help make it more satisfying when we finally hear the resolution in the right key in the recapitulation. The repeat adds a very subtle kind of tension to the overall flow of the movement.

At any rate, when thinking of repeats, I think it's worthwhile to compare Beethoven's Waldstein and Appassionata. At this point, Beethoven uses repeats very deliberately. Why is there one in the first movement of op.53 but not op.57?

-Jason

I think in a live performance a repeat will always differ slightly at least from the first playing - the performer is approaching it from a different perspective - even if no notation, dynamics etc are deliberately changed. However, if you enjoy the wonderful music of the first section played first time around, how can you suddenly become bored with that same wonderful music being repeated? If it's second class music, or music you are not enraptured by in the first place, maybe, but any Beethoven sonata for example?

Varying a repeated section does not necessarily imply going counter to anything in the score. Even without the embellishments/alterations that were all part of the 19th Centuy tradition, there is still plenty of room for variety - the spice of life. Rubato, balancing of inner-voices, tonal color are all expressive devices that can be legitimately used and would be objectionable to only the most pedantic.

Since the thread started out referring to Horowitz, I refer to one of his oft quoted rules of Romantic piano performance: The opening statements of any piece should be played in a very direct manner, and expressive devices only used further in.