I’m so utterly in love with Hélène Grimaud‘s piano-playing that I find she dispels all considerations of period style—indeed, pretty much everything else.

Still, inspired by her Brahms, and as early music gets later, I find myself browsing

• Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman (eds.) Performing Brahms: early evidence of performance style (2003)

notably Sherman’s own article:

• “Metronome marks, timings, and other period evidence for tempo in Brahms”,

covering the range of Brahms’s ouevre—the symphonies, chamber music, the German requiem, and so on.

It’s a topic that has rears its ugly head with the fracas over Norrington’s recordings (cf. the rancorous vibrato debate in Mahler—don’t miss “Roger Norrington’s stupid Mahler Ninth”). Assembling an impressive array of evidence, Sherman’s conclusion is suitably underwhelming:

… in practice, it is evident that Brahms and his contemporaries took varying tempos from performance to performance. […] Brahms clearly did not believe that there is one ideal tempo for a work. He wrote that any “normal person” would take a different tempo “every week”.

Sherman’s website, BTW, is always stimulating.

As with baroque music, the use of historical instruments is an important element in the choice of tempo. As you may have gathered, I’m no purist, but here’s Hardy Rittner playing the 1st piano concerto on an 1854 Erard—like Mozart’s piano, once you’ve adjusted to the timbre, it has a lot to offer over the gargantuan glossiness of the modern instrument, however brilliantly performers like Grimaud manage to overcome it:

The issue of tempo is particularly notable in the Adagio (from 22.18), where the 6/4 metre flows more audibly than in “straight” performances (at least in the orchestral passages—there’s less contrast between the tempi of the piano solos). Whether it’s Adagio or not—let’s keep reading up…

Anyway, now I’d love to hear Grimaud playing it on an Erard, not least because I think she’d find even more potential there for her creative genius. But I’m sure she’s perfectly happy using the modern piano, and that’s fine!

For yet later HIP, try The Rite of Spring. And while we’re on Brahms, again casting aside academic concerns, do bask in Kleiber’s Brahms 2. For the long retardation of Tang music in Japan, see here.