#86: Is it possible to focus on ‘felt emotion’?

Section 9: Josef Suk – Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn ‘St Wenceslas’ Op.35a

An important question that has been lurking throughout these posts is whether it is possible for modern players to embody these early recorded sounds fully enough that genuinely felt emotion can start to take the place of self-conscious experimentation (with performance style ‘features’). How far could we keep hold of this unfamiliar manner while also trying to recast it as emergent from ‘real’ feelings of our own? Was it possible to channel C.P.E. Bach’s notion of the performer ‘letting themselves be moved’ by the music, even in an idiom that was so unusual to us?

Another of our metaphors that hinted at this was the idea that ‘we did not need to see the duck’s feet under the water’. We felt that there must be no hint of moving parts, which needed to be subsumed under ‘higher’ expressive intentions. While we were sceptical that this would be possible, I was keen to see what the attempt might tell us. In the event, the results were fascinating: some aspects of our playing were far more convincingly ‘synthesised’ than previous takes, but we also witnessed a sense of reversion to a more modern idiom, when we prioritised ‘feeling’ in this way. The playing still involved slides, unequal rhythm, asynchrony, and tempo flexibility. But its character was undoubtedly different to the Czech Quartet’s, in a way that arguably resists explanation by parameters.