Music; Interpretation

This paper presents three different perspectives on musical interpretationand offers many concrete examples. They all have in common the fact thatthey fall within the field of Czech music. Focusing on historical recordings,I offer a number of suggestions with regard to specific topics. The aim is tohighlight the need for caution when forming evaluative judgments. Considerationof the technical aspects of recordings is essential, and the first section uses both amateur (folk) and professional (opera) recordings for demonstration. The recordings of the Czech opera singer Richard Kubla, and the contemporary critiques of them, serve as a “bridge” to the second section, focused on reviews. The career of Kubla was again used as a case study. At first glance, the reviews by the Ostrava music critic Milan Balcar may seem objective. However, the discovery of a letter written by Kubla to Balcar, i.e. the performer’s response to the critic’s assessment, suggests that Balcar may not have been objective when writing his reviews and that he was perhaps settling personal scores with his former classmate. This finding sheds a completely different light on the published reviews of interpretations.A probe into the life of the soprano Eva Hadrabová-Nedbalová highlights two interesting matters: the first is the confrontation of professional reviews and the handwritten notes of a frequent visitor to the Vienna State Opera between the wars, and the second is her time at the Nuremberg Opera during the Second World War. Her desire to leave Nuremberg at any cost led her to intentionally perform poorly – a fact the critics were, of course, unaware of. This raises the point that reviews often focus solely on the performance presented, without taking into account the background, motivations or reasons behind it. A review is thus an unconscious evaluation of a “simulation” rather than the real situation. The third section deals with the dilemma of choosing between different melodic variants of twoimportant mediaeval Bohemian spiritual songs. For illustration, one of themost important treasures of Czech music, the Hussite war hymn Ktož jsúBoží bojovníci (Ye Who Are Warriors of God) was chosen. The late discoveryof the older version raised the problem of how and whether to continueworking with the younger version, which is still in use and which BedřichSmetana firmly and forever anchored in the history of Czech music.

This paper presents three different perspectives on musical interpretationand offers many concrete examples. They all have in common the fact thatthey fall within the field of Czech music. Focusing on historical recordings,I offer a number of suggestions with regard to specific topics. The aim is tohighlight the need for caution when forming evaluative judgments. Considerationof the technical aspects of recordings is essential, and the first section uses both amateur (folk) and professional (opera) recordings for demonstration. The recordings of the Czech opera singer Richard Kubla, and the contemporary critiques of them, serve as a “bridge” to the second section, focused on reviews. The career of Kubla was again used as a case study. At first glance, the reviews by the Ostrava music critic Milan Balcar may seem objective. However, the discovery of a letter written by Kubla to Balcar, i.e. the performer’s response to the critic’s assessment, suggests that Balcar may not have been objective when writing his reviews and that he was perhaps settling personal scores with his former classmate. This finding sheds a completely different light on the published reviews of interpretations.A probe into the life of the soprano Eva Hadrabová-Nedbalová highlights two interesting matters: the first is the confrontation of professional reviews and the handwritten notes of a frequent visitor to the Vienna State Opera between the wars, and the second is her time at the Nuremberg Opera during the Second World War. Her desire to leave Nuremberg at any cost led her to intentionally perform poorly – a fact the critics were, of course, unaware of. This raises the point that reviews often focus solely on the performance presented, without taking into account the background, motivations or reasons behind it. A review is thus an unconscious evaluation of a “simulation” rather than the real situation. The third section deals with the dilemma of choosing between different melodic variants of twoimportant mediaeval Bohemian spiritual songs. For illustration, one of themost important treasures of Czech music, the Hussite war hymn Ktož jsúBoží bojovníci (Ye Who Are Warriors of God) was chosen. The late discoveryof the older version raised the problem of how and whether to continueworking with the younger version, which is still in use and which BedřichSmetana firmly and forever anchored in the history of Czech music.