A new approach to Historically Inspired performance

By Eugene Tzigane

What would Classical or Romantic era music sound like if we used all the historical performance practices we know of and combined them with the flexibility, emotionality, and subjective mindset of the Enlightenment or Romanticism? It is still largely an unanswered question, despite the mountains of musicological evidence and the wealth of early historical recordings available.

Though the Period Instrument movement has made great advances in historical practices, many performances of the Classical and especially the Romantic repertoire are still not free of Modernist aesthetics ideals like perfectionism and fidelity to the text. Shedding these ideas is a difficult task. Consequently, only a select group of historical practices have been cherry-picked to match our current tastes. The next step is to let go of the known and take the leap into the beautiful unknown.

Through research, intuition, and imagination, I build a living picture of the era from which a piece was born. Intellectual and emotional immersion are the keys to performing the music as if from another time. Understanding that the range of styles, techniques and tastes of an epoch opens the door to the evolution of a personal style. This would have been expected at any moment in time prior to the rise of Modernism in the 1920s. I attempt to put myself in the shoes of a composer and his or her most famous champions.

I ask myself, how did Beethoven or Liszt play? Or, how did Wagner revolutionize conducting? What were the ideals and philosophies that guided their activities as composers and performers? It's the musical equivalent of an actor on stage who embodies a character in a realistic and believable way. It is at its essence a Holistic Approach to Historically Inspired Performance Practices.