Post by MandrykaPost by MiNe109Post by MandrykaJust one quick point. Don't confuse the composition with the
score. Not everything which was part of the composer's conception
is written, partly because he just assumed that it would be
played on certain types of keyboard, with certain performance
conventions.
What has got me thinking about this recently was a comment about
playing Mozart on clavichord. I believe Mozart owned and played
clavichords. The comment basically said that when you play on a
clavichord the instrument guides you about tempo. This musician
was playing the Mozart sonatas much more slowly than we've become
used to, and he was led to that choice by the reverb on the
instrument.
The Mozart clavichord performances I've heard are by Arthur
Schoonderwoerd and Wim Winters. The latter seems closest to your
description to me.
Maybe, I would have to listen to the Schoonderwoerd again. I haven’t
heard the Winters. I don’t believe he uses a real clavichord. It’s
too loud, like a concert instrument. I once asked him about the
instrument but he was reluctant to talk about it.
It's hard to determine the correct playback level for clavichord. I
tried one once that was nearly inaudible in the room. One has to guess
how close the microphones are. Listening too loud gives a false sense of
the relative levels of attack and sustain. Sometimes there's a rustle of
page-turning as a clue.
Winters has videos on YouTube that show a large instrument, identified
as "Potvlieghe 2009 Saxon clavichord." He also has an idiosyncratic way
of interpreting metronome marks which leads to slower tempos than usual.
For KV 576, recorded by both, the timings show Winters (9:31, 10:12,
8:23) and Schoonderwoerd (6:21, 5:25, 4:56). I suppose the slower tempos
are from the metronome rather than responding to the instrument as your
commenter did.