Steven Isserlis

Even the question itself is problematic. Say that a composer marks a pianissimo, or an accent – what exactly IS a pianissimo, or an accent? So what is ‘taking literally’? There’s no way of measuring the exact decibels involved; each pianissimo, each accent, is going to have its own personal identity, based on the context. And the same goes for tempo; as the great Ferenc Rados says (in his unique way): “Hat – I don’t know vat EES this ‘tempo’ “. And yet – when a composer marks a pianissimo or an accent, or gives us a tempo indication, it is an important message that we are not at liberty to ignore. It must mean something, or the composer wouldn’t have written it. So how are we to understand these signs?

Well, I’d say that we have to interpret them above all using our musical instincts and intelligence. It will never sound right if one just follows an instruction without understanding it; music must make sense. If, for example, there is an accent indicated in the middle of a gentle, lyrical phrase, unaccompanied by any harmonic jolt, it’s likely that the accent should fit into that gentle lyricism, not disrupt it.
Not making the situation any easier, the various form of accents can mean such different things to different composers. In Schumann, for instance: looking at almost any score of his I’ve ever seen, it seems clear that there is a hierarchy of accents at play: > calls for that gentle stress; ^ seems to be more of a held-through emphasis; fp is a lean, or a sigh – again, nothing violent; sfp is stronger – between an fp and an sf; and sf is strong, even disruptive. As far as I know, Schumann never wrote about that hierarchy; but it seems obvious from his scores – at least, I feel that it does. Again, each musician will have to follow his or her musical instinct in order to decide.

Similarly, dynamics: a pp in Beethoven or Brahms seems always to be a moment of extreme quiet, utterly different from a p. Schubert, on the other hand, uses pp very often in melodies that need to sing out – albeit gently. Composers can have their individual quirks too: for Fauré, mp seems to mean something very special. I don’t know whether it was at his instigation, or whether for some reason his publisher made the decision, that almost every mp in his music is written out in in full – ie mezzo piano – whereas mf is written as just that: mf. What does that tell us? You decide…

It’s all very fascinating, I find (you may beg to differ). We performers have to be detectives, musical Sherlocks, fastening onto every shred of evidence, weighing it for its meaning and relative importance. (And of course that’s why we need utterly trustworthy editions; even Sherlock couldn’t have solved a case if handed the wrong evidence.) Each composer deserves his or her own case-file – perhaps each piece, since composers can change their language as they develop. (It seems to me, for instance, that sf and fp switch places, in terms of weight, within Beethoven’s lifetime, sfs generally lyrical in much of his early work – unless there are a series of them, which I often take to mean a terraced crescendo – but then becoming a stronger indication as his style evolves, fps becoming gentler.)

Of course, I may be completely wrong about all this. (It does happen: for instance, I implied the other day that I wasn’t perfect; how wrong was that? Haha.) We need different interpreters, offering us different approaches! But simply ignoring what the composers are telling us from beyond the grave, or from this side of it, should not be an option. When I hear a performance, I want to be able to trust that the performer has noted everything the composer has written in the score, and has come to his/her carefully-considered conclusions based on those markings (as well as understanding the harmonic/thematic shapes, structure, etc, of the work, of course). It’s all part of the story we have to tell our audiences; and the more clearly we understand why the composer has written exactly what they’ve written, the more clearly can we communicate that story to others. And the happier will be both performers and audience.

And boy – do we need happiness these days…!