Some time ago Francis Wood kindly sent me the following article from the Times, reviewing a Clough recital in London:
http://chrisormston.com/Documents/Cloug ... .03.28.pdf
Looking beyond the patronising tone of the piece, the comment about Clough's phrasing stood out.
When I started competing at Open level in the late 1970s, Peacock-style variations were popular with most participants, and the ethos seemed to be to play as quickly and cleanly as possible, at a uniform speed governed by how fast one could play the most difficult variation. Over time I've come to realise that this would produce technically-impressive performances at the expense of musicality. Given the above references to Clough's phrasing, and much earlier descriptions of Peacock's 'lilts and pauses', I now think that the old players may have taken liberties with tempo while playing variation sets, maybe keeping key anchor points in the tune to a set tempo. Coincidentally, before Francis had sent me the Times article, I tried this approach when recording 'O little Wat Ye Wha's Coming' on my solo CD, and listening back a few years later I'm inclined to think that this was maybe how variations were phrased in the past. Maybe we'll never know!
Any thoughts?
Chris