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The most important of Chopin works...
The mazurkas he wrote for a long part of his short life...
My favorite interpretation...
Difficult to play because the pianist must transmit a kind of dance rythm which is akin to a controlled set of little jumps in a controlled vertigo...
It is the soul of Poland...
Why a brazilian pianist among very few is the best i listened to ?
Brazil with his roots in jungle indian tribes , his african slaves and Portuguese roots can produce rythm masters... Antonio Barbosa is a top not well known pianist but among the great pianists there is...
He plays mazurkas as the dance they were not only beautiful melody as most pianists do...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYdYwk3Vjqg
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Thanks i will go for it...
Ogden was my favorite Schumann Piano Concerto recording, with Paavo Berglund conducting. The perfectly capture the rhapsodic nature of that piece
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John Ogdon is a powerful pianist...Master of expression way more than a mere perfect virtuoso...
Anybody can verify with his Busoni recording or with his Sorabji Clavicem ballisticus unrivalled rendition...
This short Liszt piece reveal why :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aU_cmFD5k8
Only E.Ny. can rival him...😊 Or Sofronotsky and few others...
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Richter was one of the best pupils of Sofrontisky and i will listen your recommendation... I just want a cpmparison illustrating the sheer power of E. Ny compared to a pianist undoubtedly powerful too to put a level comparison..
Thanks for these recommendations...
Richter could be disturbingly demonic as well. Try his “Bydlo” from the live Sofia (Bulgaria) recording of Pictures at An Exhibition. I have never heard anyone project the menace in that piece as he did. Or his numerous recordings of Beethoven’s Appassionata
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Now suppose Mephisto exist and touch the piano...Liszt thought about him ...He composed some pieces where it is Mephisto himself who he had summon to play himself through him ... Which pianist can play as Mephisto in person touching the piano ? Liszt , but who else?
It will be pure madness and grace with the power of volcano ...
Philistine "cake tasting" esthetes could say " Full of bad notes and distasteful" when listening E. Ny.
I say that Mephisto himself as Liszt intended him to play was playing not a first prize model pianist with E. Ny. ...
E.Ny. is a genius...
The greatest pianist i ever heard , not always the more perfect, but the most powerfully expressive of all...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtSHsZj566Q&list=RDwtSHsZj566Q&start_radio=1
Now listen to Richter, the great disciple of Sofronitsky himself...
Compared to E. Ny. we dont listen Mephisto himself in person playing, we listen to a marvellously well played REPRESENTATION of Mephisto, not the devil himself playing as with E.Ny.
Which one is the best?
It is not a question of taste not even a contest... It is the difference between a perfect image of the devil and the devil incarnated playing himself...
There is no best pianist..
There is level of expressiveness and levels of expressiveness are not levels of formal perfection ...
When we listen Richter we are at ease and contemplating an image... When we listen E.Ny. we are deeply disturbed and it is impossible to listen to him relaxed , our body is tensed as if we assisted to the devil playing... Richter is almost boring compared to E.Ny. ... And Richter is one of the greatest pianist from the Russian school surpassed only by Sofronitsky who anyway is on par with E. Ny. for expressiveness in his own way...
Richter :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n-GrOpTOjs
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Lucky you were...
I am a bit envious,,,
Behind the decreasing virtuosity we can listen the powerful expressive tone which almost no pianist i know of , save a Sofronitsky , can produce...
The ruins of his playings reveal a deepness that is nowhere to be heard...
I'm pretty sure I saw Nyiregyhazi in performance during the guy's momentary, end-of-life resurrection of his career. It was in L.A., I can't remember exactly where the concert was (The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion?) but I had a truly excellent seat. The audience wasn't large but it was absolutely worshipful. Nyiregyhazi played with a playful, indulgent "why the heck not?" affability. Unfortunately, he only had a glimmer of his once magical chops. In any case, it was a heck of an experience.
For example this :
I pick the "evening bells " and the christmast piece to show after the madness of Olbermann valley or Mephisto how touching and exquisitely hypnotizing in his effective tenderness and grace E.Ny. could manifest pure heavenly grace... At least at the same level than Brendel... If not, i will say that E.Ny. play with a suplement of grace in my opinion... Because here E. Ny. is more delicately fluid than even Brendel and the total resulting piece is more integrated as usual with E. Ny. with pulse behind the horizontal melodic line ... With Brendel it is more like many small successive scenes...
I had only Liszt: Weihnachtsbaum with Brendel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn9zi8cLAoA
The same piece by E. Ny. for the 4 first minute and a few seconds.. but observe that E.Ny. is repeating the complete first section, though it's not written in the score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0S1KDOC8is
After 8 minutes 19sec. : The "evening bells" is in the E. Ny. youtube selection . But i did not have Brendel playing to compare with...
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I cannot thank you enough for your two posts and information about D.B. i could not answer ...
my best...
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You are completely right....
Telemann worked after the era where music was merely Church order or Prince order, but now middle class and bourgeois commands and demand was enormous and the musicians amateurs numbers too, and Telemann was a self taught musician and did not come from a musical dynasty , he taught more to amateurs musicians not like Bach who was busy with his multiples children...He then used the amateurs playing musicians and apprentice composers around him like Bach use his children ... Half of the work of Telemann is lost... And of the remaing half, half had never been performed...
i like your sentence :
It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates, if you will accept that mixed metaphor
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Very interesting post ... Thanks very much...
No one can disparage Telemann...I know some piece of him that put him at Bach level...( His sonatas for oboe by Holliger ) The problem of Telemann is the same as with Vivaldi and Mozart... They dont need to work as others , musical inspiration comes too easyly , they seat and wrote or play... ... Telemann if i remember published many thousands opus ( in addition to composing more than 1000 cantatas and 600 suites, he also created operas, passions, oratorios, and concertos for a variety of instruments. He also penned numerous passions, ten oratorios, and more than a dozen masses, making him easily the most prolific composer of church music in history. Telemann’s instrumental works include about 125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos, 40 quartets, 130 trios, around 90 solo sonatas, and 145 keyboard pieces. It has been suggested that he may have written more than 3000 pieces)....
He never work hard and only wrote tirelessly ... Then disparaging Telemann after listening 100 hundred opus means not much... 😊 Almost nobody know really the music of Telemann... how many hours to listen only half of it ? would it be the best half ?
the only problem of Telemann is Bach continuous perfection with way more less works ... 😊
I will go for him too ...
Excellent suggestion...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmRrrfaJB4
I’ve been listening to a big box set of Musica Antiqua Koln. There are a lot of the Baroque “usual suspects” here but what is really grabbing me is the Telemann. That composer, who published a veritable ton, is frequently dismissed as being formulaic. Oh, but what a practioner of formulas! The invention seems inexhaustible. He wrote for every instrument of his time but his Violin and recorder pieces seem particularly daring.
I need to explore more Renaissance Music. I can’t comment meaningfully on Gesualdo at present. I’ve been meaning to turn my focus there for some time.
Marriner and the ASMF are frequently overlooked because they were non HIPP practitioners, but they did pioneering work in terms of popularizing Mozart and others for smaller ensembles. I cherish their records
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Thanks "couch potato" i will go for them...
My best regards ... I will wait for some other advices... I dont know them either...
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Very good recommendation...
I forget them a bit in the last decade... It is a shame... Marriner is a great conductor... I love everything i heard from him and his orchestra...
Thanks i will try it again soon ...
The only thing i listened a lot in the last years was his "art of the fugue" Bach version... Among my 5 favorite...I listened these 5 versions one after the other...Impossible to choose...
Give the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields chamber orchestra a try if you are looking for performances of Classical Era and Late Baroque Era repertoire, especially Mozart and Haydn. The fidelity of their recordings ranges from very good to downright excellent. Orchestral string tone is a particular highlight. The band’s performances, most notably the ones conducted by Neville Marriner, are unfussy and insightful. Their LP pressings are never less than excellent. I got a bunch of ’em. And oh, yeah, I’ve seen them live a couple of times.
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In a word the perfect description of an emotion is not the emotion itself...The image of an emotion is not the emotion... The pianist playing he can play the image in a perfect way or can imperfectly play the emotion, but it is way harder to play the emotion because we must feel it totally and forgot the notes...
The written score playing so perfect it can be cannot replace the emotion rolling from the interpreter hands...
For example here : the perfect description of some "nuage gris" from Liszt score by the great Zimerman ( my best interpreter of Brahms concerto no-2 my favorite concerto by the way ) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkzBbuyy1M
But now no more a "description" so perfect it was, but the emotion itself so imperfect it was by Ervin Nyiregyhazi: Liszt: Nuages gris S.199
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHSF5oeg8k4
Here we see the clouds with our eyes because the emotion is all over the place... It is no more merely beautiful image or representation we see as with Zimerman... it is sadness through clouds we FELT ...No more a beautiful score marvellously played...But mere emotion flowing from the sounds..
But we cannot listen in a distract way the E.Ny. interpretation at all...Too disturbing to be listen in a distracted relaxed way...
We can listen Zimerman in a distracted relaxed way, because it is perfect...
We must understand music, there is no right or wrong here between the two versions... But one thing is certain Liszt could have never been able to mesmirized crowds and put them in trance with Zimerman playing here... He played like Ervin Nyiregyhazi, who was anyway direct Listz student through his teacher Lamond...
Music is not about our tastes only but about revelations...Animals had tastes human not only had tastes but they may have revelations...
For me music history is consciousness history too...I explored it with my guiding tastes as anyone of us , but imprevisible revelations disturbed my road and throw away few times my past certainties...
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An example from the past of a highly disturbing expressive music and a composer who was a revelation when i listened to him at 25 years old, almost in ectasy, is the great and unique Carlo Gesualdo...
My favorite interpretation by far is by the Quintet vocale Italiano...They convey the emotion before trying to be perfect and plastically beautiful...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c60YJsL37d8
Here the music is saturated "plaint" as saturated Schoenberg Gurrelider will be, the composer goal is to move the listener more than relax him... it is very difficult to interpret...because the singers must not sing for the music to be mere beautiful but emotionnally saturated by chord between harmony and dissinance...
For me Gesulado is not a secondary composer but as Monteverdi and on paqr with him a unique moment in musical history...
For sure i loved poetry all my life and Gesualdo is a supreme poet as Schubert will be in his own masterful way...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGuRiuq_qfY
But la Venexiana ensemble impressed me too, they are more plastic in expression and very clear, less moving than Quintetto Italiano though... it is the same difference between Liszt Bolet and E. Ny. Liszt playing... I like the two pianists and the two vocal ensemble for different reasons...My favoritism dont erase the other interpretations good points ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRuy8UuRwyo
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I never was nor i am a Liszt-o-philliac...
I never love Liszt at all...
I did not know why...
Till i listen pianists able to reveal it FOR ME...The first was Bolet...
Like Scriabin Liszt is not for everybody, he wrote music to be listen in intimate sacred moments ...These two are revelations or acquired taste...For me they were at the same time revelations and acquired taste because of Sofronitsky and E. Ny. who played them in a way no other could...
The music of Liszt and Scriabin on piano has one point in common, it is never first merely written to be pleasant and beautiful music, most of the times it is a moving intensely disturbing music written to reveal soul depth ... It is the reason why it is hard to play the right way by almost every pianists... To give an extreme example: LSD is not bread nor a cake...
Bolet and Arrau are tremendous pianist anybody can live with I discovered Liszt with Bolet perfect playing, it reveal poetry to me unique to Liszt ...But this dont nullify Neuhaus choices in Liszt or others who play it in a more intense way... ...
Music is a journey where the travellers meet but never goes together toward the next stay...
My favorite works of Liszt is not on piano, it is the Christus...With Bach, Haendel Messiah, Bruckner great mass, a work of supreme mastery away from the promethean Liszt ...
And in music thread it is better to speak about less known interpreters and less generally appreciated composers..
My favorite composer is Bach...
I am not much of a Liszt-o-philiac, as I think there is more style than substance there. Some of the Etudes are nice. Claudio Arrau and Jorge Bolet are enough for me, and Brendel in the Sonata
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Thanks i never listen to him... I will do...
😊
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For those who like pianism...
The son of a god and himself a god of piano...
A top Scriabinian too...
And his Liszt is played by supreme expressiveness with the melody coming from vertical musical time...Then pulsating and not merely flowing...
Expressiveness is not about beauty but about truth to the emotion , it is moving before being felt beautiful, the indication in the pianism that expressiveness dominate is the pulsation over and guiding the melodic line... Only very great pianists can do it without fails... They often trade off for horizontal plastic beauty...
I will not give examples at the risk to hurt someone feelings...But listen carefully how some notes oscillate powerfully aimed at your heart like a rifle bullet... This is expression, it is not so much the melody that moves us but the pulsating heart singing it ( the pianist)...
Stanislav Neuhaus (1927-1980), piano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9l-a0CFV2M&list=PL_FxhjClAeZfWH8k76xiIfO-pb6VjurVy
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Now for those who look for a not well known absolute treasury of piano "repertoire", the mighty Samuil Feinberg, whose fourth sonatas was praised by Scriabin himself...
As i already said, Scriabin nor Feinberg are for me secondary composers, but great one....Feinberg is a Scriabin disciple....
Here it is double CD BIS recording. Nikolaos Samaltanos plays the piano in the 1,4,5,9,10,11 sonatas. In the other sonatas (2,3,6,7,8,12) plays Christophe Sirodeau.
The two pianists to my heart and ears are more than just good....
Feinberg sonatas are massage of the soul and spirit dialogue....The dual musical time dimension are together woven in a continuous flyings between heights and depths , the melody is born only to return different toward his original source....I cannot fault Feinberg... It is with Scriabin my prefered works in the Russian piano school... The greatest piano school on earth by far...For sure it is only my opinion, feel free to differ... 😁😉😊
One word can resume these sonatas for me :
"Enthusiasm" , which meaning came from ancient greek i studied in my teen and i remembered for all my life the stunning etimological spelling :ἐνθουσιασμός from ἐν (en, “in”) and θεός (theós, “god”) and οὐσία (ousía, “essence”), meaning "inspired by [a] god’s essence"...
The melody, rythm and harmony are only there to suggest a journey toward a never taken road toward a higher truth....
As claimed the Mathematician Alexander Grothendieck in his stunning 1000 pages book about God ," la clef des songes" untranslated alas! in English and even not officially published save as a PDF on the internet , "truth" cannot be defined....
The greatest Christian mystic before him, Dyonisos the Areopagyte demonstrated why and inspired completely Georg Cantor, who know him well because he taught also theology , for his set theory foundation and pre-axiomatization principle of lim itation of size , the greatest mathematician before Grothendieck...Cantor and Grothendieck are without any possible discussion the most influentials and deep mathematicians in mathematic history, on par with Archimedes, Newton, Gauss or Riemann...
Feinberg Sonatas
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I wish you the best in these time of personal trials...
My sympathy for your mother lost...
I dont think that someone can imitate or be inspired by someone genius hoping to emulate him,... Each genius is unique...It is why Pollini is unique, liking him or not...
D.B. whom you know way better than me is for me as you described him...I cannot speak about him...
I dont believe that there is ONE METER to compare all musicians... We must learn to listen, at least me, to understand more with each passing years... At the end all geniuses are recognized by us , even those we dont like as much as others... because we have learned even if we keep our biases and preferences...
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Thanks for your post...
I cannot contradict you about Pollini... The search for perfection, when i feel it , kill for me the spontaneous playing imprevisible creation...
Pardon the thread drift, but say what you will about pianist Maurizio Pollini possessing more finger speed than soul, more often than not he’s my go-to guy when I want to hear some Chopin. Out and out exhilarating. I might have mentioned it in another thread, way back when, but I saw him perform live, once upon a time in L.A. Hair flying, reach-out-and-mow-down-the-stars virtuosity.
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When i said in the post above : «Music is not two dimensional at all for sure...
But musical time is two dimensional... vertical pulsative dimension and metronomical horizontal dimension... Physical time had only one direction : from past to future...» Musical time then own two directions instead of one...
I forgot a very important precision to be rightfully understood...
In the metronomical horizontal dimension as in the vertical pulsative dimension, the two dimension and directions of musical time , THERE IS NO PAST and THERE IS NO FUTURE as in the physical time dimension...And no pure direction from a known past to an unknown future ...
in the two musical dimensions the "measurable" horizontal one and the non measurable pulsative one, only the present moment exist the now but not as a point as in the physical time dimension but as a sphere... In music a past note or a future note is always here or is BEHIND or forward not a past or future event but as participant in the eternal now which is a pulsative spiraling movement toward inward or outward never lost in the past or not there at all as a mere future... The now moment is like a tree which is at the same times root, and canopy and seeds ...The now momwent is not an abstraction because it is music felt...In a way in musical time dual dimensions, the past and the future are known together , but only the now moment is FELT...
Then the two directions of musical time dont exist in physical time, when they are reduced to it though , it is as a ghost, or as a spectral reduction of the eternal now to metronomical time which is at the same time the grave of music and the door of the awaiting musical resurrection...
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Pollini is a great pianist...
But he never put me in ectasy...
Ivan Moravec for example, i listened to ALL his albums
Moravec is really for me over most pianists...i put him over Horowitz...
Why ?
Because he is not a virtuoso on the level of Horowitz at all...
But like Rubinstein, his playing is nuanced and in control of "hues" and so fluid , Horowitz beside that can sound too "perfect" to be as subtle in the expression and colors as Moravec is especially in spontaneous and natural melodical expression ...
For example; the cathedral under the sea of Debussy...try it... it was an amazing day the day i listened Moravec playing it... i was in ectasy why ? because for the first time ever, this piece i was not in love with speak to me, and i was able to SEE REALLY the cathedral under the sea... Why ? Total control of the hues of colors by Moravec... Unbelievable... it is not often being not a cenesthete that i can SEE musical object as REAL OBJECT in front of me... this holgraphic seeing is impossible for the listener if the pianist is not an absolute master of nuances and color over dynamic virtusity or even over perfection... Expression is NEVER perfection or perfect playing.. . Expression is OVER perfect playing because it know how to stay imperfect in a perfect way... Difficult to explain but easy to spot...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phq8soeZLLA
My three other favorite pianists, are Sofronitsky, Neuhaus, and Ervin Nyiregyhazi... But there is many others... Especially In the russian school... But some are unknown genius as Antonio Guedes Barbosa in my favorite Chopin work the Mazurkas...
The mazurkas being a dance of some kind of "limping " rythm, most pianist miss the limping they erase it sometimes because it is impossible to play a rythm if you dont feel it in you first ...Barbosa being brazilian dont miss it, and his playing is made of a fluid noble gesture and at the same time humble simplicity, it is very hard for me to listen other version... For example the great Yakov Flier did the mazurkas , but even him is under Barbosa heights for me so great it is and he is...
Russian dont limp- dancing as polish does it seems, and brazilian dance well any dance... 😊
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdFkWm-D5Sk
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i had a philosophical mind, but your knowledge of music is more large or deep than mine on many aspects, because more professional too if i analyse your past posts... i dont master any musical instrument myself as you... i spoke about my intuition... and my feeling thats all...
i cannot for example characterise really Barenboim, because i dont know him much about being a conductor ... i listen almost nothing from him and a long time ago when i was less experienced than i am now... Then i am not competent to describe his maestro work...
I can speak of Klemperer or Celibidache or Furtwangler ONLY because i enter in ectasy with them in some works... i can understand ONLY those i experienced in love ...But if i did not discover the right work of them , i cannot speak of them...
But there is exception, paradoxically, i dont like Toscanini and never will , but amazingly, i was so fascinated by him and will always be, i begun to understand why he is so great and why he will never be surpassed in his way... And doing so i begun to understand why my two heroes Celibidache et Furtwangler were also giants...Without Toscanini i would have never clearly understood them ...
For example Giulini in the 9th of Bruckner or Celi. or Bernstein in Mahler... etc i love and know them because i love them... Barenboim i cannot speak about him...
Do you have any thoughts on one of our most prominent’ Furtwangler-wanna-be’ Daniel Barenboim?
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Music is not two dimensional at all for sure...
But musical time is two dimensional... vertical pulsative dimension and metronomical horizontal dimension... Physical time had only one direction : from past to future...
In musical time you may create a metronomical dimension which go from beginning to end.. And stay and live there... But there is a direction from pulsative origin in the vertical dimension toward the horizontal physically measurable dimension as a destination and the reverse two ...The road between horizontal and vertical is two-way...
jazz was invented by poor people looking not for a purely physical horizontal time ALREADY KNOWN dimension but looking for a vertical new pulsative dimension which must be FELT as an origin and a new road now toward a new destination in the horizontal time dimension ...
Celibidache imposed as Toscannini a metronomical time but unlike Toscanni which goal was TOTAL METRONOMICAL CONTROL with his will power, Celibidache looked for a the vertical origin of musical time in the pulsative dimension, but to do so he mustIMPOSED a slow metronomical time over his musician playing by force as Toscanni.. But his goal unlike Toscanini was never a complete mastering and domination of the orchestra for the sake of it, but to look for the spiritual origin of music in SILENCE in the pulsative verticas dimension as source...He is a dictator as Toscanini... But not with the same musical agenda...
Furtwangler was not like these two a dictator, but someone taking the musicians with him to listen the music in the act of playing it, to manifest the source of vertical time in the playing itself manifested in the horizontal measurable dimension of time...The measurable time dimension is the destination of F. but for C. it ishis point of departure toward the vertical silent origin in the vertical pulsative dimension the non measurable one...
Then Furtwangler and Celibidache are "racemic isomer" in a different way the two of them...Toscanini is not... This is why nobody will never surpass Toscanini in his his road with his bending of time dimension reduced to one direction only, under his iron will... ...
I had read your previous posts on Celi but I was wondering if you could fit into the context of the present discussion. I do like your analogy of Celi being sort of of the racemic isomer, to use a biochemical term, of Toscanini ; in two dimensions they are similar, but since music is more than two dimensional, they arrive at completely different results.
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I made an error inversing the words... I reverse "origin" and "destination" writing the post ... I read my post anew only hours later... I apologize... We must read :
«where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical TO his true destination , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension AS his true origin ...»
Instead of :
where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical as his true origin , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension as his true destination ...
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You already know anything i will say if i read your posts...
But thanks to ask...
All interprets or composers need our understanding... And each of us may discover any moment or may discover any interpreter in musical history according to the many threasholds we had already pass by ourselves in our own consciousness evolution and in our own musical knowledge and experience...
At the time i was a young i will never had understood Celibidache...
He use the two dimensions of musical time, the vertical pulsative one and the metronomical melodical horizontal one as Furtwangler did to reveal the intrinsic transcendance of musical time over physical time...
But their two ways differ a lot...
As Toscanini but in a different way than T. who subordinate completely , by imposition, in some way music music vertical dimension to metronomical time; C. without breaking the relation between the two dimensions of time in a way separate them bit to reveal in his own way the transcendance of musical time, but where Furt. use vertical pulsative dimension to let the melodical horizontal time to happen as if coming from the vertical as his true origin , C. like T. impose, but in a complete reverse way that T., he impose the melodic horizontal time to go back to his source in the vertical dimension as his true destination ...To do this he must slow the metronomical time dimension ( this explain why i spoke about the way C,. separate the two dimensions first because this slowing tempo IS THE SEPARATION i spoke about ) ...
Then for me, F. and C’ they are among the greatest maestros ever , because F. and C. complement one another in opposite way but without negating or erasing the transcendance of vertical pulsative time over or for the benefit of the metronomical time dimension, as Toscanini did...
Read me right i did not claim that T. is not a great maestro in his own way, he did supreme direction , he is one of the greatest maestro who ever live but he stay on a road which will never travelled so far again as he did by anyone... Because T. was using his will to bend music to his personnality , In this he was the ULTIMATE MESTRO , he did this instead of putting his personnality and will at the service of music in a more humble way as F. and C. did after him .. I hope i am clear...I try to describe these maestros here i dont claim superiority for one or the other...
With T. we are always in a musical experience that stay in time so astonishlingly dynamical and hypnotizing it is and it is mesmerizing; but with F. and C. we go more for eternity in a contemplative way...
If the works "sings" with F. it "speaks" poetically more than sings with C.
Now take that with a grain of salt... I try to describe in conepts my own experience with them... I had no serious knowledge in music and i am not a musician at all...
I describe in words my felt experience... I am interested by the concept of musical dual time experience , there is two directions of time in music , and in the physical world there is only one...
Music express something so deep that our science even only begins to grasp it as in the works of mathematician Alain Connes..
By the way these three maestros, C. F. and T. are the three most characteristical maestro if we analyse them with time dual dimensions as methodological concepts to understand them... This does not means that the other great maestros are less genius or less great... Not at all... But no other meastro illustrate better than C. with his slow direction , or as F. with his internal singing direction or as T. with the way he bent music to his will , no other so great tghey are go to the same extreme with always the exact same motivation consistently and always in the same way ...
All other maestro are more imprevisible or variable or flexible , and more complicate or less characteristical when we compare them together with the prism of the TIME dual dimensions and the way these dimensions interact internally and externally...All other maestro combine some aspect of these three directions in some mix unique recipe.... Ansermet is not Bernstein, and Giulini is not Klemperer... There is something of C. and T. in Klemperer more than of F. ...But here music is so complex that any formula will appear artificial... Human personnality is not an equation... But three great maestros because of their own personalities succeeded to isolate a particular road and way of being "musical" in relation with time and they succeeded in revealing to us ONE priviligied asopects in a way we can grasp it for its own sake... ...Thats is my point..
So how do you regard the art of Celibidache? Another artist famous for going his own way, for conceiving of music as statements, rather than a series of notes?
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His interpretation are not something always making unanimity...
We must be conscious of his mania in old age and limitations..
Then some of his playings will schok you at first, especially if you look for "tasteful" orthodox playings...
He let me discovered Liszt on whom i pass over young, listening Scriabin in ectasy , who i consider the greatest piano composer with Chopin...
But i was wrong...
Exactly as Scriabin is very difficult to interpret in the way intended , it is the same for Liszt... We know how Scriabin must be played because there is a Russian school tradition around his greatest disciple : Sofronitsky.. E.Ny. is the one who open my eyes to one of the greatest composer and not just a pianist... Liszt... ( Christus for example is a work of mastery that impacted greatly on Brucker soul)
If you for example are with reason an admirer of the beautidul playings of Arrau in the Olbermann Valley, one of the greatest work of Liszt, you MAY find the interpretation of E. Ny. in old age "disturbing" even "horrible" at first listening... I just answered to someone elsewhere , a pianist, claiming that this piece by E. Ny. is the worst piece ever played... I am not a pianist nor a musical specialist, but i listen with my heart... I listen music for the transformation i felt sometimes from it in my consciousness and experience of the world and soul...i dont just take it as a pleasurable leisure object of esthetic contemplation which must be played as all others pianists played it only "well"..
E. Ny. sometimes played overboard in a way bordering on madness, it is not madness, it is pure expression in a very intense way and in the two time musical dimensions : horizontal melodic and pulsating vertical he plays as Furtwangler directed,not Toscanini, with the birthing of the melody from the vertical dimension and not with a written melodical score put in the horizontal metronomical dimension ... As the main quality of his master Liszt , through Frederic Lamond, he refused to be a worker and a slave of the written score...He improvized in a way and immerse himself in this dimension of time where the soul does not belong to the world and where the melody is put to be born in the playing of "exécution" not from the written score metronomical orthodox suggestions...
We then listen to an event with him not to orthodox translation... He is volcanic sometimes way more than only clean and smooth... Our ears are not used at all to this playings bordering on thunders sometimes.. The only pianist who resemble him is Sofronitsky furor in Scriabin with the same sense of the vertical pulsating time from heights and depths , and as you know, in Scriabin, in his first works progressively horizontal melodic time become pure vertical time , AND vertical time BIRTH horizontal time especially in the last sonatas...Scriabin works explore the second vertical dimension of musical time without any algebraic recipe as Schoenberg will did but with a more subtle chords tool set ready to be use for any expressions between tonality and atonality, instead as Schoenberg of creating a new FORMULATION out of traditional tonality ...
In Liszt E.Ny. playings there is pure hubris expressiveness, and hues of colors and texture, pulsation, "the speakings and talkings" voices create the singing, and he does not use the written score as a jail , his freedom is over simple clarity and modesty, over horizontal metronomical time is complete and it is why he goes in depths of emotions never communicated before on a piano since Liszt who hypnotized crowds in trance with way more than just a perfect and just clean playing ... After all, the teachers of piano devoted to the young E. Ny. were all direct Liszt pupils ...
Music understanding and experience is more for me about my readiness to go through some new territories than about my "tastes" even if as everyone i had mine, but it is certainly not about "good taste" even if good taste exist and bad tastes too...
My very best to you...
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I forgot to say that the Liszt Oberman valley by Nyiregyházi give us twenty minutes of duration ...( a few second less)
The Arrau version 15 minutes....
Can you imagine how a pianist can master each note in a so slow physical duration time compared to anyone ?
Kissin, Richter, Berman, all played around 14 and fifteen minutes...Horowitz 13 minutes... Volodos 13 minutes... Etc
it is IMPOSSIBLE to play at this slow tempo as Ervin N. do it without a complete mastery of the relation between chord and musical vertical time, not physical horizontal time...
And when we listen the piece as played by him, we NEVER feel it as slow, the powerful succession of notes is more a fall or/and an ascension than a simple walk...
Read the biography of this pianist who quit concert life at thirty five , because after the exploitation by his mother whom he abandon after his 16 th birthday to live alone he was managed by american impresario who seems to exploit him too much for his taste, he never practice, and never own a piano for decades, and came back at 70 years old to concert after 35 years absence ONLY to win money for the cancer cure of his tenth wife...But then he regain celebrity for the years till his death... When he played at his highest power, i cannot compare him to any other pianist ...Save Sofronitsky at his height in Scriabin ...
Amazing... now ... Am i a fool ?
Who listened to Ervin N. at the height of his maturity ?
Arnold Schoenberg himself who wrote a 3 pages letter to Klemperer about his playings and urge him to take a boat and come to listen this prodigy...
We cannot accuse the Faustian creator of atonal music to be an afficionado of pianists for the sake of their playings , they only serve him as slave working for him in a way... 😁 a man who think of himself as a Faustian genius as Thomas Mann depicted him do not become a groupie for a favorite pianist,... There is a SOLID reason...
Here from an article :
«We also have the testimony of Arnold Schoenberg. Arnold Schoenberg was not a man to suffer fools greatly. Nevertheless, the letter in which he wrote to Klemperer, Schoenberg lavishes praise on this pianist just about unlike any musician he had before encountered. Schoenberg’s own students were sometimes victims of their master’s caustic comments. He did not bestow praise lightly on anyone. However, he seems to be absolutely captivated by Nyiregyházi and his playing.»
Or this from an other article... Alas! i did not recover back the letter of Schoenberg which is very long and totally under the spell of Liszt interpretation by the 35 years old Ervin N.
«Arnold Schoenberg, for one, was bowled over. “Such power of expression I have never heard before,” he wrote to the conductor Otto Klemperer. And then follows three pages of Schoenberg’s analysis of Nyiregyhazi’s “incredible” playing.»
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Music does not exist ONLY in the horizontal mundane plane with a duration measured by the hour glass or the watch...
Music exist first and last in the vertical direction ... There is no flowing time , no melody for the sake of a melody, the melody become an AFTERTOUGHT, created by what is FIRST perceived : the pulsation of each chord as heights and depth sparring in ourself as a spiritual and psychological felt vertigo...The melody is not an addition of external chords but the impossible division of eternity ...The musical scale is described as non commutative by the french geometer Alain Connes...
What does it means concretely ?
It means time do not pass or do not exist, but manifest only as a revelation of something out of mundane time... Musical time has nothing to do with physical time in science or with the repetitive metronome ...
Time in music is like respiration or the blood circulation between beating heart movement in an experience where each note oscillate between before and after, suspended between the infinite heights over us and the infinite abyss under us... Music is based on a non commutative geometry and the direction taken toward the heights or the abyss, toward minor or major chord, as with each chosen note among other possible, can oscillate in an unlimited way but must be chosen at the end...Music is for us then sometimes the experience nearer to the sacred, to the miraculous, to the visionnary, to the unknown... But if it can be so only relaxing and asimple joy, humble beauty, natural and simple pleasure...it can be also way more than that ...
This cosmos originate from music not the reverse...Mathematic and even geometry are music not the reverse...
Because sound qualitative content of information is no more mere waves in the air than a fire is mere oxygen, air and wood even if it takes these element to be perceived ...Music is information and emotion coming from sound sources, not mere abstract waves...Our consciouness catch a qualitative information, a meaning, our brain can only modulate and transmit but not create...
Then i ask sometimes for a pianistic interpretation suggesting this truth and derived from it...
Each note must be not so much a sound position taken in a melody, but like a a rifle bullet aimed at our heart... The melody must not be an addition of external notes but a miracle perceived on top of our death between each bullet as a division of eternity...The notes bear their own melody and created a new one not the reverse ...Because melodies are not abstraction but explicit meanings born from implicit one...
I will translate here the celebrated Keats verse : " A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
A melody is an impossible irreversible division of eternity...
Now concretely which pianists can display in contrast, a pure perfect mudane time flowing melody , and a pure vertical time duration suspended fatefully between the heights and the abyss ...
Listen to Arrau perfect beautiful flowing melody , easy to grasp and easy to taste:
Now listen to Ervin Nyiregyházi fateful version of the same piece no more flowing but with each note surging from an abyss or falling from the heights, where the melody is only grasped as an after- tought, because each note you will see it coming as a rifle bullet aiming at your heart.then you dont remember the melody or you dont perceived it at first or you forgot it at each note and each other note remind you of it ..
It is impossible to choose between these two supreme versions, but there is no doubt that no pianist could ever learn to play as Nyiregyházi played... It is not something that can be taught ... it is out of this world and it is no more mere music... It is sacred terror gazing in the Liszt soul as in our own... A spiritual event more than a pleasant leisure...
Scriabin the successor of Liszt and Chopin must be played like this...
This is why i love Sofronitsky playing Scriabin because he play it the same way as Ervin N. in Liszt ...
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I concur with all your observations...
I thank you very much for all your posts and interesting reading...
I did not discovered Scriabin with Ogden nor Horowitz,,,
But Ogdon is very much more to my taste ...
But perfection about colors is not the only difficulty in Scriabin playing ...
The harder task after complete colors control is intensity, the playing must not be MERELY BEAUTIFUL, but trance like and hypnotic.... Scriabin as you know was not only a synesthetes but was a seer who use his art to seize the listener and put it out of his body... I learned to listen to Scriabin with Sofronistky, Zhukov, Neuhaus and many others unknown in the east from the Russian piano school...
( Ogdon a very great pianist is my best by far in Sorabji Clavicem Ballisticum where is more controlled mastery with intensity is there a more perfect match with the composer Sorabji , Scriabin unlike Sorabji does not CONTROL himself completely but let go of everything and immersed himself in a cosmic sea, an experience which is nowhere in the works of the completely cerebral genius Sorabji who i admire)
For example the great version of Michael Ponti which i like a lot in spite of his atrocious sound recording, is not the way i will prefer for Scriabin interpretation at first , because Ponti plays it as delicious beautiful liitle pieces of colors, but his mastery of the playing with his spontaneous IMPROVISATION feeling as in one fell swoop with no back thought impress me a lot , which playings i listened nowhere as it is under his finger, make him my best version out of the Russian school ...It is a pity for the sound , it is almost the worst recording of piano i listened too with alas! many bad sound recordings by Sofronitsky ... But music is not sound...And Ponti is a very underestimated Pianist...
My best pianist of all time with Scriabin is Sofronitsky probably in second Zhukov and What we have from Neuhaus who for example give us a "toward the flame" rivaling Sofronitsky himself ...Neuhaus is a giant but verry few recording available in the east, he work as a teacher and stay in the shadow but i never listened to a combination of supreme esthetic playing with supreme intensity in so perfect balance by any pianists ... Even if Sofronitsky is my favorite pianist because of his Scriabin understanding without match ( except Neuhaus beside him ) , for the piano playing itself not only Scriabin interpretation i had no doubt that Neuhaus is God too as said Richter about Sofronitsky...
This except from french wikipedia about this anecdote is very true:
«Although Scriabin himself never heard Sofronitsky play, Scriabin’s wife claimed that the pianist was the most faithful performer in the spirit of her husband’s works. His recordings of Scriabin are seen by many as unsurpassed. Pianists Svyatoslav Richter and Emil Guilels considered Sofronitsky their master. One day when drunk Sofronitsky declared to Richter that the latter was a genius, Richter retorted that he was God.»
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slv09szFHkM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8MTTrh-Z8
The Russian piano school is so powerful and with so unknown masters that no other school even compare... Think about that in the same evening listening, before 1920 Sofronitsky, Simon Barrere, Maria Yudina, and young Horowitz on the same piano...
Listen to Simon Barrere, about who Horowitz said Barrere could do more with one hand than most of us can do with two. For an example of unknown unique pianist :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1sXWfHaIQ
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Here a very humoristic video of Rubinstein called :
"Arthur Rubinstein being Arthur Rubinstein for 8 minutes straight":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPrXRzw0KU4
I never had never reservation or frustration to listen to him...
In the last minute of this video you will see why this man is a great soul...
I am very picky with pianists...very difficult... Because i love piano... My god is named Scriabin... Rubinstein is not a Scriabinian for sure...
But this master can play Scriabin with a mastery of colours existing only in the Russian school...And his playing sing without never being mere "perfection " ...
I dislike crystalline perfection on piano without the soul singing ...
Because as said the famous french poet, René Char : "imperfection is the peak of the mountain "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSti8gu1VCc
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You are right :
Furtwangler had the effect of making Music escape bar lines. The Orchestra seems to speak in paragraphs not in short phrases. His Schumann Fourth sounds more like a Shakespeare soliloquy as delivered by a great tragedian than a series of emails (for contrast, try the same work conducted by Yannick Sezet -Neguin.).
The "black magic" is linked to rythm and to the source of all rythms as primal pulsation as the heart beat not on a "beat" but on a music of his own...The heart is not a metronome... This is the root of musical achemy...And old jazz african musician say it is "rolli’n" or not, it must not be just extended in a repeated uniform way but spiralling...
What is rythm?
A conductor can direct by imposing an external order( metronome) on the set of timing interpreting written score indication, if there is one, in search for a PERFECT rythm which cannot be written anyway and KEEP ALL totally under his control as a maestro ...Musicians for him are as good as dead soldiers...
This is Toscannini in Beethoven 9th ...Complete perfection... But a mechanical perfect one ,sometimes, all along the piece ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr2mcEtCxnY&t=633s
A conductor can direct by listening the music INTERNAL un-written and un-writtenable order first and let this order surge in him and happen by not so much commanding it over the head of the musicians but letting them feel this internal duration extended as an organic rythm coming DURING THE PLAYING ITSELF Which can never be repeated and this at the risk to lose the control or at the risk of IMPERFECTION...
This is Furtwangler genius recognized By Gergyev or Ansermet themselves great conductors and recognizing Furtwangler as a master...
It is easy to prove if we use the circonstances during which Furt’ was recording the 4th of Schumann and ask the sound engineers to never interrupted it anymore and he directed it NON stop IMPROVISING IT for 32 minutes ... One of the greatest maestro recording of all time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4mW2Mc9is
The direction of Furt. dont reach perfection at all, and he dont look for perfection at all , as Toscanini aim at and in some admirable way reach ( there is a reason why Toscanini is so great among all maestros ) Furt, aim at something over perfection, called LIFE which is never perfect sound and beat but an imprevisible singing beauty who he is let herself free to speak in his own way to the heart ... The source behind behind the song melody is the archetypal rythm of life...Not the beat of a metronymic measure imposed... So perfect it is...
And speaking about music and some work of music any good writer must use METAPHORS and the poetic language and not only the prosaic one with exact knowledge from musicology...I am by no means a knowleageable musician anyway... I am a listener thats all...Not even well informed... But i love some music too much... For sure... But someone can speak well only about what he love over anything else...
In language there is two working levels at the same time: the prosaic and the poetic...None of these levels are to be reducible or prefered to the others...Music is not science...
And anyway the root of all rythm as it is felt even in improvising African rythms, is the body itself and the spoken language moved by no EXTERNAL command but by a spontaneous living each time new improvised order...Each ceremony is a divination and linked to the incoming future... Music is sacred as these old immemorial rythms ...
Furtwangler transform his musicians imitating him in dancers around a never felt before new dance coming from the Beethoven beating heart ashe felt it this day , not from the dead score...Beethoven spoke for each new day... He is not dead...
In a word the wand is a metronome or an improvised gesture coming from the song with always changing suggesting "hues" on the playing spot this day at this hour to the musicians ... The musician listen or not, BUT they never merely obey to Furtwangler because it is not enough to obey for him , they must give their soul to the music WITH Furtwangler and not UNDER him and never only playing the music well and perfectly ; because even written, classical music ask for improvisation especially in time and this improvisation surge FIRST through the conductor ... This is not a beating wand ordering commands , this is more a gesture asking to be ACCOMPANIEDin something completely new and resembling a revelation ..
It is what i hear ...
«What is prose ? A sum of dead hidden forgotton metaphors. Nothing more but nothing less»Anonymus teacher commenting Borges essay on old english and Old Norse language where a "beard" is "the forest of the jaws"..
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I made an error creating this thread and i cannot correct it...And add an introductory post...
My introductory post dont exist...
Ok i looked for a classical thread and i discovered that there seems to be none...
And these posts of mine about Furtwangler in Schumann 4th had been posted at the wrong thead... Then looking for a thread there was none... I created one...
Feel free to give your ideas...To all...
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But Furtwangler direct everything as he directed Schumann or Bruckner or Beethoven...
The time dimension and timing is INSIDE the music, the music dont obey to a "beat "outside of itself with him... The PULSE is born with the music and NEVER imposed on it from an EXTERNAL representation or from an arbitrary conception... At least so it seems and is felt by most... As Alas! it is not the case with many lesser maestros...
Then Melody is revealed and appear as rythm and rythm itself is melody in the making...
Rythm here has nothing to do with what people call a "beat" which is something outside the body and which is used to move the body by an external means...
Rythm is the mystery of time emerging from inside and manifested as pure melody, but a melody which do not grow as an horizontal line but as a spiralling apocalypsos: a revelation from inside through our gestures , in translation... Not a "beat "then and deeper than a dance because it is the origin and source of dance itself ...
In african percussion, rythm is not growing in horizontal line but spiralling from inside and never exactly repeating...Rythm is rolling without repeating itself exactly as speech is...
Each Furtwangler direction is more than mere beautiful because with him beauty as said Rilke is a" terror " experience as is the "sacred" experience an experience of dying and birthing ...
And all mysteries are in all religions about TIME experience called life and living, and dying then about the power of rythm as harmony emerging or disapearing ..
Furtwangler is the greatest maestro because he know that and make it felt... it was the opinion of another master the great Ernest Ansermet and few years ago Valery Gergyev said the same answering a journalist about Furtwangler...
One day i understood why i was unable to stop listening a Furtwangler work and then trying to go for a distraction : it is because we dont listen music with him, nor to a melody, we listen to our own PULSATION through the pulsating music as two communicative waves in ONE heart....The human body is made on this pattern through the two blood flows...Through the two cycles of aspiration and expiration... Even walking and thinking extend in time with the same rythmic pattern... It is the reason why life dont come for mere atoms but from the music of spheres... Anyway number theory is even based on rythm... but it is not the place for me to give it us to see... 😁😊
Furtwangler directing Beethoven 9th symphony ( 1942):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AI9kp02eq0
Furtwangler in Schubert 8th symphony called Unfinished`:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Z0O6OxEpo
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