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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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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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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'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.
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@bdp24 The stairs to the Classical section were next to the Ticketron Kiosk, to the right when you entered the store. And let me tell ya’, everybody hated being ordered to work the Ticketron window. More often than not, the Ticketron Machine would just decide to take it’s own special "I don’ wanna work" break. And when the machine did work, you could guarantee a queue of personally offended customers snarling, "What? No more Stones/Dodgers tickets?????" 🙄
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In college in Ann Arbor in the seventies I worked at a store called Liberty Music. They aspired to have a copy of every recording currently in print. I don’t know how they succeeded with that but it was certainly an Aladdin’s Cave for all kinds of obscure music.
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@edcyn: I had no idea the Panorama City store had an upstairs. I did my Classical buying at the Hollywood store on Sunset Blvd. They had almost everything that was in print in stock a lot of the time.
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This thread takes me back to my Tower Records days at the Panorama City branch, where the classical music department was up the squeaky stairs to the second floor. There was the customer who pronounced Deutsche Grammophon as "duchesses grab-a-phone," and Daniel Barenboim as Daniel Bound-boom. He was a good guy, though, who always bought one or two albums.
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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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There is a large Barbirolli box that has been released, with many 78 recordings.
My impressions of J.B. Are from his stereo recordings, in his last decade or so.
His Mahler is impressive, but ultimately just to slow and world weary for me. I like the Sibelius stereo set with the Halle Orchestra, but the Orchestral deficiencies are wearying. It would be interesting to hear the younger J.B.
Re Curentzis, I admit that I am one of those that is off put by his relentless P.R. Machine. The one recording of his that I did stream, Tchaikovsky 6, didn’t begin to live up to the hype.
I second the comments about Barenboim as a Furtwangler wanna be. The young D.B. was so phenomenally talented. It just seems weird to want to ape another musician to the extent that he has, and to alter the natural growth curve that he may otherwise have experienced. Furtwangler make it seem as though he was playing the Orchestra like an individual instrument, exercising complete command, apparently able to manipulate the musicians to follow him wherever he went. I think it was that improvisatory feel that D.B. the Pianist wanted to bring to his conducting
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Another conductor worthy of mention for his passionate dynamics, tender adagios, and understanding of soloists, is Sir John (born Giovani Battista) Barbirolli. When I first listened to Barbirolli's Mahler 2 & 4 I was transported.
A contemporary who seems to be on a (relentless) path of discovery is Theodore Currentzis. While many are suspicious of his approaches and his affectations (spending the night at the music hall with the orchestra, rehearsing in the middle of the night, analysing together the score with the composer's personality, the moment in time of the composition, and the emotional content he wishes to inspire...) -- I don't care. I the listener, am only subjected to the result, and the result can be magical at times (take the Mozart Requiem Lacrymosa, for example).
At the end of the day, I believe that what attracts me the most is the conductor\s personality and their psyche which emerges through the music; T was a powerhouse and, although he was a master of timing and score, what I get from his music is ultimately the power, the strength, and a sense of huge confidence. Furt OTOH was an amateur philosopher, very knowledgeable in ancient Greek philosophy (which he apparently read in the original text...) and his sense of humanity is evident in the music - i think.
A note re, Pollini - his technical prowess is beguiling. The only thing for me is that he seems to attack pieces of music as if he is solving a mathematical equation...
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i too like the sentence :
It may not storm the gates of heaven like J.S. Bach, but it paves the streets leading to those gates,
It resonates with my (short) impressions of his work -- which include the oboe sonatas (Holliger, I agree of course).
Sorry to join in so late, but I would like to add to the discussion on D Barenboim: I propose to rephrase the question as,
DB, a conductor or a pianist?
I have heard DB both as a conductor (Elgar, Brahms, etc) and pianist (Brahms 1, 7 other recordings).
My response is, definitely much better pianist than conductor... I am not a music professional so mine is an amateurish approach.
My experience with the discussion, re maestros, resonates with the thoughts expressed above, especially regarding Furt & Celi & T... to add a short comment, both F & C succeed in touching the listener's inner soul and, by their conducting, let out the humanity hidden in many compositions (many examples; Celi: Mozart Requiem, Furt: Beethoven 3 recording of 1944 (?) in Vienna...)
In this respect, trying to emulate Furt, for example, is a limitation in itself, in that
a) we already have Furtwangler, the original item😉
b) following endlessly in someone else's footsteps often leads one away from discovering their own path
Whereas, as a pianist, DB played an exciting /interesting Brahms under Celibidache & recently under Sir Simon Rattle. (Although for this piece I would prefer Gilels)
Regards
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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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@edcyn Interesting, I had read the Goebel could be a bit standoffish, nice to see something to the contrary.
@mahgister No one is disputing that Telemann was to prodigious for his own good, in the Historical Appreciation sweepstakes. He worked on the model of great painters of the day, in that he had a room full of apprentices. How that system worked is beyond me. Perhaps he whistled a tune he had thought up while using the water closet and told them “Use formula IIIb on this and show me what you have before lunchtime “. Presumably there is a fair amount of chaff in there, and we rely upon the likes of MAK to be sort of a quality control expert.
However, we can only judge the results. At the end of the day I don’t care if a canvas by Rembrandt has 20% or 80% painted by an apprentice with the great man supervising. One cannot imagine Beethoven or Brahms using Telemann’s compositional method (actually, there is some evidence that a substantial amount of Beethoven’s Works without opus—the stuff that he churned out to make a living-may largely be the labor of students such as Ferdinand Ries), but ultimately one should accept the music on it’s own terms. 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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I've got my share of Musica Antiqua Koln LPs & box sets. Whether the stuff they perform is obscure or Greatest Hits, they do it with soul and panache. A particular favorite of mine is the three LP set Deutsche Kammermusik vor Bach, stuff J.S. listened to when he was a sprite. I've come close to wearing out Side One, the side that features the works of Johann Adam Reincken, an under-rated, under-heard composer if there ever was one. A kaleidoscope of moods. Great tunes.
Me and the wife saw the ensemble live when they did a concert in Pasadena. After the performance, they joined the concertgoers in the lobby to share drinks & snacks. My wife considered it an imposition to ask the band to mingle with us but I was in seventh heaven. I mumbled a few words in German to 'em and shook a couple hands.
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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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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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For the past couple hours I've had Idagio randomly streaming Romantic Era violin concertos my way that, not only have I never heard, I've never heard of the composers, either. In any case, no matter who Gernsheim and Frohlich were, they came up some engagingly pretty, tuneful stuff. Well-played by soloists and orchestras I've never heard of, either. Fine fidelity. Just call me a contented couch potato.
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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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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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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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I've no doubt mentioned this sometime in the distant past on this site, but just in case I gotta say that Andre Watts is my favorite Liszt interpreter. His Columbia Masterworks LP hasn't got the greatest sound but his un-mannered, just-tell-us-the-story virtuosity never fails to catch me up in the narrative. When I daydream about playing Liszt (a composer whose works are perhaps just north of this would-be pianist's) it's his versions that emerge from my fingers. Saw him once in concert, too.
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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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I have been out of town for my mothers funeral so I haven't had a chance to keep up here. I agree that Pollini and Moravec are two very different Debussy players. Moravec has that warm buttery tone while Pollini has such fine etching and leonine strength. The music however, can survive both approaches. I prefer M.P. here, but for years the only recordings that I knew of the Debussy Preludes were those of Michelangelo, who was M.P. teacher. Pollini very different Art does lead to equally exquisite poetry.
Barenboim has stated throughout his career that he wants to emulate Furtwangler. He was the chief conductor here in Chicago for many years so I am very familiar with his work. A recording that he made of Beethovens Third Piano Concerto, when he was a teenager and before discovering his Furtwangler Passion, was one of my earliest acquired ops. Lets just say that D.B. has phenomenal natural musical instincts, but in attempting to superimpose the style of W.F., he frequently misfires. He just doesn't seem to have that innate ability to convey his vision to others unless he slows things down to near stasis, but without the inner light that a Furt or Cell had, it just sounds slow and bloated
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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 love Pollini. I was asked recently who my favorite pianist was and after a lot of thought, and all the disclaimers that I couldn’t pick just one, etc, I settled on him.
The Gramophone did one of their pieces on their favorite recordings of a given work on the Chopin Etudes and I was apoplectic when they dismissed M.P. His recording is supremely, eye poppingly virtuosic yet brings out Chopin’s harmonies, especially for the left hand, like no one else.
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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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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.
Do you have any thoughts on one of our most prominent’ Furtwangler-wanna-be’ Daniel Barenboim?
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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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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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