Beethoven Piano Sonatas - Charles Rosen versus Pollini, Kempff etc
ACT
late Beethoven piano sonatas? Some people were recommending Rosen highly,
whereas opinions seems divided on Barenboim, Pollini and others - Barenboim
for not being up to the technical challenge somehow, Pollini for being too
cold and analytical, Kempff for being too dry......
Also, soundquality is important to me, as I really enjoy listening to a
highquality recording! If there's anything out there on SACD, I'd buy it.
ACT
Sonarrat
news:wj4Ma.1633$fJ....@twister.nyc.rr.com...
Count me as one of those who recommends Rosen highly. He literally wrote the
book... :)
-Sonarrat.
John Thomas
"Sonarrat" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote:
Me, too; but Richard Goode's, finally back in print as a separate
set, is also excellent.
--
-Regards,
John Thomas
Matt
> Any recommendations on the various interpretations and recordings of the
> late Beethoven piano sonatas?
I was just listening to Rosen's 31 today--wonderful stuff. This set also has
the best Hammerklavier I've ever heard, equally fine in the slow movement as in
the fugue (very rare indeed). I can't comment on the Barenboim, but I also
find the Pollini a little cold, although he also has a good fugue in the
Hammerklavier. I'm not terribly fond of the Kempff stereo set of late
sonatas. His technique is vastly inferior (compared to Rosen, that is), his
dynamic range is limited, the piano timbre isn't very well captured, and I've
never been able to hear the "magic" of these performances that many critics
rave about (that's probably my shortcoming though).
As to other sets of late sonatas with which I'm familiar, the Philips analogue
Brendel set is dirt cheap, but rarely takes off for me (sonata 32 being the
exception and probably the only reason why I hang on to this one). The
interpretations are a little fussy, occasionally dull, but always competently
played. The Solomon set (the Testament CD's have better sound) is probably
disqualified by being mono according to your criterion; in any case, I admire
the precision and unfussiness in some sonatas, but mostly it's a little too
mannered for my tastes. I tend to prefer Solomon in the earlier sonatas--his 7
is one of my favorites.
In any case, the Rosen set, in addition to being very, very good, is also quite
cheap on the Sony Essential Classics Label. The sound is, to my ears, very
good.
Regards,
Matt
Dan Koren
> recordings of the late Beethoven piano sonatas? Some
> people were recommending Rosen highly, whereas opinions
> seems divided on Barenboim, Pollini and others - Barenboim
> for not being up to the technical challenge somehow, Pollini
> for being too cold and analytical, Kempff for being too dry......
>
The only sets of Beethoven late sonatas (27-32) that I
would recommend are Rosen on Sony and Levy on Marston.
> Also, sound quality is important to me, as I really enjoy
> listening to a high quality recording! If there's anything
> out there on SACD, I'd buy it.
If sound quality is so important to you, why worry
who's the pianist? Just go buy the SACD! :-)
dk
David7Gable
Pollini in the Late Beethoven Sonatas came up a few years ago.
Pollini has a technique that surpasses virtually any other pianist's. He makes
the performance of Boulez's fiendishly difficult 2nd Sonata sound like child's
play. He plays with an extraordinary beauty of sound, a beautiful sheen. He
even knows his late Beethoven. But he doesn't take any interpretive risks.
The performance of parts of late Beethoven (and of Boulez's 2nd Sonata, for
that matter, and for similar reasons) should sound, to use the old Romantic
trope so often applied to Beethoven, like a struggle. Beethoven knew perfectly
well that he was writing at the limit of the pianist's technique, and the
resistance of the music in all its organic complexity to facility of
reproduction contributes to its expressive effect. But with Pollini it's a
case of no sweat. In many ways, Pollini's super pearly white approach is
better suited to Chopin than to Beethoven, although even with Chopin we want
(or should want) something more than Pollini has to offer. One senses that
Pollini could do more, but something prevents him from doing it, a kind of
aristocratic disdain. He maintains a demanding repertoire and is obviously an
intelligent man, but, despite a hint of that something more that is never quite
delivered, his superb technique and polish are not quite enough, not quite the
right requirements for the late Beethoven sonatas.
Not that Rosen's technique isn't up to the rigors of, say, the outer movements
of the Hammerklavier. It is. But Rosen gives that "more" that the more
reticent Pollini witholds: a distinctive point of view. Rosen is steeped in
the music of Beethoven. He has lived with it all his life and he has ideas
about it, ideas that are sometimes quirky, perhaps, but never wrong-headed.
Rosen plays en grand homme, utterly absorbed in every detail of the music, and
every spiky detail in the Hammerklavier fugue emerges in its essential
rightness, carefully weighted to contribute to the totality. Nobody can judge
and put across the weights of the individual contrapuntal lines within a
classical texture as Rosen can. Rosen's subtle adjustment of the weights of
the various attacks even within an extremely brief span of time is astonishing,
although this makes Rosen's approach sound atomistic, which it isn't thanks to
the very technique I'm describing. Even a very short motive--even a motive
consisting of only two notes--requires individually nuanced attacks in order to
be conveyed as a distinctive shape. No other pianist approaches Rosen's
capacity for judging the weights of attacks in this sense: it's a function of
a grasp of the contrapuntal facture of music that belongs to the fingers as
much as the mind. Rosen is not the only pianist who knows how to shape and
phrase, but no other pianist has surpassed him in wedding the technique I've
tried to describe to expressive ends. (Rosen has written that what we call
color in a pianist's performance is actually the result of the various weights
that are given to the individual notes in a chord. A pianist cannot actually
modify the timbre of the instrument he plays as he strikes the keys with his
fingers, but the sonority is varied depending on which notes are weighted how
much.)
Rosen's playing is extremely varied. Rather than applying a single beautiful
sheen to the whole, he approaches the various characters and textures of late
Beethoven differently. He dares to play the "verklemmt" opening of the slow
movement from the Hammerklavier with a kind of spare, dry, tone as Beethoven
suggests, only opening up to full lyric expression with a singing tone later in
the movement.
Rosen indulges in rather more rubato of an essentially old fashioned kind than
the musicologically correct HIP performers of today. In that sense, Rosen is
as generous as a latter day Liszt, and there is a kind of Olympian grandeur in
Rosen's approach paradoxically balanced by his modesty in face of the music.
Rosen has suffered from the fact that he is known as a brilliant writer of
books on music and specifically on the Viennese Classical style of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven (although his repertoire ranges from Bach to Boulez).
Listeners assume that Rosen must necessarily hope to illustrate some academic
thesis with his playing, when nothing could be further from the truth. As he
has often said in interviews, what he writes about in his books would apply to
anyone's performance.
Rosen once wrote a short piece for the New York Times entitled "The Quandary of
the Writing Pianist." In it he says that he is often asked how he approaches a
piece of music for the first time, to which he delights in responding with
malice aforethought, "Oh, I try out different fingerings." As with any
pianist, Rosen's approach begins with a kind of physical immersion in the work.
"Ideas" arise as the pianist begins to project the motives, lines, and phrases
in peformance. There is no intervening verbal conceptualization. The
realization is in sound. The critical approach in Rosen's books necessarily
follows performance just as the physics in textbooks follows nature.
Rosen's survey of the late Beethoven sonatas now on Sony--it includes Op. 90
and Op. 101 as well as the four late sonatas--is an extraordinary exercise of
one brilliant and original pianist's musicality and musicianship. Rosen isn't
the only great pianist to have approached these masterpieces, but his
performances are brilliant. Buy them. At the price of a couple of Sony
Essential Classics discs they're a steal. (Sadly, Rosen's original liner notes
have been replaced by somebody else's.)
-david gable
deac...@yahoo.com
wrote:
Sorry Dan, but how can you reconcile the Rosen's hard, unyielding tone
with your basic principles of good piano playing.
And were are Arrau and Schnabel and Kempff, and Backhaus etc. in this
list. I can hear them all saying: "What do you think I am, a potted
palm?"
Not that I don't like Rosen. He's different and intelligent and all
that. But your list is far too exclusive for my personal taste. And
that CBS recording from London is really hard as nails, just like the
Columbia Serkins. They never did learn how to make records at that
time.
Tom Deacon
Ivailo Partchev
available cheaply in the EMI Reference series. Your problem is that they are
not in modern sound quality (in fact, only tow are in stereo)
"ACT" <sch...@nyc.rr.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:wj4Ma.1633$fJ....@twister.nyc.rr.com...
Simon Roberts
says...
>
>
>Pollini has a technique that surpasses virtually any other pianist's. He makes
>the performance of Boulez's fiendishly difficult 2nd Sonata sound like child's
>play. He plays with an extraordinary beauty of sound, a beautiful sheen. He
>even knows his late Beethoven. But he doesn't take any interpretive risks.
Oh, I don't know - one might argue that smoothing out the music in the manner
you complain about here is an interpretative risk. His remake of the Beethoven
concertos with Abbado is breathtaking in its blankness.
>
>The performance of parts of late Beethoven (and of Boulez's 2nd Sonata, for
>that matter, and for similar reasons) should sound, to use the old Romantic
>trope so often applied to Beethoven, like a struggle. Beethoven knew perfectly
>well that he was writing at the limit of the pianist's technique, and the
>resistance of the music in all its organic complexity to facility of
>reproduction contributes to its expressive effect. But with Pollini it's a
>case of no sweat.
True, but that's not because of his good technique, is it? The "struggle" we
hear in a good performance of the sort of Beethoven piece that contains
"struggle" isn't caused by the pianist's being challenged by technical
difficulties but by his/her phrasing, articulation, accents, etc. Pollini's
Beethoven doesn't lack "struggle" because he doesn't find it technically
difficult but because of his interpretative ideas. I imagine you don't really
(if at all) disagree (as your account of Rosen's superiority implies), which
makes me wonder why you mention that Beethoven "was writing at the limit of the
pianist's technique."
Simon
David7Gable
That's not remotely what I hear in Rosen's playing, and his actually rather
expansive and generous approach is quite distinct from Serkin's much more
austere approach. There is no end to the variety of sonorities he was capable
of in his most physically fluent period, although a harder edge gradually crept
into his playing from the mid-70's on.
>And
>that CBS recording from London is really hard as nails,
Sounds pretty good to me . . . at least for a recording of a piano.
>They never did learn how to make records at that
>time.
They haven't yet, and in the case of the piano, I wonder if they ever will.
-david gable
ACT
ACT
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030701025931...@mb-m17.aol.com...
HPLeft
Haven't heard the complete Rosen set, but I recently had a chance to hear
his Hammerklavier and Op. 111 and came away extremely impressed. My
reference in the big Beethoven Sonatas tends to be Gilels (unfortunately he
never got around to 111, where my reference remains the Philips Kovacevich),
but the Rosen stuff I've heard strikes me as an excellent alternative view.
Any question of the Hammerklavier not making utter musical sense vanishes in
Rosen's hands (as it does in Gilels IMHO). Not the most weighty,
soul-searching Adagio I've heard, but lucid, extremely musical performance -
as the 111. At the Essential Classics price, I'd can't imagine you'd be
disappointed.
Matt C
David7Gable
>hear in a good performance of the sort of Beethoven piece that contains
>"struggle" isn't caused by the pianist's being challenged by technical
>difficulties
I disagree. Or at least your point is not the one I am insisting on.
Beethoven wrote for pianists who could play the Hammerklavier and string
quartets that could play the Grosse Fuge--but just barely. He didn't write for
late 20th-century performers with freak techniques like Pollini's. If anything
he wrote for Schnabels who couldn't quite play the Hammerklavier. This is not
to deny the importance of the performer's more purely musical ideas, but the
physical relationship of the technique of the performer to the technique
demanded by a piece has a palpable effect on a performance. (Of course, the
importance of this varies from piece to piece). In the case of late Beethoven,
techniques have improved beyond what Beethoven could have imagined, and
performers playing his music are no longer inevitably playing at the limit of
their techniques. The result is that their performances sound palpably
different from any earlier performer's quite apart from any interpretive
decisions made.
While the physical and "interpretive" can be distinguished conceptually, they
are indissolubly linked in performance. For example, according to Rosen,
Chopin's most expressive dissonances often occur where the writing for the
piano demands the most painfully awkward hand positions. In other words,
Chopin has composed painful physical effort.
-david gable
Simon Roberts
says...
>
>I disagree. Or at least your point is not the one I am insisting on.
>Beethoven wrote for pianists who could play the Hammerklavier and string
>quartets that could play the Grosse Fuge--but just barely. He didn't write for
>late 20th-century performers with freak techniques like Pollini's. If anything
>he wrote for Schnabels who couldn't quite play the Hammerklavier. This is not
>to deny the importance of the performer's more purely musical ideas, but the
>physical relationship of the technique of the performer to the technique
>demanded by a piece has a palpable effect on a performance. (Of course, the
>importance of this varies from piece to piece). In the case of late Beethoven,
>techniques have improved beyond what Beethoven could have imagined, and
>performers playing his music are no longer inevitably playing at the limit of
>their techniques.
How does this manifest itself audibly? A pianist stretched to his limit in
Hammerklavier i just manages to get all the notes out in the right order at the
right tempo? Just manages to do that and obey all the various accents, dynamic
markings etc. in the score? Plays few enough wrong notes not to be really
annoying but just enough to make it sound dangerous? Is it the wrong/missed
notes in Schnabel's Hammerklavier i that convey the "struggle"? Sorry, I don't
buy it. Pollini is bland, not because he has a "freak technique" (does he
really? The only time I heard him live there were wrong notes galore *and* it
was boring as hell), but because he's interpretatively bland (not always,
but...). I should have thought that the better your technique the better able
you are to be expressive, to be faithful to the letter and spirit of the score
and thus better able to convey the struggle that matters (which isn't, of
course, to say that you will do any of those things).
>
>While the physical and "interpretive" can be distinguished conceptually, they
>are indissolubly linked in performance. For example, according to Rosen,
>Chopin's most expressive dissonances often occur where the writing for the
>piano demands the most painfully awkward hand positions. In other words,
>Chopin has composed painful physical effort.
Are you/is he suggesting that a pianist who doesn't find such hand positions
painful will create less of a dissonance, will create his dissonance with less
expression?
Simon
Dan Koren
news:h7n2gv0jgmv6f4bsu...@4ax.com...
>
> Sorry Dan, but how can you reconcile the Rosen's hard,
> unyielding tone with your basic principles of good piano
> playing.
a) I never said I liked Rosen's sound -- and I don't.
b) The performances have other compensating virtues,
unlike Serkin's.
c) You seem to be obsessed with the notion that I
have a fixed set of "basic principles of good
piano playing". I don't know how you got that
idea -- except perhaps by projecting your own
naivete and rigidity on other people. As I said
many times, all I want from a performance is to
be bowled over. Incidentally, my criticism of
Serkin is not limited to his sound alone. His
musical conceptions are those of a mad dog.
> And were are Arrau and Schnabel and Kempff, and
> Backhaus etc. in this list. I can hear them all
> saying: "What do you think I am, a potted palm?"
a) It seemed pretty clear from the context that the
original poster was asking specifically for a
packaged set of the late sonatas, not a complete
edition or a mix-your-own.
b) Arrau is guano by now. Backhaus is in the gutter
where he lived/performed his entire life -- what
the heck man, do yo have any brains left? I don't
like Serkin and you could possibly think for one
moment that I would recommend Backhaus ?!?!?!?!?
c) Schnabel's late sonatas as you know have a lot of
flaws -- I wouldn't recommend them as a first or
only recommendation.
d) Kempff is another one of my pet criminals. Hey
man, you should have read the archives of this
ng before you started posting here. Once upon a
time someone (MrT?) even maintained the list of
"Dan Koren's betes noires" ;-)
Here's a brief snapshot of the list so your
fingers don't get too tired surfing the archives:
-- Claudio Arthritis
-- Alfred Brendull
-- i due Guglielmi (Kempff and Backhaus)
-- Moron Perahia
-- Rodolfo Serkin
-- Dinu Constipatti
-- Santa Clara
-- Geza Panda
Happy now? Something new to chew?
> Not that I don't like Rosen. He's different and
> intelligent and all that. But your list is far too
> exclusive for my personal taste.
I couldn't care less what you like or don't, or what
is your personal taste. If one were to judge from the
Great Gold and Brown Box (heretofore referred to as
TGGBB) your "taste" is dumping everything in one huge
pot and making bouillabaisse.
> And that CBS recording from London is really hard as
> nails, just like the Columbia Serkins. They never did
> learn how to make records at that time.
No disagreement here. Philips were actually capable of
making decently sounding recordings at the time, but
did not have any pianists worth recording on their
roster. When they finally got one (Cziffra) they
treated him so badly that he moved over to EMI.
BTW, how did Ingrid Haebler manage to get into the
recording business? Was she promoted from page
turner after everyone else had left the house?
dk
deac...@yahoo.com
wrote:
><deac...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
Why would I bother to find out what your "betes noirs" are?
I am supremely indifferent to your tastes.
However, I will call you each and every time you utter nonsense.
And I may be busy, if I decide to stay here.
Tom Deacon
Dan Koren
news:6bq3gv8t0hpdaid0i...@4ax.com...
Careful, you dropped an 'e'.
> I am supremely indifferent to your tastes.
As an individual listener you can be as indifferent to
anyone's tastes as you like. As a marketing honcho for
a classical music record company, you cannot afford to
ignore too many of your customers too much of the time,
or you might end up you know where -- like Air Canada.
> However, I will call you each and every time you utter
> nonsense.
?!?
> And I may be busy, if I decide to stay here.
ROTFL. If you decide to stay here you will be
very busy indeed applying band aids.
dk
Phil Caron
those by Levy, Solomon, Richter, Rosen, Petri, and Pollini. Of those,
probably Pollini's has the best sound, with Rosen, Levy and Solomon being
only fair.
If you include complete sets of all 32 sonatas, good accounts of the last 5
are also done by Ashkenazy, Annie Fischer, and Arrau. Arrau's is in pretty
good sound, as is at least some of Ashkenazy's (I don't recall). The sound
on Fischer's isn't bad.
There are other available last 5's that one can say a lot for, like those by
Backhaus, Schnabel, Kempff, Brendel, Feltzman, and Kuerti, but I don't find
them as consistently good as those previously mentioned.
If you don't need all five sonatas played by a single pianist, there are
many more excellent choices.
- Phil Caron
"ACT" <sch...@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:wj4Ma.1633$fJ....@twister.nyc.rr.com...
Raymond Hall
I tend to agree with what you say. I have long been waiting for this
argument to appear. I remember teaching a Vietnamese friend in Sydney the
rudiments of piano (and he was an absolute Beethoven freak), and when he
heard me 'struggling with a piece', and for me it is a struggle, I remember
saying to him something along the lines of, " ... well, that is part and
parcel of what Beethoven is all about ... ", to which he replied, " ... but
the struggle is in Beethoven's mind, his conception ...", to which I
remember deciding to drop any more argument. He simply could NOT understand,
that there should be struggle in the playing as well.
I can imagine nothing worse than a piece like the Hammerplonk being played
as though it were Art Tatum surmounting a simple piece by Satie. There has
to be, imvho, as one who is not up with the pianistic gurus here, an element
of struggle in Beethoven's works - from ALL aspects.
Btw, without Rosen's notes, which were on the back of the LP of the
Hammerplonk, and another sonata, then a fair bit of the value has
disappeared with the Rosen release on CD. At least for me. Part of the fun
was reading Rosen's notes.
Regards,
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
See You Tamara (Ozzy Osbourne)
Ray, Taree, NSW
deac...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>As an individual listener you can be as indifferent to
>anyone's tastes as you like. As a marketing honcho for
>a classical music record company, you cannot afford to
>ignore too many of your customers too much of the time,
>or you might end up you know where -- like Air Canada.
>
>dk
>
>
Having retired to the rural paradise that is Eastern Ontario, I think
I qualify for the first position, i.e. one who can be indifferent to
anyone's taste as I like.
That arrow missed its mark, Dan, like most of your others.
But you can try again, if you like.
Tom Deacon
John Thomas
"Raymond Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> Btw, without Rosen's notes, which were on the back of the LP of the
> Hammerplonk, and another sonata, then a fair bit of the value has
> disappeared with the Rosen release on CD. At least for me. Part of the fun
> was reading Rosen's notes.
Get your hands on these two books. The second is pretty technical; the
first the work of a brilliant and charming raconteur.
Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist -- by Charles Rosen
Beethoven`s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion -- by Charles Rosen
--
-Regards,
John Thomas
Raymond Hall
news:CutMa.7577$%3.33...@typhoon.sonic.net...
Thanks for the titles. I have two library forms on which to list some
submissions, including some Liszt tomes. What publisher does the Rosen
books?
Ta.
Dan Koren
news:ipg4gvsp13tua5981...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 01 Jul 2003 21:19:15 GMT, "Dan Koren" <dank...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > As an individual listener you can be as indifferent to
> > anyone's tastes as you like. As a marketing honcho for
> > a classical music record company, you cannot afford to
> > ignore too many of your customers too much of the time,
> > or you might end up you know where -- like Air Canada.
>
Rural paradise is an oxymoron. Paradise includes sushi,
espresso and chocolate ;-)
> Ontario, I think I qualify for the first position, i.e.
> one who can be indifferent to anyone's taste as I like.
Great! Good for you. You should start thinking about
retiring from r.m.c.r as well -- and we won't even
pay you a pension.
How is Philips going to do the next 100 Great Pianists
without you? Holy cow, they might even change the color
of the box.
dk
Dan Koren
And before you even start reading Rosen, do
yourself a favor and read Edwin Fischer's
book on Beethoven's Piano Sonatas.
dk
Dan Koren
>
> While the physical and "interpretive" can be
> distinguished conceptually, they are indissolubly
> linked in performance. For example, according to
> Rosen, Chopin's most expressive dissonances often
> occur where the writing for the piano demands the
> most painfully awkward hand positions. In other
> words, Chopin has composed painful physical effort.
>
And you infer from that any "deep meaning"
other than the pain being a side effect of
the keyboard layout? I hate to say this,
but judging from your naive statements
about piano music and piano playing you
don't seem to know shit about either.
dk
John Thomas
"Raymond Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> "John Thomas" <jwth...@sonic.net> wrote in message
> news:CutMa.7577$%3.33...@typhoon.sonic.net...
> | Get your hands on these two books. The second is pretty technical; the
> | first the work of a brilliant and charming raconteur.
> |
> | Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist -- by Charles Rosen
> | Beethoven`s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion -- by Charles Rosen
>
> Thanks for the titles. I have two library forms on which to list some
> submissions, including some Liszt tomes. What publisher does the Rosen
> books?
Piano Notes is Free Press (2002); the Companion is Yale University
Press (2001) The Companion comes with a CD in which Rosen illustrates
his points.
--
-Regards,
John Thomas
ACT
detect a general tone in your observations that betrays you to have some
kind of chip on your shoulder. Are you a failed concert pianist or
something? Were you beaten by your parents to play the piano against all of
your wishes, and now you sit with all that knowledge and experience with
nowhere to take it other than on innocents at an online newsgroup - because
you never loved it enough to become good at it? Perhaps your brother has a
recording contract, whereas you have a teachers position at a mid-western
university with a sad excuse for a music program? Or are you just an unhappy
lonely soul in front of a computer?
Your arrogance is the arrogance of someone who still - for all of your
knowledge - does not know that he really knows very little. Of someone who
does not recognize that besides the fact that you may know more than the
next guy about something, you can be almost certain that that person knows
more than you about a lot of other stuff. Your little petty arrogance may
give you temporary relief, because you have a discerning mind I can tell,
and this mind, even when your conciousness tells it to shut up, will
probably whisper to you these above facts, and the realities of your life
probably shouts them to you.
People of real substance and knowledge have no time for arrogance.
ACT
"Dan Koren" <dank...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c1c5ead9.03070...@posting.google.com...
David7Gable
>other than the pain being a side effect of
>the keyboard layout?
Of course the pain comes from the shape of the hand and the layout of the
keyboard! Where else would it come from.
>judging from your naive statements
>about piano music and piano playing you
>don't seem to know shit about either.
You're entitled to your opinion. But I guess the sheerly physical side of
playing the piano is irrelevant to you. (In any case, the observation that
Chopin's most poignant dissonances also very often happen to occur when the
most painful extension of the hand is also required was not mine but Rosen's.
I seriously doubt that you'll be able to refute it. And the point is that the
pianist composer, consciously or not, is aware of all of these aspects of
writing music for the piano as he composes.)
-david gable
David7Gable
Phil, is an Ashkenazy recording of the Hammerklavier on Decca from the later
60's available on CD anywhere? I'm not generally Mr. Ashkenazy's biggest fan,
but I remember liking his performance of the fugue.
-david gable
Dan Koren
> >And you infer from that any "deep meaning"
> >other than the pain being a side effect of
> >the keyboard layout?
>
> Of course the pain comes from the shape of the hand and the layout of the
> keyboard! Where else would it come from.
>
> >judging from your naive statements
> >about piano music and piano playing you
> >don't seem to know shit about either.
>
> You're entitled to your opinion.
And you are too! ;-)
> But I guess the sheerly physical side of
> playing the piano is irrelevant to you.
Bullshit. I spent almost twenty years of
my life slaving over the piano repertoire.
> (In any case, the observation that Chopin's
> most poignant dissonances also very often
> happen to occur when the most painful
> extension of the hand is also required was
> not mine but Rosen's.
I know this comes from Rosen. FYI I read the
same books, articles, interviews and magazines
as you and everybody else.
> I seriously doubt that you'll be able to
> refute it. And the point is that the
> pianist composer, consciously or not, is
> aware of all of these aspects of writing
> music for the piano as he composes.)
That point is a ridiculously naive and romantic picture
that no one can prove or disprove -- in other words a
figment of Rosen's imagination.
I'm not debating the fact that Chopin's dissonant chords
require awkward hand positions -- that should be obvious
to anyone who can read the score. I just don't think there
is any deep meaning to it.
dk