Heye guyz!

Posted this ballade couple of months ago, but the audio uptake with my shitty microphone back then didnt record that much sound for you to hear. Now im playing the ballade a couple times in the week and figured it would be cool to make a second recording with better stuff.

So here it goes, in video form! Feel free to comment or whatever.

This is my favorite of all the recordings I've heard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR7eUSFsn28

Of course, the pianist has the advantage of playing a Hamburg concert Steinway.

I think my main comment on your playing is that sometimes the tone sounds thin(especially in the softer passage) and sometimes the melody is not loud enough compared to the rest.

Oh.......I thought Hamburgs didn't make any difference!

And remember of course that this is someone who isn't as good as the winner of the youtube contest.

It's beautiful and wonderful, of course. But, since we always want to give at least a little criticism .....some of his "pauses" throw me a bit. He did some of that in the Schubert impromptu also (Op. 90, #4) and I guess it's a characteristic of his to do little pauses at times in unexpected places.

Congratulations on this fine job. Very good performance, well done!

Personally I'd be pretty much annoyed if I had been working real hard on this piece, had created this topic, anxiously awaiting comments, only to find the commenters talking about a performance of Zimerman. Come on...

You don't think there's anything to learn from listening to a performance by a great pianist? Or how about getting inspired by a performance?

I do think that actually discussing the Zimmerman performance, as opposed to mentioning it, is somewhat off topic.

Haha Thanks for the answers. Im not annoyed, not at all! Zimmerman plays this ballade very beautiful, comparing me to him is not necessary. He's a professional pianist and i'm an amateur pianist.

I like Horowitz version more though, it has more edge in my opinion. There is one time in the 3rd variation of the meno mosso theme where LH is playing a big arpeggiated Eb major, where Horowitz makes the piano sound like a full orchestra. It sounds like he has 50 persons playing that Eb major with a dozen instruments. About 07.15 in the youtube version. So my inspiration comes from Horowitz, not zimmerman, and that might be another reason why the difference is so big.

But i really appreciate suggestions. The dynamics thing was interesting, ill think about that.

I also like Horowitz's intensity in the Eb part (im working on this ballade as well and the Horowitz Youtube recording was the first one I saw)

Adapa... Loved the recording! I agree that Horowitz's recording is probably my favorite of this piece. You've done a very nice job of putting in a bit of rubato, expressing the dynamics and pedaling. My only critique is that a couple o fthe pauses in the phrasing were a bit longer than what they felt like they should be.

My teacher tells me on fermatas to listen to the cycles of the held note/chord and think of it like an escalator, you wait until the step is actually there to jump on. You get a feel for what is the right time. Jumping on too quickly, you stumble, to long, and people are backing up behind you.

Loved it!