decided to take advantage of the copious amounts of free time i'll have this winter break and *finally* learn the 2nd and 3rd movements of the moonlight sonata. (2nd was a breeze, but i want to try and understand it more thoroughly cause IMO it's an incredibly underrated movement). Anyway, in light of this i've been listening to recordings of the piece (and all the other Beethoven sonatas) more in the last couple weeks, and I stumbled upon this absolute gem:





One of the most vivid and colorful interpretations I've ever heard - of course rubato and romantic phrasing are applied liberally, but certainly not excessively IMO. It's a shame, if you ask me, that playing like this is so heavily frowned upon in modern times.

Listened to less than 60 seconds. Hate it.

Second and third movements sounded very strange compared to performances from the last 50 years. Today this type of playing would just be called rhythmically inaccurate IMO. The endless breaking of the hands/rolling of the octaves in the first movement also sounds bizarre.

It's recordings like these that make me wonder about the "virtuosity" of some of the past greats. Personally, I think many recordings made by members here are superior.

I think it's difficult for people to listen past the quality of the recordings, in which a lot of nuances are lost; and of course, tastes change.

A bit OT, but a few years ago I met a man who had a collection of antique reproducing grand pianos (which, unlike the old "player pianos," reproduced dynamics). He had paper rolls on which some of Paderewski's performances were recorded, and had pianos in condition to play them. Now that was amazing to hear (and watch)!

Sorry, not my taste.

Sort of makes one wonder what the fuss was about. For all that, I suspect Paderewski had the most magnetic charisma of any pianist since Liszt, and probably an absolutely glorious tone which -of course- would be generally lost on the recordings as jdw posts above.

As for the breaking of hands -which comes across as such an affectation- times were different. I'm reminded of how overwhelmingly popular the Meyerbeer operas were in their day. But listening to musical excerpts, I'm at a loss to find much of sustaining interest.

But to be fair, the Meyerbeer operas dealt with very controversial topics that were dynamite at the time, they were huge spectacles, often requiring roles for six major singers (Tosca times two?). To mount a real slap-up production of a Meyerbeer opera today would be inconceivably expensive.

I suspect that Paderewski was pretty old when he made that recording, and it is well documented that he suffered strain injuries when he was younger that affected his playing for the rest of his life. You might compare it with Harold Bauer's recording, made about the same time. His mannerisms are not so exaggerated.

Really stores? Your powers of discernment are so refined that it takes less than minute to condemn a performance?

It's not as if Paderewski is some unknown performer. He was the highest paid artist of his day and the most acclaimed pianist by the general public since Liszt. He was well known for the lusciousness of his tone, the grand sweep of his performances, the elegance of his style. He was not known for note perfect playing - if you wanted that sort of performance you waited for Busoni or Godowsky to come around. Paderewski, on the other hand, could transport audiences to a frenzy. Were all these people 100 years ago stupid or Philistines?

The reason we don't like the breaking of hands in turn of the century performances, or the occasional wrong note, or the excesses of rubato, is that we live in an age where standards are defined by the recording process, which allows for wrong notes in particular to be erased and re-recorded. We expect public performances to adhere to this high-wire standard, which unfortunately knocks out a lot of performers who have interesting conceptual approaches to offer but don't have the nerves to appear in public.

19th century audiences wanted completely different performances. They wanted emotional power, drama, excitment, pathos, tenderness, and dozens of other attributes to playing that are easier to produce if the performer does not have to focus first and foremost on note-perfect playing. This is why Paderewski was so successful.

Understand too that the recording process didn't really take off until 1910, and Paderewski's recordings came late in his life when he retired from the stage. They do not represent his best playing, with the exception of a few pieces like the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10, where his technique held together.

These recordings from the early 20th century - even the Ampico piano rolls - are treasure troves of piano playing. Paderewski's Moonlight Sonata may not be the most brilliant gem of the lot, but it has its beauty and meant something to the listener back then. If we try for a moment to think, listen, and feel like they did, we will capture some of that beauty. Maybe we will even rethink what our musical standards should be, because rest assured, 50 years from now people are going to listen to performances we like and scratch their heads at our poor taste.

It's okay, but it's no Paderewski!

He was said to have created a sensation that hadn't been seen since Liszt and I have to believe charisma is a huge part of that. I have many ancient recordings (Hoffman, Freidman, and others)and none of them display the sloppiness of Paderewski. The free-style aspect of it doesn't bother me at all, it's the clumsiness with which it was done.

My view is closest to yours.
Actually more so.

Most of the posts on here bother me.
Not because of the criticisms, which I can well understand and might even somewhat share, but because they fail to see what's good and even great about Paderewski. Sure, "breaking of the hands," screwing around with the rhythm, blah blah blah.
It's all true, and we may or may not like it, or even approve of it.

But listen, in the 1st movement, to what he does with the melody.

Listen to how it sings. Listen to how it is unobtruded by the accompaniments. (Yes, BTW, plural accompaniments.)
Listen to how it veritably soars above the accompaniments. Listen to how perfectly each next melody note picks up on the decaying dynamic of the preceding one. And BTW a goodly part of what enables these aspects of the melody to be this way is how he plays the accompaniments.

All of this in spite of the poor recording quality which many of you are noting, and which I wouldn't even have registered because of the splendor that I described.

In line with what Numerian said, our views on this depend much on our standards and expectations, and what we value. Something we find in a lot of discussion of performances, both here and elsewhere, is an absence of concern and love for SOUND. Some very knowledgeable people can hold forth on musicianship and pianism for reams and reams without ever showing any concern for sound.

If you're not hugely into sound, there's no way you can appreciate what Paderewski was about. You can criticize, and a lot of what you say could be right, but you won't be addressing what he's doing and what was great about him.

Mark_C, I agree with everything you said, in spades. After reading all the responses (your's hadn't come up yet) I decided to cue the Paderewski and listen. I have to say that both of these performances blew me away. This was not at all what I expected after the comments.

Count me in to the Numerian/Mark/Tararex camp. I find these recordings fascinating and there is definitely something special about his playing. I wasn't crazy about the third movement (probably because he was too old to play it well at the time this was recorded). It wasn't about the wrong notes, the third movement just didn't work for me but there are definitely flashes of brilliance even in that movement.

Yes.

Well, Numerian, to be honest, if you go to a piano competition that's not the highest tier, you can often tell within the first few measures (unless something goes horribly wrong) how good the pianists really are.

I think these recordings are wonderful. I for one am tired of the homogenized "proper/cookie cutter/midi-like performances offered up by most current pianists.

It is my understanding that music is art, and art is all about personal expression. Why bother looking at paintings when you can look at photographs?

I am sure Beethoven would rail against some of the soulless, machinelike, recordings currently in fashion today.

Numerian, stores here has great powers. He could tell within 10 seconds that my Beethoven sucked (he took the pains to visit that thread in the recording forum just to tell me that it only took him 10 seconds ;)). So I'm not surprised that he could judge Paderewski "accurately" in 60 seconds.

I agree, but that's not what happened here -- and he didn't even say so.

He didn't say it wasn't good or that there weren't great things. I mean, he probably thinks that -- but he didn't say it. He just said he hated it. I certainly believe he could tell that in no time flat.

As I mentioned, many knowledgeable people just aren't that much into certain aspects of music, and focus on other things. If someone isn't into the main things that Paderewski was about, I'd be surprised if he didn't hate it. But that doesn't have much to do with how good it is.

I'm not a classical afficiando, but the first movement has a flow to it and blends
nicely..and has musical expression,whereas many newer artists tend towards a separation
tonally distinctly left/right hand, from a listeners point of view..is this what Beethoven
had in mind, or is Paterewski more correct in his interpretation?

In amateur competitions I've heard some pianists start out very poorly, get their nerves under control, and then go on to finish with an overall excellent performance. There are other pianists who start out well, but one memory slip undoes them. This has even happened to professionals on concert stages.

I like to listen to as much of the performance as possible before making judgments. I simply lack the perspicacity of some people to make instant assessments about performers. A talent like that could get out of control and become something of a game - "I Can Name That Terrible Performance in Three Notes!" I fear that is the approach being taken here to poor, misguided, incompetent Ignaz Paderewski.

I don't think that we can definitively determine "what Beethoven had in mind," nor whether one interpretation is "more correct" than another: correct, according to what criteria?

This is a recording from another era of musical interpretation which certainly differs in some respects from what we desire in interpretation of music from this period. So, it's not a question so much of right or wrong as it is a question of like or dislike - for whatever reasons.

Regards,

I liked the recordings-- within a few seconds. In fact, I began screaming hysterically and then must have fainted. I've never had that reaction to a Youtube recording. Can anyone explain?

Well, I don't consider it an absolute gem -- but I really DID like the presentation of the ultra-familiar first movement. It's very songful, and that exactly how I relate to the first movement -- not "misterioso" and dark, but simply "singing". The second movement was very charming. although I don't personally agree with that degree of rubato. The third movement was for me the most problematic, because there I don't believe he had the technical chops anymore to do proper justice to the movement -- but he DID have a very consistent musical approach was was for me quite clear even amidst the numerous technical imprecisions. I found his interpretation very intelligent and thoughtful throughout. THanks for posting this!

It's his hair. People went wild over his golden hair. Well, girls did anyway.

And he would rail against the liberties so many (including Paderewski here) take with his music. I have a strong feeling that he would feel Paddy was having a day at the opera with the first movement or worse yet he might feel he's poking fun at him.

Paderewski portrait by Alma-Tadema

No kidding, you are right! I had forgotten about his wild blond hair!

I gave your "Tempest" 30 seconds and I never said that it sucked. I simply said that you would probably not take my critique very well (and at that time I don't think you would have, since you bucked at every single word I uttered). That said, you're right that I don't need much time to tell what I'm listening to, but that's only because I've been listening to people playing the piano nearly every single day for almost 3/4 of my life. I'm paid to listen and when you teach, give a masterclass, adjudicate, etc. then yes, you need to be able to know quickly what you're dealing with.

Gee! It looks like mine, except that mine is much longer.

Agreed.

As you can see from the portrait, Paderewski had red hair.

I'd like to debate that people are too quick to generalize and bash those performing today. It's true that from "those good old days", we're only getting the cream of the crop. We've got Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels, Neuhaus, Sofronitsky, Arrau, Schnabel etc.....but surely there were hundreds of other mediocre performers who have been totally forgotten. I'm sure if you come back to our age in the future the same will have taken place as well. I mean, today there are some mindless midis and downright boneheads performing, but when was that not true? And today there are still great pianists performing: Ax, Sokolov, Argerich...and lots of younger pianists rising with their own artistic personalities.

It's almost like a double standard for someone to go and say that today's pianists are totally terrible compared to those from the "Golden Age of pianism", and then go to a concert featuring a young performer and say that they enjoyed it a lot.

Well, of course, but who is going to remember mediocrity? I'm not sure I get whatever point you're trying to make.

There are many of us who treasure this kind of playing. Paderewski was a great musician, and I am glad for the recordings we have, even if they aren't always representative of him at his best.

There are some interesting aspects to why people don't play that way today (or, if they try, are often not respected for it). I think one reason is that it just doesn't usually feel authentic as a product of our own time - Paderewski's playing really is playing from a different era, and it comes from a sensibility that is much different than ours.

You make a good point, but I think there's more to it. The times have changed, people have changed, and the role of classical music in society has changed. There seems to be little room for the kind of "greatness" that used to be admired. There may be good reasons for that, but it does not encourage the kind of wildly imaginative and grand thinking that created those major performers of the past. And a certain vitality has almost totally disappeared, too, IMO.

I suspect that type of grandiosity came from two 19th century giants - Liszt and Rubinstein. They brought out passion, tenderness, heroicism, and so much more in their music. There were similar trends in other art of the period. Genre painting was known for its sentimentality, and in the theatre actors like Edwin Booth and Sarah Bernhardt employed a melodramatic style that we today would consider "hamming it up." It was if the entire Victorian Era was searching for emotional connection, and why not? The agrarian way of life was dying out, as people moved into the impersonal cities to seek employment in factories. Families were being split apart. When you emigrated from Europe to America the odds were very very high that you would never see your parents or siblings again.

One of my favorite piano stories from the 19th century involves LM Gottschalk. He was touring in the far Western states in the US, his two grand pianos along with him on the train (he couldn't rely on suitable instruments in situ). He put on a performance in a remote mining camp in Nevada, in front of dozens of rough, hardened men. When he got to the encores, he played his variations on "Home, Sweet Home." The entire group of men burst into tears. They had given up any hope of ever seeing their mother or father again, in the usually forlorn chance of making a fortune in the silver mines. It meant something deeply personal to them to even think of home, much less have music transport them back.

The massive disruptions in life caused by the railroads, the electric light, the phonograph, the telephone, and the autombile seemed to settle down around the 1920s. This is when artists like Rubinstein (Artur) and Josef Hoffmann came upon the scene, espousing a devotion to technical accuracy and fidelity to the score. These two are transitional artists in my view. Rubinstein's recordings from the 1930s, and any of the Hoffmann discs, display some of the grand sweep and large conceptual risks that characterized the previous 50 years. But by then we were on the path to a phonograph-based musical scene, where classical performances became enslaved to note accuracy. The old melodrama simply died out, which is why Paderewski, or the ghost of the great artist we hear on his 1930s recordings, sounds so out of place in our time.

I see no reason why note accuracy and great imagination can't go together and think today's greatest pianists generally combine both. I think it's a fallacy that one precludes or must limit the other.

I do agree and think it's generally accepted that before recordings became widespread note accuracy was considered less important.

This thread brought to mind what Stephen Hough says about performers of the Golden Age:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100059031/ivry-gitlis-happy-un-together/

I get the impression that he would appreciate Paderewski's performance for what it was, and for what it represented.

Thanks, Mark-- and right on!

Personally, I enjoy Paderewski recordings and the early ones display a technique that is second to none. A trill that would defy a modern pianist, and control that few could equal. Read the early reviews by his contemporaries. I admire his playing. After the WWI he suffered from some physical and financial problems caused by his continued support of the Polish causes and with that, he still managed to thrill audiences. My teacher in Honolulu told me of hearing him in his later life and said that he and his wife walked out as he was just slapping at the keys.

His playing of WARUM of Schumann is the most moving I've heard.

And he was a romantic--my teacher in Chicago deplored the sterotypical playing of conservatory graduates and advised me not to attend their recitals. Their playing may be techically accurate but also devoid of feeling and compassion.

Ralph

I think the problem with an argument like this is that the good points mentioned about the Paderewski performance can be found in numerous recordings by other great pianists without the other aspects of his playing that were greatly out of fashion even by the time of this recording(e.g. the rubato which even by 1930's standard would probably just be called rhythmic inaccuracy)and without the technical deficiencies so evident in the last movement. I don't doubt that Paderewski's technique was once superior to this recording since he was "old and frail" by the time this recording was made(according to Dubal's The Art of the Piano).

So, for me, raving about this performance is kind of like raving about a dinner where one dish was excellent but the rest of the food was mediocre or burnt.

Numerian: Interesting historical perspective! I've never come across anything like it. I can't say that it immediately strikes me as correct ....but certainly it 'works.' If you feel like saying, I'm curious about whether you've seen or heard it discussed, or whether you mostly just came up with it.

It reminds me of my notion (which I'm not sure I came up with -- probably not) that the rise of atonal and "modern" music is related to the splitting of the atom, the development of the bomb, and the idea of everything just being blown up. BTW it seems composers tend not to be fond of the theory.

I don't remember the exact quote or who even said it, but I think Paderewski (or Horowitz) said, when I don't practice for one day I know it. When I don't practice for two days my audience knows it and when I don't practice for three days everybody knows it. Sounds like he was a couple of weeks late on that recording.

If so, then maybe more people should practice less!

I came up with it as part of a series of lecture/recitals I do. I think the analysis holds up, especially if you look at the prevalence of sentimentality throughout Victorian society.

We can date atonalism and the dodecaphonic system to 1921, a few years after Einstein published the General Theory of Relativity. It took many years for General Relativity to become established in the public's mind, and with it the discovery of the Hubble constant which postulated an ever-expanding universe. The identification of innumerable galaxies and the true immensity of the universe had an effect somewhat similar to Copernicus's arguments in favor of a heliocentric solar system. It made mankind seem highly insignificant. I don't think it is an accident that Western music shed its tonal foundations at the same time Western science was destroying the average person's sense of where they fit in the world.

The atomic bombs sealed the deal. By this time even Aaron Copland had succumbed to atonalism. Leonard Bernstein labeled his Second Symphony "The Age of Anxiety", after the W.H. Auden poem. Clearly the atomic age was influencing composers as well as many other artists.

My own theory on why atonalism was destined to fail rests on the simple assumption that humans have two ways to create music by themselves: singing, and dancing. When you remove the vocal line from music and then remove rhythm, you take away any connection to the listener. Atonalism may have some cerebrally intriguing aspects that might appeal to some people, but everyone else needs the emotional connection that comes through melody and rhythm.

I'm late joining this discussion and I admit I haven't read all the posts. I enjoyed the first and second movements. I found his expression and rubato appropriate and moving. If these movements illustrate the beauty of his playing when he was his prime, I can understand why he was admired so much. Unfortunately, at the time of the recording, Paderewski just didn't have the chops for the 3rd movement. It's faltering and uneven.

Numerian, I loved the "Home Sweet Home" story.

If you lose the rythmic flow..it starts to sound like someone's "typing" on the piano
and becomes boring to listen to...

I don't think I agree with all of this; leaving aside Liszt's experiments with atonality in the 1880's, it seems like you and Mark are one war too late here. WWI, with its new mechanized horrors, and the wiping out of almost an entire generation, destroyed the very foundations of European culture, and certainly did far more than Relativity (which no-one really understood anyway) when it came to "destroying the average person's sense (or at least, the average European's sense) of where they fit in the world". Dissonance, alienation and incomprehensibility seem like the natural artistic reaction to such a catastrophic event.

I would agree that the atomic bomb sealed the deal, but "modern" music was well enough established by the time of WWII, so that the scientists at Los Alamos literally wore out their copy of Varese's "Ionisation" while working on the bomb.

You have some great ideas here, Numerian, and I'd be interested in attending one of your lectures.

But I disagree with your analysis of atonalism, because I think the best atonal music (say for example Schoenberg's op.11, or Berg's Lyric Suite) is deeply emotional and romantic. Not just "cerebrally intriguing".

In fact, if you listen to late Mahler, and then to Schoenberg's first three string quartets, you see, in this progression of four pieces, that S.'s pure atonalism was just the next logical step in the direction of pure yearning.

What begins with a trickle when Mozart pushes a "wrong" chromatic note, and becomes a stream with more chromatic dissonances in Chopin and Liszt, and becomes a flood with, say, the last movement of Mahler's 9th, simply became a full deluge when Schoenberg removed the final tonal protections. But I find that it's the same music at heart.

-Jason

Paderewski's recording is certainly worth listening to. The 3rd movement is a wreck, but there are moments of greatness and I can hear masterful voicing. The fact that we're willing to trash it says more about how we've become accustom to "note perfect" performances each and everytime we hear someone play. It's gotton to the point where at times it's hard to distinguish one player from another.

For Daro:

You make a perfectly valid argument. Many more people were impacted by the devastation of WW I than by Einstein's discoveries. I think the scientific discoveries were part of the picture. They constituted yet another unsettling piece of reality to trouble an already-shocked population. By the time we get to the end of WW II, the reality of the atomic bomb puts a whole new dimension to the word "unsettling".

For Jason:

I can see your point about the progression from creeping chromaticism to full-out atonalism. I also should acknowledge the validity of Schoenberg's arguments (made in 1947) regarding the radical contributions of Brahms. My "thesis", as it were, is that after that point, atonalism fails to find a long-term, concert going audience. I don't see it programmed much anymore, compared to the 1960s and 1970s. Many modern composers are working fully within the tonal structure. Atonalism seems to me to be an interesting side trip in musical history, but ultimately a dead end.

My own personal experience is that the music makes me nervous and edgy in a concert setting. To the extent you feel noble or pleasurable emotions from the music, I do envy you. I wish it summoned up these feelings for me; instead I get anxiety. By the way, this sort of music is eminently suited as background music for movies, so it clearly has emotional power. It just seems to be useful when the scene is calling for tension - it is not used as a background for love scenes, for example.

I'm talking here about classic twelve-tone, dodecaphonic music. Contributions from other modern composers like Luciano Berio I don't think are normally described as based on the twelve-tone system, so I'm leaving them out of the discussion.

+1!

Numerian: Since it looks like we have enough here for a motion plus a second and I doubt there would be any dissent, I hope you won't be afraid to let us know when you're giving any such lectures. Even if nobody from the site is able to attend (or just one person, as was the case for my recital in the spring ) -- I think we like to see when our people are doing stuff like this, and you never know, some of us may be able to come.

I agree with what you said about the ultimate lack of staying power for atonal music:


Unless basic human nature somehow changes, which is sort of unlikely I think this has to hold true.


I would bet that you and Numerian aren't far apart at all. I think it's mostly where we want to draw the line on what we're calling atonal with regard to this.

As luck would have it I happen to know Schoenberg's 1st string quartet very well -- I did a paper on it in school, sort of a fine-toothed-comb analysis. (I'd lay odds that I'm the only one here who did a paper on Schoenberg's 1st string quartet! And I'd love to hear from anyone, anywhere in the world who also did.)
It was an extra-interesting exercise because I didn't have a copy of the score. I had to make do with what I could gather from listening over and over.

While I agree with what Numerian said, I wouldn't include that quartet of Schoenberg in it. But I would absolutely apply his idea to the 'further-out' atonal music.


(edit) Just saw Numerian's next post. Looks like he said basically the same.

I agree-- Schoenberg's first quartet is definitely not atonal. My point was that there is a progression-- from Mahler's 9th, to Schoenberg's first quartet, to the second, to the third. The Mahler's completely-ish tonal; the Schoenberg 1st is what I'd call "locally tonal" (any given 30 seconds sounds tonal, but the global tonal picture is volatile); the 2nd quartet is further along the line, and the 3rd is purely atonal. If you listen to them as members of this kind of progression, you can hear the truly atonal stuff as being "like" the tonal first quartet, just pushed that much farther.

That said, I agree with Numerian's vision of atonal music as being basically a dead-end. I've made room in my heart for some of it-- Schoenberg's op.11 and 25, his opera Moses und Aron, about half of Webern, a lot of Berg-- but I don't know if I have room for that much more.
-J

Just because music has no tonal centre does not mean it has no melody and rhythm.

Sure -- and in the post where Numerian first talked about this, I assume he said "atonal" in a rough way, without meaning it to cover everything that might be called atonal. Maybe we wouldn't all draw the line in the same place, and actually I think there's a gray area where we wouldn't be sure what we'd say -- but I think most of us would agree on the basic idea that beyond some point on the atonal spectrum, the fate will be what Numerian said.

I love atonal music for the flute!

I think that's an oversimplification and somewhat inaccurate. For one thing, I don't think that many composers are really working "fully within the tonal structure". Most seem quite eclectic, and take whatever they can use from whatever idiom they want. Many do reference tonality, but aren't using the functional tonality of the past, which is what I am assuming you mean by "the tonal structure".

As far as 12-tone serialism (and that seems to be what you mean by "atonalism") being a dead end, so is every other art music idiom that I can think of. Nobody composes in Bach's idiom any more, so obviously, it was a dead end. Ditto Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov, Elgar, Sibelius, Ravel, etc., etc. etc. So saying 12-tone serialism is a dead end isn't really very meaningful, AFAIAC.

Good that you added the AFAIAC.

This shows how definitions and lines can be drawn in different places; to a large extent this is about whether we want to be "lumpers or splitters" on this, and what kind of lumping we do.

I think it's safe to say that most of us by far (anyone stop me if I'm wrong) wouldn't divide Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov, Elgar, Sibelius, and Ravel from one another in the way that you're doing. I certainly consider all of them to be within a broadly-drawn category -- and even together with some Schoenberg, as has been said by others. In the context of the subject here, we see a unity among those -- admittedly a broad unity -- and a distinction of the entire group from much or most atonal music, rather than each of these composers being its own "idiom."

Anyone please stop me if I'm wrong.

I think the question isn't whether anyone composes in that style anymore, but, rather, whether that style led anywhere. Was it a road that takes us to the next thing, or is it a dead-end?

No one composes in Mozart's style anymore, but it was a style which connected with the masses, and which led to Beethoven, and many rich flavors of Classicism and Romanticism that also connected with people. When Schoenberg took his brave leap into the unknown in 1909, one could wonder at the time whether in 50 years this would also lead to great important developments in popular classical music. Would we all be singing in twelve-tone once we got used to it, as he famously predicted? The answer turned out to be no. You can argue (and I'm over-simplifying here, obviously; it would take a book to argue it) that, in this sense, pure atonality was a dead-end. Perhaps, I hate to say it, it's partially responsible for the woefully reduced state contemporary "classical" music holds in so many people's minds.

And I'm speaking as someone who loves many atonal pieces, and especially loves atonality in a larger tonal context (as in Shostakovitch's 12th string quartet).

Anyway, I have strong feelings about the wonderful pieces, but less strong beliefs about these more general statements. To be honest, it's all very complicated to me, and I'm not completely sure what I think.

-Jason

BTW, wr, I'm with you totally on this:

Well, Bach's style didn't lead anywhere at the time - he was the end of the line. Right after his lifetime, his music was considered to be intellectual and dry as dust, and basically of interest only to scholars or other musicians (which, amusingly, is not unlike how many people view serialism today).



Popular classical music? What's that?

At any rate, I think Schoenberg's influence is all over the place in contemporary music, regardless of whether composers write in a strict 12-tone idiom or not. Even while he was still around, composers were adapting his method to their own ends, without necessarily aping his idiom. For just one example, Frank Martin is said to have taken the 12-tone method and turned it into something of his own. Certainly Martin's music sounds more or less "tonal", but it is highly chromatic, too.



I don't agree. IMO, it doesn't seem any more a dead-end than anything else, really. I think it has just been absorbed into the ongoing development of classical music, just like the idioms of all the other composers I mentioned. Which means, just like everything else, you won't find it in its "pure" form this far down the line. Even someone as close to tonal writing as John Adams has been influenced by Schoenberg (several of his pieces specifically reference Schoenberg), even while he protests the idiom.

I think the issue of whether hard-core serial music is responsible for some of the general negative attitude about contemporary classical music is a very interesting one. I used to think it was, but my perspective about that has changed somewhat in the last ten years or so (in part because that style seems much less forbidding to my own ears - I've learned how to listen to most of it).

I think what really turned a lot of music lovers off wasn't the music as much as the belligerent and extremely arrogant attitude of some of the composers of that music. And it all got weirdly tangled up with Cold War politics, so that high modernism ended up representing the West and tonal music ended up representing the Soviets and communism.

Yes, that music can be difficult to listen to until you get used to it, but that kind of difficulty is typical of much of the arts in the 20th century, I think. It's not as if everyone instantly knew how to look at Abstract Expressionism or conceptual art right off the bat, either. Are concert-goers somehow supposed to be exempt from dealing with art they may not immediately understand? If so, why?

I have to agree with Jason. Whether Schoenberg intended this or not, his 12-tone system was viewed as overthrowing traditional Western classical music. It was all boiled down to atonality vs. tonality by his critics. As others have pointed out here, Schoenberg got to his system by building on those before him, including Mahler. But once he go there, where could he go? We can say that the fugue is a dead end, but it was used by composers well after Bach, and it is listened to with enjoyment by millions today. 12-tone serialism is a much deader end, because it never found broad audience acceptance. It was supposed to overthrow Western music, but it didn't. The types of modern music I am hearing programmed at my local symphony are not tonal in the Mahler sense, but they have a key signature, chord modulation that people are familiar with, melodies now and then, and persistent rhythms that don't disappear on you bar by bar. Their modernism is more in the clever way they use new instruments and electronics. Audiences respond well to this music. Composers are brought back with additional compositions (one each year is kept on as a resident composer), and some pieces become staples (like the Carl Vine sonata for piano). There is a vitality here that we never quite got to with atonalism.

Getting back to performance...





I am away from my home computer for a time, and not able to listen to music over the internet ( Oh, HORRORS! ) so I haven't been able to listen to the links, above, but I have listened to other early recordings of established performers who were on the cusp. Anyway..

...These two posts made me think. It was wr's use of the word "sensibility," followed by Numerian's post that illustrates "sensibility," that made the wheels start to turn.

I think "the old melodrama," as Numerian puts it, could be alternatively described as the old stage-craft practice of "over-enunciating in order to be understood," and was accepted by audiences as "the way things are done." Perhaps?

Contrast the olden days of live performance, (pre-electricity)--an ultimately transient localized experience for all involved--with "live" performance now-a-days, which is captured in high-def to be repeated to the world.

So many things have changed since the advent of recording technology--sensibilities and sensitivities.

Numerian, count me as one that would like to attend a lecture!

Schoenberg definitely thought his 12-tone method was going save Western music (which is rather different than overthrowing it). People who didn't like it characterized it as an "overthrow", but I can't think of a good reason to subscribe to that description, since it is simply wrong. The break-down of common practice was well on its way well before Schoenberg came up with his method. Arguably, Debussy did more to hasten the end of tonality than Schoenberg, and he did it earlier (and Debussy's compatriot, Abel Decaux, wrote his atonal Clair de Lune before Schoenberg arrived at his atonal music).

And I still think it is odd to characterize it as being a dead-end, simply because it, like many other idioms and ways of composing, has had some composers that use it for a while and then it becomes absorbed into whatever comes next. I also think you are underestimating the degree to which composers have absorbed some of the concepts and/or resulting sounds of 12-tone serialism.

What is the point about audience acceptance supposed to be? It's not as if musical quality and audience acceptance are one and the same. And too, it's not as if every audience hates all 12-tone music (or that every audience loves all tonal music, for that matter). I've heard plenty of enthusiastic responses to such pieces as the Berg violin concerto or music by Boulez. I do think that some of it may require some listening practice for some people (it definitely has for me), and that means that the audience for it will probably have a larger proportion of music connoisseurs who are willing to put in the effort, relative to more casual listeners.

At any rate, I don't think there ever was a great deal of strict 12-tone music being programmed at orchestral subscription concerts. And some of the modern music that people seemed to love to hate was not in that idiom (for example, Elliott Carter's music is not).

Which reminds me, "atonal" is not a synonym for 12-tone serialism. There is a great deal of atonal music that isn't dodecaphonic.

That's a good point. The French also refer to "serialism" when they talk about Schoenberg's music.

I don't hold strictly to the view that mass public acceptance of a musical genre is the definition of success or failure. Plenty of composers popular in their time have fallen by the wayside. Also, it is rather difficult to come across some unknown composer from the past who has been overlooked as a great composer on the level of Beethoven and Brahms. Maybe we can say that the combination of public acceptance, the interest of performers in programming a particular composer, the view of critics and academic scholars, and the willingness of publishers to keep printing scores from this composer, ultimately defines whether someone achieves lasting greatness. We have to emphasize "over time" to include people like Mahler and Schubert who didn't achieve real fame until after their death.

There is a good point here about the need for performers to project to an auditorium before the days of amplification. This isn't germane to concert pianists, other than to say that until Steinway invented his concert grand piano it was difficult for a grand piano to reach 2,000 or more people in an auditorium. From Beethoven to Liszt, the biographies of pianists tell about their constant search for a bigger, stronger, and louder piano.

My lecture recitals are done for local music groups here in Chicago. I only mentioned them because I have a lot of fun researching the composer and learning about how their lives and the times they live in influenced their music. So far I've done Mendelssohn, Brahms, Gottschalk, Debussy, and MacDowell (for the local MacDowell Society). Of these, Mendelssohn elicits the most profound reaction. Even knowledgable musicians are simply unaware of what Richard Wagner did to him after Mendelssohn died, and how the Nazis further destroyed his reputation.

But that's not the only reason; in fact it wasn't even the main reason that Numerian characterized it that way (and others of us agreed):


I think that's a superb basic way of seeing it -- and IMO it's a mistake to ignore this idea in arguing the other side.

The reason I think the idea is so important is that it reflects (IMO) the basic human derivation and drive for music -- and that I think any musical mode that doesn't tap importantly into those fundamental things is unlikely to have staying power.

I'm sure music and dance went hand in hand during the very beginning stages (and it is still prevalent to this day). So in the evolutionary beginnings of music, dance most certainly played a huge role. Then again, what is evolution for? So I don't agree with the dead-end characterization, you never know. All this is legitimate part of evolution and these evidently more intellectually complex forms of compositions will have a role to play in the evolution of music over the next several decades (or centuries).

You're a scientist, right?

How quickly does evolution occur -- I mean, evolution of something like that? How long does it take for our 'hard wiring' to change significantly?

I think that for something like that to evolve into something else, we're talking thousands of years -- far longer than anything at hand.

Earlier in the thread I pointed out that just because music is atonal, having no tonal centre, does not mean it has no vocal line and no rhythm. When you say this, you are not referring to atonal music, but to a very small subset of atonal music. It's even a very small subset of dodecaphonic music. I'm listening to a recording of Webern songs at the moment, sung by Christiane Oelze. They are gloriously lyrical, even the 12-tone ones. And "no rhythm"? Really?

Yes, although I wouldn't agree it's a 'very small' subset. When Numerian first talked about this on here, he used the word "atonal" as sort of a general hook without meaning it globally, and as I said, we all might draw the line for what we're talking about in somewhat different places.

If the question is, will some aspects of atonal music have staying power, I'd certainly say yes.

Well, I'm trying to think of a piece which has no vocal line, and no rhythm, and I'm having trouble.

I answered the prior post too simply. IMO it's not just whether there's 'any' rhythm or line -- first of all because we could disagree on what's rhythm or a line (I think we would!), plus that some of us would say there needs to be a certain kind or 'amount' of it. However we slice it, it comes down to drawing the lines in different places.

I think it's way more than a small subset; I understand that you don't. And BTW to me, much or most Webern doesn't have enough of the relevant kinds of 'rhythm' or 'line' to fall within what we're talking about.

I think exactly what we're talking about has become a little fuzzy. Numerian said this:If I follow your drift, you would conclude that most of Webern has "failed", and has no "connection to the listener". I admit that the audience for Webern is considerably smaller than that for many other composers, but I don't think that means he has failed - and he certainly connects with this listener. I accept I'm in a minority, but I'm also in a minority just liking classical music in general, aren't I.

But since I disagree, what's your point? I know that isn't what you guys think.



Lovely theory, but I don't see any reason to believe in it. People have an esthetic, musical response to all kinds of sounds other than song and dance. For example, there has been quite a bit of music written in imitation of storms, because the sounds of storms can excite the musical imagination. But the sounds of storms have nothing to do with song or dance, IMO.

Numerian, can you tell us what kind of piano(s) Paderewski likely would have played for audiences, and, in general, in what kind of venue? Also, when did Steinway bring the "concert" grand to the stage?

I had occasion last week to play a vintage Haddorff grand, a vintage Cable grand, and a vintage Schiller console, and I was struck with the unique tone of these old pianos. They ring in a way that present-day pianos do not. Of all of these, the volume of the Schiller console (1920s era) was remarkable.

This was a point that I was not sure how to make in my first post--that instruments and their tunings have changed, too, over the years, from the time Paderewski performed in his heyday, to the time he would have made the recording in the OP, and ultimately, in contrast, (for the sake of this discussion), to the kinds of sounds we are used to hearing from concerts and recordings in the present day.

I think the idea of "sensibilities" is worth exploring in a big way and is critical to understanding the difference between the way performances were shaped and executed then and now. But the state of the art of acoustics (meaning the acoustics a performer would find in any given venue of the time) and the development of the instrument figure importantly into the question, too.

Paderewski played Steinways on stage.

You must understand that human evolution also depends on how quickly the environment changes. When we talk of evolution today, technology is very much part of it. So the changes that are happening as we speak very likely happen at a much faster rate than 1000 years earlier. Adaptively advantageous behavior and the traits/skills that enable them are what drive evolution, which is why technology is very much part of current evolution (just to clarify because I'm sure you will have a question about that).

Secondly, when I speak of evolution of music (which is different from human evolution but not totally independent), what makes you think it takes thousands of years to exhibit any noticeable change? How long did it take to move from Baroque to Romantic (via the classical era)? We are absolutely talking within the time scales of these phenomena.

You're not a scientist, right?

The point was that the "simply because" that you stated wasn't a correct representation of what we had said. Your opinion is fine, but what you expressed in the noted respect was a "straw man" thing: you were arguing against something other than what we had said.

Wrong!


But seriously folks.... ....well said about technological change and evolution -- but I don't agree that it applies to the kind of thing we're talking about here.

You asked me about the time scale of evolutionary change and that bit about the rate at which technology has been advancing and its very important (potential) effect on evolution is absolutely pertinent to my point that human beings might be changing at a faster pace than you would imagine from what you know of evolution thousands of years earlier.

The second bit about music evolution was more to the point about time scale of changes happening in music. You need to come up with something better than just "it does not apply here".

I think the nature of our visceral connection to music is a deep and fundamental thing of a sort that is not subject to accelerated evolution in the way that you're saying, regardless of technological change.

It's not something I can explain or persuade any better than what I've said, since it's about our individual concepts of how deep and fundamental this thing is. And in fact, as we've seen on here, not everyone necessarily even agrees that this is a deep or fundamental thing, or even that it exists as I've stated (and as I think Numerian implied). I think it does, and that it is ....and that such things are fairly immutable in a species, unless it gets converted into something globally different -- which isn't within what you're talking about.

Huh? I wasn't trying to restate what you had said, nor was I directly arguing against it. What I was doing was stating a reason of my own for not buying into the dead-end characterization.

I had to read that twice, but now that I've done it, I disagree completely. It does not have to do with our differences in how "deep" or "fundamental" we think "rhythmic" aspects of music are (I put rhythm in quotes because you talked about it in the sense of dance-able rhythm. I'm sure you know that contemporary music has RICH rhythmic structure). It has to do with what I understand of evolution and what you do (hint: nothing is "immutable" theoretically and the fact that you don't see atonal music "globally" right now isn't proof that its headed to a dead end). I don't expect to have a great discussion on that topic on a piano forum anyway, so we are probably better off letting that one go.

Happy new year to you! I do hope to meet you in person some day, maybe at an amateur competition 5 years from now (which is when I'll be over 30 ;)). I'm quite certain that we will get along very well.

Good way to resolve this. And +1.

BTW, y'know you don't have to be 30 for some of them....

Really? I thought most of them required a minimum age of 30. Could you please point me to a couple (decent ones) that don't have this requirement?

I do too, but it's not so easy to talk about.

Paderewski was born in 1860, and was already in his early maturity while the Romantic era was still going strong. But it was no longer revolutionary, and there were signs, especially in the visual arts, that things were about to change in a big way.

But still, he was in a world where a Romantic idealization of the personal, and especially of emotional reactions to The Big Themes, was prevalent. This influenced the performance of music, of course, and a kind of highly emotive and poetic style of playing seems to have been prized by many, with the primary goal being a deeply or unusually affecting experience, regardless of what the actual notes on the page might be. In a way, I think you could say that many classical music lovers and performers saw the performance of classical compositions as almost a kind of seance, or a magical thing (or at least they were hoping for that kind of extraordinary experience, and, often enough, got it).

When I listen to his playing, even though made late, after the sensibilities of most people had already changed, I can hear something of that older world, where the idea of classical music was only loosely based on the score, and the main idea was to give the listener a musical experience that was intense and unique to the particular performer.

Very well written, wr. I think the emotive style of concert performance was best exemplified by Liszt. We think of him almost entirely as a super-human virtuoso who dazzled crowds with technical talents never heard before. This he was. But the written record shows that far more than this, his concerts were exhilirating yet draining emotional experiences. This too no one had ever heard before. He somehow projected the emotional power of the music by the force of his playing and his personality into the souls of each audience member. It already helped that the crowd was in a frenzy of anticipation even before he stepped on the stage, and that in a pre-recording era, people had no idea what to expect if they had never seen or heard him before. It is wrenching to read the letters of people who heard him play and tell about how they were in a cloud for days afterwards. Even sober professionals like Clara Schumann fell under his spell and many despaired of ever playing again since they could not create this experience. The description of a seance is very apt.

This is why audiences loved someone like Anton Rubinstein, who came several decades after Liszt. He tore through his performances with little attention to wrong notes, as long as the power and emotional context was conveyed.

From the section on Paderewski in Dubal's The Art of the Piano:

"..Paderewski's looks contributed greatly to his aura...Never had there been a more glorious stage presence."

"There was a beauty of line as well as color and atmosphere...a quality of tone...as to make of his playing something never till then quite divined."

"Paderewski lived in an age when indiviuality wa prized; it was also an era of self indulgence, when the performer was king. Most audiences were more concerned with personality than with great music...It was easy for an artist to stop listenng to himself when the majority of the audience wanted the shallow, cheap thrill and charm at any cost. At his worst Padereski was almost as self indulgent as de Pachman, and his colleagues were often scathing in their comments. "Padereski," a fellow pianist said."did everything well except play the piano.""

"After 1910 his art painfuly declined; he became stylistically artificial and insular. His interpretations were often marred by mannerisms, and by one in particular of not playing the hands together. However, many still heard the poetry that was always somewhere apparent."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ZxnObmcdU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNlBp9TM2Pc&feature=related

Let me comment, pianoloverus, on the Revolutionary Etude recording you kindly included in your post.

First, the performance itself. Paderewski has trouble with his right hand, of all things, in this etude. He can't make the jumps with accuracy, or maybe he doesn't care about hitting the right notes as long as he gets the ff sound he is looking for. His left hand is taken somewhat slower than usual, but he does something quite interesting with the sixteenth note runs. He takes them in rigid tempo, with a slight emphasis on every fourth note. This is not how people play this etude these days. I found it more and more compelling as I listened to his recording. The music is not rushing along in a tempest, but it is propelling you forward nonetheless in a fascinating way. He shows you do not have to take this etude at super speed to make it work. I assume he is quite old at the time of this recording (it does not sound like a piano roll, which would have been remastered).

Second, the comments from a few of the YouTube visitors. "Sloppy as heck" was all one person could say. "Unacceptably messy," says another. This mirrors the sort of discussion we are having about him here on the PianoWorld Forum. Our modern instinct is to react with dismay at the mistakes. Even an amateur would be embarrassed to post such a recording. We are all about perfection, and insuring that anything that appears before the public is as note perfect as possible. We sometimes miss the forest for the trees because of this.

Third, the comments from the person who posted this to YouTube, as well as the comments from Ignaz Friedman who takes up the second half of the recording in a tribute to his fellow Pole. Here we find out more about why Paderewski performed and recorded in his old age, when his technique was gone. He ran out of money, and needed more of it. But it was not money for himself. Paderewski earned $7 million at the top of his career. He could have built a palace and retired with that amount of money back then. Instead he gave it all away to the cause of Poland's independence. He then served as Poland's first Prime Minister. When he retired from politics, an old man by then, he returned to performing to raise even more money for charities. His list of charitable contributions in the 1920s and 1930s is incredible, but as an example, at the worst of the Depression in 1932 he put on a recital in Madison Square Garden for 16,000 people and raised $50,000 for unemployed musicians. He paid for his own ticket for his own recital. He raised money for Jewish refugees, for unemployed workers in London, for American war veterans. Friedman points out he did all this at the expense of his composing. He could have been a great composer if he worked at it. There was a nobility of spirit to Paderewski that we don't see today (though some come close, such as Barenboim's efforts to establish an Arab-Israeli orchestra). Maybe he didn't appreciate the longevity of a recording, but he traded away his reputation as a pianist by recording marred performances, just because they could raise money to help people in desperate need.

I find the man absolutely inspiring, and when we talk about great pianists of the past, he deserves a place in that discussion. There is more to an artist's career than the recordings they leave behind.

As another example of why we shouldn't rush to judgment:

Here is a 1928 Duo-Art piano roll recording on a Chickering grand of two Chopin etudes by a young pianist just arrived in America and trying to establish his reputation. The recordings are note perfect, so they have that going for them, and I find them satisfying overall, but it is possible in the first etude (10/6) to ask, What's the Tempo? The pianist is all over the place, speeding up and slowing down, and even in the second etude 25/12 (the Ocean etude), he slows down dramatically in two sections. In the first etude the pianist uses a slight breaking of hands in order to accent the tenderness of the melody at key moments. I suppose this could be forgiven in the 1920s. The performance overall could be criticized as highly self-indulgent playing. Even Paderewski in his dotage could play the Revolutionary Etude in a recognizable tempo.

The pianist is identified as a young Russian emigre, V. Horowitz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-OPTYpYuS8&feature=related

I think there is a difference between a great humanitarian and a great pianist. Most would agree P was the former, but I'm not at all convinced he was the latter.

Also, I think there are a lot of degrees between being all about perfection and tons of wrong notes. For some being all about perfection would be phrased more like thinking a world class pianist should have the technique to play the correct notes most of the time. I cannot think of any pianist whose recordings seem to have as much technical failings as these by Paderewski. I do think that earlier in his career P must have played with a better technique and Dubal indicates that is the case.

Thank you wr, Numerian, pianoloverus. That was interesting!

wr, I agree that "sensibility" is not easy to talk about because it is not easy to define. And then, if one can manage a satisfactory definition, one has to qualify every point...

BDB, regarding the development of the instrument, I did the gruelling work of finding a paragraph on the Steinway website that said that Steinway earned a patent for the "concert grand" in 1875. I wonder how long it took to populate stages with them after that? I bet there's a book out there somewhere...

I not sure that recording, if it represents accurately the way Horowitz played the first etude, is representative of the way he played most of the time even early in his career. I know on a Horowitz recording(The Early Years?)the rhythm throughout is very steady and extremely modern in concept. I have also listened to quite a few historical Youtube recordings by other pianists and few take the rhythmic liberties shown in some of the P recordings.

Paris: 18
Colorado: 21
Chopin/Warsaw: I think 25

Also, there are some competitions I'm not familiar with (Russia, London, I think there's one in Vienna) that might have lower age limits too -- I just don't know about them.

Awesome, thanks.

That's true. And it is interesting, too, to think about what our impressions of various other famous pianists would be if we only had recordings made from the latter part of their lives, and they were all unedited. I dare say that the general opinion of pianists as diverse as Rubinstein, Horowitz, Ashkenazy, and de Larrocha would be quite different than it is if all we had were raw recordings made late in their careers.

But regardless, I can still hear some of Paderewski's striking musical imagination and genius in the recordings he did leave. I remember hearing his recording of Chopin's op. 26, no. 2 polonaise many years ago and thinking "Oh, so THAT is what the fuss was all about." The poetic intensity and musical authority of it just bowled me over.

The "problem" with Duo-Art (and Ampico) piano rolls is that the speed of reproduction can be changed by considerable amounts, both faster and slower. I don't recall, since it's been several years since I've handled such equipment, if some of the rolls have indicated on them the actual tempo of the performance when it was recorded. Otherwise, one sets the tempo that best suits the listener which may not at all have been that of the performance.

Regards,

.....but presumably the presence of tempo changes is retained, no matter what -- unless the playback speed isn't constant.

That's a really good question. From what I have read, the three most famous brands of piano roll (Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art, and Ampico) all indicated the recording/playback speed at the beginning of each roll. Welte-Mignon also manufactured test rolls that included a series of notes played exactly a second apart from each other, and some notes and chords played at a wide variety of dynamic levels, for engineers to be sure that the playback instrument was set up correctly and optimally. These test rolls were used when recording the famous Mahler Plays Mahler CD, so we can be sure that the composer really did record Ging heut' morgens übers Feld in under 3 minutes! I don't know if the other manufacturers did the same or not. With a couple of landmark CDs, Gershwin's super-fast Duo-Art recording of Rhapsody in Blue, and Rachmaninoff's Ampico recordings that usually closely match the timings of his electric recordings, the reproducing pianos were adjusted and tested by technicians of impressive credentials. However, where we know little to nothing about the circumstances under which piano roll recordings were played back and recorded, sometimes decades ago, I think it's worth wondering whether the overall tempo is accurate.

@Mark_C: I'd like to think that internal tempo differences would always be faithful, but apparently there was some magical doo-hickey inside these machines that compensated for the changing diameter of the roll of paper over time so that the recording didn't gradually speed up, and I guess if the doo-hickey isn't adjusted correctly before playback, that could be a problem?

Sure. But I would guess (guess) that we could pretty much tell if it's only that, or what the player was really doing -- provided it's someone real good (rather than someone who might just have been playing sort of randomly), because even if they did weird stuff, it would usually make some sense.

I would think there might be a spot or two where we wouldn't be that sure, but if it's a bunch of places, that we'd feel we pretty much knew if these changes were real or not.

Something that would compromise our ability to know, besides not being able to judge for sure what the player might have plausibly done, is that the doing of such rhythmic things is somewhat dependent on the exact nature of the piano -- things like tone, sustaining power, balance among the registers, which absolutely aren't retained for the recording (even if it were the same piano!); and on the basic tempo of the playing, which isn't necessarily being retained.

But I'd still bet a quarter that I could tell.

P.S. I got curious enough to go and listen to those etudes played by Horowitz, especially to see if the tempo stuff seemed to be 'real' or an artifact of the playback.


I would bet my bippy that the tempo shifts (which BTW wouldn't have struck me as such) are authentic -- nothing to do with inconstant playback speed.

BTW, Numerian: I think the breaking-of-the-hands is something that Horowitz continued doing throughout his career. For sure he did it at least intermittently thereafter, and I think a lot of the time. He did it in his "historic return" concert (1965); for example, his extraordinary Chopin C# minor mazurka (30/4) from that concert has lots and lots of it.


While I'm sure it can happen that tempo shifts are due to the technological thing that was mentioned, I would bet two bippies and five strings of poloponies that the tempo stuff we're hearing in this is pure authentic Horowitz. Take it to the bank.

There are so many, many ways we can tell this.

-- It fits totally with what we know of Horowitz's style. (And BTW, as with the above thing, I don't find this particularly different from what he did later on; it's not just a thing of youth or that decade or whatever. Sure, there were some stretches of time where he didn't do such stuff as much -- but also stretches where he did.)

-- The tempo shifts come at places that are completely logical -- places that are absolutely where someone with such a tendency might well do it. (Can say more about this if anyone wants me to.)

-- The tempo shifts are done together with other things to make it "work." This wouldn't occur if they were random artificial technological glitches.

I don't think the extreme rubato Horowitz uses in the Chopin Op.10 #6 is at all typical of many or even any of his recordings that I have heard, and I think I've heard most of them.

The occasional breaking of hands in Horowitz's playing of Chopin Op.33 #4 is also nothing like the breaking of hands(or arpeggiating the RH octave?)that Paderewski does in vitually every measure in the first movement of the Beethoven.

You misread it.


(Anyway I hope you realize I didn't intend any comparison to the Paderewski; it was only about early Horowitz vs. later Horowitz, as per what I was replying to in Numerian's post.)

Just for you, Mark:

Another 1928 recording, this time of Chopin's Barcarolle performed by Artur Rubinstein for HMV records. Rubinstein said the Barcarolle established his reputation in the 1920s as a first-rate concert artist. His conception is unique to him, and the muscularity of the performance astounded audiences, especially if they were used to the refined and delicate French school of playing Chopin (ala Cortot). Like Horowitz, he uses enormous tempo rubato, but in a more judicious way; it's like his tempo changes themselves are timed to give a rocking, barcarolle rhythm to the performance. It's really quite something, and this says nothing of the impulsive moments that give directness to his performance and which never overstep into brashness. The tone is typical Rubinstein - rounded, full, noble, always rich with color (he attributed this to having exceptionally fleshy fingertips and a fifth finger as thick as most people's thumbs). His only rival in this approach to Chopin at the time was Arthur Friedheim.

This will send you to the piano to play the Barcarolle again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5G_8JHbEck

Thanks, Num! (It's OK to say Num, right?)

I think I've heard that recording before; I know I've heard one from around then and it was at least similar. I do love this, as well as his later versions that I've heard.

He sure mixes it up here. On another thread we were talking about his performance of a Brahms Intermezzo. Some people thought it was unusual for him that he shifted the moods so much. I thought it was almost typical, and this performance is in line with that.

One of the challenges of this piece (one of the many) is which possible moods to be in, how to do them, and how to mix them if we choose to do so. And I think for many of us, it's particularly hard to be in touch with how well we're conveying what we think we are. I don't think I've known of any other piece where our ideas of what we're doing can be so far off from what's actually coming out.

I see no particular reason to buy into Dubal's point of view regarding Paderewski. Much of it is opinion pretending to be fact, a mode we are all familiar with here at PW (and this sentence is an example of it).

I just can't get any enjoyment out of it with such sound quality.

I just mistyped the Opus number. My comments about that performance still apply.


Numerian was using the performance of Op. 10 No.6 by Horowitz to say that other pianists played with the extreme rubato that Padereswki showed in the OP's post. My claim was that, based on the Horowitz recordings I have heard, the amount of rubato Horowitz used on that recording was not typical of most of his recordings and that the the amount of playing the LH before the RH in H's performance of the Chopin Mazurka was also much less compared to what Paderewski did on the first movement of the Beethoven.

Not at all regarding the thing I said about it.

The "breaking of the hands" in that mazurka -- particularly the more unusual thing of playing the right hand FIRST, which was a particular Horowitz thing -- for better or worse is hardly equaled by anyone from any period, ever.

I have no problem with your differing opinions. The main reason I ever comment on them is that you sometimes think you're saying something about what I've said but you really aren't.

It's true that H plays the right hand before the left in that Mazurka. So if I change my post to "breaking if the hands" as opposed to "playing LH before the right" then my comments apply. My main point being that the amount of breaking of the hands is much less than in the P video.