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Pogorelich:

I made the decision, early on, when I started finalizing this 13 year research project (two years ago) that I was not going to get bogged down in the Cartesian rationale associated with the Modern School of pianism. I would instead refer you to Dr. Kenneth Hamilton's book, "After The Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance."

It is an excellent primer on how we got from there to here. His first chapter is entitled "Great Tradition, Grand Manner, Golden Age," wherein he pretty much beats it to death in terms of what you call evolution.

However, the specific purpose of my discourse here is to expose as many people as I can to the manner in which the piano was played in the 19th century.

Just as any art teacher, or any drama teacher worth their salt exposes their students to as many styles and schools related to their art, so should every piano teacher do so, who wants to "Teach You Right."

Do I play Prokofiev the way I play Debussy? Of course, I do not. And, the same holds true for any other composer.

Is it my responsibility to let as many people know that Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, Debussy, and Ravel did not write or play in a Modern School block chord fashion? As a social activist philosopher, yes it is.

And, if I step on more than a few toes in the process, that is not my concern.

No one would dream of going to any art museum and giving the paintings of the great masters a fresh coat of paint; nor would anyone get up onstage and perform Shakespeare in rap artist rhyme.

The fine art of classical music pianism is absolutely no different. Every piece of art, regardless of its genre or medium, has a specific signature/style indigenous to its original creation.

I think we are aware of the expressive vocabulary of the old masters, however I think your basic concept is wrong; you've simply interpreted it wrong. Also, you still haven't addressed the concept of music changing over time. The same music changing over time, not modern music being composed in a different way. I don't hear violinists sliding every second bar anymore, and that's kind of the equivalent of breaking everything. I think composers were pretty clear when they wanted something rolled... there is a notation for that. What you're talking about is a different, expressive tool which pianists employed. It's not done anymore because it's outdated and frankly doesn't sound good.

Regarding performance practices changing over time, here's a pretty relevant statement from 1948 from a fairly significant figure in 20th century music. I quoted him in a different thread as well:

“Today’s manner of performing classical music of the so-called ‘romantic’ type, suppressing all
emotional qualities and all unnotated changes of tempo and expression, derives from the style of playing
primitive dance music. This style came to Europe by way of America, where no old culture regulated
presentation, but where a certain frigidity of feeling reduced all musical expression. Thus almost
everywhere in Europe music is played in a stiff, inflexible metre - not in a tempo, i.e. according to a
yardstick of freely measured quantities. Astonishingly enough, almost all European conductors and
instrumentalists bowed to this dictate without resistance. All were suddenly afraid to be called romantic,
ashamed of being called sentimental...Why is music written at all? Is it not a romantic feeling which
makes you listen to it? Why do you play the piano when you could show the same skill on a typewriter?
(...) It must be admitted that in the period around 1900 many artists overdid themselves in exhibiting the
power of the emotion they were capable of feeling. (...) Nothing can be more wrong than both of these
extremes."


The man writing these words was the figure that pioneered first atonality and later 12-tone music, Arnold Schoenberg.


By the way - if there was a general trend moving away from some of these performance habits we've discussed, certainly not everyone followed this trend - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrsKGfJP_w

That's great -- and if you didn't make it appear you're trying to do way more than that, it would be just fine.

fnork:

Thank you for your inciteful comments and especially the Horszowski. It was just beautiful; the best I have ever heard that particular Nocturne played.

As far as how we got here, two things stick out in my mind. The first is that behind the scenes at the First International Chopin Competition in 1927, a young concert pianist named Rubinstein, who did not play rolled chords, saw to it that, from then on, no one would dare play this composer's music in this fashion.

Secondly, when he, Backhaus, Gieseking, Arrau, and Horowitz are out there recording/concertizing everything under the sun in the style of the new Modern School, and you have Harold Schonberg of the NY Times continually telling the whole world of their greatness, then that sends a very strong message.

Finally, (as with Horszowski), Marguerite Long, Adelina de Lara, and George Copeland, all of whom matriculated in Europe in the 1890's, all made recordings of Beethoven and Mozart played in the rolled chord fashion. They certainly could not have been the only three people taught to play this music that way.

Copeland learned it form Teresa Carreno, Long from Marmontel, and de Lara from Clara Schumann. Between the three of them, these great teachers taught thousands of students, who in turn taught tens of thousands more.

Yes, of course.. every music major has had to come across this quote at one point or another. And that's exactly what started happening in the 20th century, along with 20th century music being composed. It was the reaction to the romantic movement.

Are you saying that unless you roll chords everywhere, you will immediately sound like a typewriter; a soulless, dull endeavor to produce music? Because I disagree...

There are many things we can take from the old masters - particularly their wonderful sense of line, their incredible range of dynamics, the way they listened to everything. Why the rolled chords everywhere? Mind you, I don't think these people did it everywhere, like Mr. Podesta here seems to think.

Arrau studied with Krause, who studied with Liszt.

Backhaus studied with Francis Charles d'Albe who studied with Liszt.

Horowitz studied with Schnabel, who studied with Leschetizky who studied with Czerny.

Just like you said before, these people can be traced back to the composers. Well... as you also said, those three play in the "modern" fashion (whatever you think that is). Something doesn't quite work in your favour here.

Holy pedantry, Batman! What a sea of meticulous grammar and Unnecessary Capitalizations! Pogo has here the difficult task of storming a beach under fire of large, boring cannons. Here's the deal: the extent to which performance practice is well and truly important to the composer is written into the score. No amount of youtube links and gratuitous semicolons will change that. Vicissitudes of performance through the ages is something all performers should be mindful of, but this pronouncements from on high reek strongly of Not Being a Musician.

That's not quite how the fellow I quoted would have put it - he saw himself and his music as the natural continuation of what had been going on in western classical music until that time. Schoenberg for one would never have wished dull, metrically inflexible and lifeless performances of his own works. Webern, who so carefully gave performance hints and suggestions for a performer of his piano variations, would most certainly have been extremely surprised to see that this work of his (as well as others) often were being interpreted literally and without inflections or emotions.



Well no, I added that particular quote more as a commentary on general performance traditions changing. I don't roll chords all over the place and I don't recommend anyone to do it - but under the hands of someone like Rachmaninoff, it can become a powerful tool that any pianist should consider using according to his or her own taste.

I posted some notable Rachmaninoff performances in this regard, but I somehow missed this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nya05t-iDL0

This was recorded in 1940, by the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM-6B8_Jj-o

Here is the Brahms e- with Serkin and Rostropovich - Serkin studied composition with Schoenberg.

Nice link, fnork - I'm familiar with it. I LOVE how he plays it!
(I've played the piece)

What he does is break the bass note with the melody occasionally... but doesn't roll all those solid chords. Except when it's written in, near the end.

Fml...

Well, that is interesting. For what reason then did Leopold Mozart, CPE Bach, Czerny, Daniel Gottlob Turk and countless others write treatises on how we are supposed to interpret what is written into the score? Did Wolfgang's daddy, Johann's son, Beethoven's pupil and numerous others have nothing of interest to say on this topic? Do people who knew Brahms, the Schumann's, Saint-Saens, Chopin, Liszt etc etc - do the recordings of these people have nothing to say of interest regarding performing manners of the past, and possibly performance manners of said composers?

I'll take them in order:

1. Those people realized they weren't their son, father or teachers, and settled down on the cheaper real estate.

2. Nothing absolute.

3. Sure, but nothing from which one can or should extrapolate a rule or set of rules.

Yeah we apparently think the goal is to dress up in pink uniforms and dance around the instrument.

fnork:

Very well put, fnork. This is why I keep recommending Kenneth Hamilton's book, "After The Golden Age," as well as Neal Peres da Costa's Off The Record."

The titles of these two works are not by accident. "After the Golden Age" means what the piano sounded like before, and then how it got to where it is now.

"Off The Record" means just that. That is why the first chapter is entitled "Early Recordings: Their Value as Evidence." The OUP companion website has an extensive selection of recordings referencing this and the other chapters in the book.

Instead of spending countless hours pouring over treatises and journal articles, just get the two books and go to school. Hamilton spends fifteen pages with nine different cites on arpeggiation, and Peres da Costa's dedicates an eighty-eight page chapter to the subject.

Regarding Liszt's way of breaking chords, and quoting from Hamilton re: Claudio Arrau, "He (Martin Krause) would teach us several ways of breaking chords: to start slowly and then accelerate toward the highest note; or to make a crescendo to the hightest note; or to make a diminuendo; or to do it freely, with rubato. But always so broken chords would have a meaning coming from what went before."

But, the two things that Gieseking, Rubinstein, Arrau, and Backhaus all had in common were that they started concertizing in their teens or very early twenties, and they did not study with any teacher in adulthood. Martin Krause died when Arrau was fifteen, Rubinstein never had a lesson after the age of seventeen, Gieseking (Karl Leimer)started touring when he was twenty, and with the exception of a later brief coaching with d'Albert, Backhaus was on his own by the age of sixteen.

So, how did they learn, record, and play all of this great music? In that they all had phenomenal abilities in this area, they sight read it off the score. It explains a lot.

Yes and they had to use their own judgment. Is that so terrible?

Pogorelich:

No, of course not. However, you just get up and play your jury at any major music school or conservatory in the U.S. and see how fast you get downgraded if you "use your own judgment" and play arpeggiated chords. Neal Peres da Costa's pianoforte students get downgraded at the Sydney Conservatorium when they play that way in their juries.

Nevertheless, a special shout out to "fnork" for introducing me to Mieczyslaw Horszowski. I have been researching his life and his recordings, and the man was a great pianist.

He played the Beethoven 1st concerto when he was 8 years old in 1901, and he taught until the week before his death in 1993 at the age of 100! His first teacher was his mother, who was a student of Karol Mikuli (Chopin), and his next was Leschetizsky.

Go to Amazon and listen to some of the samples in his recordings. The man's repertoire, which is referenced on Wikipedia, was pages in length. He played everything (including a ton of Beethoven and Mozart), and he did it in the old, excuse me, the "original style."

I once again list "fnork's" link of him playing the Chopin E Flat Nocturne in recital, at a very advanced age. He just nails it. It is beautiful.

Thank you, thank you "fnork."

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

P.S. Oh, and by the way, the man taught at Curtis for years, with Richard Goode, Murray Periah, Steven de Groote, and Peter Serkin as some of his students.

I do play everything using my own judgment (including at adjudicated recitals), but my judgment doesn't tell me to arpeggiate every chord I see written.

It gets even better. Here is a link of "Horszowski in Japan," which is a portion of a live recital that he played at the age of 98!

He plays the Mozart Sonata K.332, which I have played for 40 years.

Does he asynchronize in the first movement? Yes, he does.

Does he very selectively arpeggiate in the slow movement? Yes, he does.

He turns a single note into a chord, just the way Carl Reinecke does in the video. (Horowitz used to do the same thing.)

Does he play the living daylights out of this piece? YES, HE DOES!

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBOKCAXmOA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grVHXLY5cM8

To each their own.

(I have to add that I did enjoy elements of Horszowski's too, he is a great great pianist)