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Is it appropriate to play this piece while wearing shorts? You decide.

Recorded at work over the weekend. There's still a way to go, but I feel like I'm making progress towards an interpretation with which I'm satisfied. The first public viewing since I played it last in 2006 is next Saturday, yay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZBKjr__8Y

Bravo!! Of course this is a very authoritative playing of this work.

I hear three different people playing this sonata in this video.

First it starts in a formal sonata form. Just plain playing in strict time without any extra pauses in rests and the subjects are immediately tied to each other. Well I did not like this at all.

Then comes the Andante Sostenuto, with just the opposite with lots of choices of interpretive freedom, much slower than I would prefer. I did not like this too.

But starting with Allegro energico we hear the usual most common interpretation of this sonata until almost the very end. I liked this part the most.

At the very end few last bars it returns back to the extra free interpretation again. I did not like this as well.

One thing that I did not agree at all instances were the overpedaling of the descending bass notes of the introduction.

Nevertheless these are all my subjective preferences. Of course you play it very good, with solid technique and well thought out through all the sonata.
I think it will be an interesting listen for the upcoming audience.

Thanks for sharing.

Only if you are playing a "short" version!

I don't know (because I don't particularly like) this Sonata sufficiently to make comments on the interpretation. Nevertheless, it is obvious to me that this is first-class playing without much evidence that the technical challenges are daunting.

At the beginning I did hear a lot of heavy breathing, or holding and then releasing of breath. There seems to be a nominal amount of tension in the mouth and jaw while you play but, otherwise, tension doesn't seem to be evident in your playing.

Congratulations, Brendan; it's an impressive performance.

Regards,

Are the socks by Hanes?

You had me at the initial washing harmonies. Or, were they dissonances? You decide.

This is an amazing musical and technical accomplishment, Brendan! Quite symphonic! It seems very personal and definitive at the same time... Can something be two things at once?

Piano performance of this kind is such a mix of intellect and emotion. I have often remarked to others, "We work out a lot of stuff at the keyboard." I often remark to other piano geeks, "We work out a lot of stuff at the keyboard." That statement means different things to others than it does to piano geeks like we.

If you were to summarize in words this novel that is the Liszt Sonata in B minor, what would you say? And if you were to give that statement personal meaning, what would you say? Can you be specific, or is this one of the things where the language of music speaks in ways too deep for words?

O.K. -- Here's another way to ask that question (as if I were an interviewer digging for a juicy bit): What caused you to take on this piece?

Thanks for considering my question. It's an open one. I really enjoyed this performance, Brendan!

--Andy

Thank you!

It's great that you hear so many different "people" in this performance. Believe it or not, that's kind of what I wanted! This piece is so pluralistic that I feel that it's impossible to define it as one thing or another. I posted a thread recently about possible interpretations, but decided that it's simultaneously all and none of those mentioned. For my tastes, I feel that the beginning of the piece needs a clear definition as a sonata in the classical sense, and as it progresses, the lines become less clear and it evolves from being "just" a sonata into something much more, i.e. a biography of Liszt himself.



YMMV. For some reason, I'm reminded of a quote from Yeats' poem "The Beckoning" in this passage - "What rough beast...slouches towards Bethlemen to be born?" The added pedal/blurring gives it a more sinister effect and portends the struggle to come, IMO.



"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."



Two reasons: first, it's a piece that I've loved as long as I can remember and wanted to give it another viewing since it's being so long since I played it. Second, I totally FAILED at learning the transcription of the last two movements of the Symphonie Fantastique! I've never been bludgeoned quite as bloody as I was by that transcription...

I particularly liked how you came back into the main theme. One small critique though, there were a few times when your breathing was loud enough to be distracting.

One of my favorite pieces, still listening to it but you should get a better recording setup. A pair of Naiant omnis and a cheap interface or a portable/handheld recorder to plug into, something like that, and isn't too much more to carry around vs. a camcorder.

Also I'm not a huge fan of how you're pedaling but everyone has different taste as far as that goes.

I'm really loving how you do the slow parts. Spot on.

I live in San Antonio, TX, so here it comes.

1) This is not a sonata, never was and never will be. It is an extreme over reach by a composer (of many fine works). Which brings to mind what I was taught in music school, which was: "If you can play the Liszt Sonata, you can play anything." B.S!!!

2) I only thought you could get whiplash injury in a car wreck. Well, now I know that you can get it at the piano.

In summary, sit up straight, put on a pair of pants and a dress shirt, or God forbid, (a coat and tie), and then show us how you can play. The world is sick of Lang Lang type pianists who wail and flail at the piano. You, of all people, should know better.

Regarding myself, as a student of Thomas Mark, ("Motion, Emotion, and Love") I have been taught that you royally screw up your balance and center of gravity by playing in such an extreme fashion.

I am grateful that you have shown us how not to play. I really am.

Hard to believe this utter nonsense and rudeness in this post.

Re comparing LL with Brendan. The difference between fake emotion expressed in body/facial movements and real emotion expressed those ways is like night and day. A significant majority of the great pianists today show some emotion in their facial/body movements. Sometimes they're very subtle and sometimes not. For me they only add to a performance when genuine and not over the top because they show the pianist's involvement with the music.

Have you ever seen Kissin, Trifonov, Uchida, Kobrin, Conrad Tao, Glenn Gould, Katsaris, Zhang, Wunder, Lisiecki, Jarrett, or Argerich play? They all have facial and/or body movements.

How can you even be serious about the need to wear long pants in this practice video? Do you know that in the IKIF concerts this summer(around 25 recitals) maybe only 15% or less of the male recitalists wore a tie and jacket? I think it's a good idea for pianists under 50 to not wear a tie and jacket in performance (except perhaps when playing in a venue like Carnegie Hall) because less casual attire attracts more of a young audience.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Louis Podesta finally [censored] all over one of my threads! I was beginning to feel excluded and feared that....gasp.....he LIKED my playing! You have no idea how happy this makes me!!!!!!

Now, if only I could get BachMach in here....

Actually, I take that back; I've always valued BachMach's curiosity and musicianship and don't wish to offend him with a comparison to Mr. Podesta.

Brendan -

Wonderful performance !!

You had total control from start to finish.

You've obviously lived with this challenging piece for a while - and it shows.

I'm sure the actual "public" performance will go well. Wish I could be there to hear it.

Wait...

Shorts ok... But no hair coming out of the chest? It's the summer!

Oh well... here goes my hopes!

This will be a three way post. Started off being funny, I'll move on to a serious note and then to some judgemental part for this forum.

____________________________________

This is an amazing performance. I'm very used to the (original, early in her life) performance of Martha and I'm happy to report that I actually prefer your own performance. I can feel why you feel there's still some more attempt to do something else for this piece, but I can honestly say that it's one of the most coherent performances I've heard for this SONATA (you hear Louis?).

I will call you up on a tiny bit of theatrics (around 5:50, for example). I'm typing as I'm listening so I'm not watching the video, but jumped in there and saw you do a high writs move with the left hand.

I'm curious, since it's something that I'd like to believe helps your sound (and I tend to do that as well), but I'm not sure if physics support something like that.

In any case it's an excellent performance and I thank you for sharing.

___________________________

Finally, Brendan, and Kreisler and anyone else reading this.

How much longer will we be tolerating Louis? I find every single of his posts disruptive, insulting and extremely annoying. Yes there's the "iggy button" (the ignore function), but I love PianoWorld very much and I do NOT want to leave it to the hands of someone like Louis.

If everyone that knows about Louis was to hide his posts then the unsuspecting members would be in trouble I think... :-/

Please note that this is probably the first time I'm making an open judgement on how a forum should be run. And I apologize for that!

Hi Nikolas, I think having a contrarian around is useful in that this often gives a voice to things many persons who are silent want to say. Maybe the "annoyance" stems from statements of known facts, e.g.:

1) Brendan knows that he doesn't sit bolt upright

2) Brendan knows that he was wearing shorts

Criticism ideally says something that the performer does not know or has not observed.

Praise also is good, musicians need encouragement.

Well done Brendan! For everything you put into being a pianist it might make sense to upgrade the recording method and procedures. I think that for a pianist such as you are it would be worth it to get a pair of factory matched Oktava MK-012 microphones, have them about eight to twelve feet out from the open end of the Steinway D, and also a nice tube preamp - maybe Hamptone's tube preamp would be just right on an amateur recording budget. I had a good experience with that setup many years ago but with a solid state preamp. $2000 to $2500 for equipment that will be used for ten or twenty years is worth it.

Maybe the school where this was recorded has some equipment you can use.

There also are the audio USB interfaces for a computer, and with phantom power for the microphones, which allow recording directly to the computer.

A contrarian doesn't have to express his thoughts in an incredibly rude and nasty manner.

Sometimes I wonder if Louis isn't often playing the role of a satirist. This notion first dawned on me as a result of his dramatic about-face in the most recent Arpan thread and it seems to play very well into the labouring over of bio-mechanical details as with a seemingly ten step process to play an octave as was given by him in another thread [the ABC Vermonter Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, 1st movement thread].

But he didn't post a video of someone he thought "got it", so you didn't get the full "Podesta effect."

I seriously doubt that he's being a satirist. And in any case at some point a satirist needs to retire, right?

Thank you, Michael! It means a lot to have a compliment from a fellow Lisztian.

Re: equipment, I do own a Sony Camcorder that does Full HD, but lately have just been using my iPad for practice videos such as these (out of laziness more than anything else). I'm definitely thinking about getting some new sound equipment and will look into the recommendations you made.