Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Lisitsa plays Liszt Sonata B minor

Heres a recording (really just a home video) of Pogorelich playing it live. It's one of my favorites. Take a listen if you have time and let me know what you think.

http://youtu.be/nc7A-oO1vKc

I could only make it as far as 3 or so minute mark.

This is like one of those piano music played at the old silent movies.

Maybe Tom and Jerry.

But I must say I find the latest Brahms video has some very beautiful moments on it.

To be fair to Valentina Lisitsa, the Liszt B minor is one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire to get right - and by get right I don't even mean playing the right notes (although that is hard enough), but I mean capturing the spirit of. I don't even think there is a 'right' spirit to it, but there are very very few recordings that I've heard that I really think capture it properly, and I certainly don't when I play it (not for the want of trying I tell you).

For instance, I think Yuja Wang's performance is stunning, but it doesn't move me. It's wonderful, it's precision is breathtaking, as is the dynamic range of it, but there's something about it that I just don't get. Yet I can't criticise it because at the same time it's so good. I feel the same about Yundi Li, and Berezovsky, and even Trifinov I just don't get.

Yet I have heard Arthur Friedheim's piano roll recording and while the dynamics of it are unreliable and the piano is out of tune (on the youtube link to it), there is a sense of the piece in terms of the structure - now I know full well that you can't separate the dynamics from the structure so I know I would have had to have heard it in person which we can't do, but there is something about even that performance that seems to make sense to me.

Then there is Vadim Monastyrski who can be found on a youtube video again playing it in America. There are mistakes in it, but so what, it is in many ways an awesome performance.

Josef Lhevinne would say its because she has thin bony fingers

Naw but seriously, I feel like a lot of her interpretations are like that, but I can judge that only off of recordings which can be very different than hearing a piece in person. Never seen her live.

Oh Octaves, bringing that Lhevinne quote in, you know how to spark a debate round these parts ;-)

Far longer than i lasted with Hewitt old chap.

Thal

IIRC the Hewitt recording got a good writeup in Gramophone, a magazine I have read for years and generally trust their reviewers.

A casual perusal of YouTube didn't turn up anything, but I'm not inclined to add another Liszt B minor to my library at any rate.

I don't excuse professionals for less-than-first-rate interpretations of well-known music in the standard repertoire just because interpretation of the piece may be difficult. They should know better once they are past a certain stage of maturity, and she's well past that point.

If a piece like the Liszt is hard to get right, performers should be aware of that fact, and they should not present the piece until they know they've got it right. Unfortunately, there are a number of professionals who have high-level mechanical skills, but only low-to-mid level musical sensibilities and artistry. Strange as it may seem to some, there is no direct correlation between skill and the deeper levels of musical understanding, even if a certain amount of skill is required to allow the musicality to manifest itself. And, sadly, this is one of those areas where a person may not have any idea of what they are lacking, precisely because of that very lack.

This is something rather frustrating to me, and one of the difficulties of classical music IMO. A person can have deep musical understanding of a piece, but if they haven't spent years building up a top notch technical ability, no one will ever know because they won't be able to present their ideas.

The two skill-sets are somewhat separate.....being musical and excellent piano technique.

Wow. I had not heard that before (nor his studio recording).

A performance of volcanic intensity, sincerely felt, though I don't know that I could experience it with any frequency.

Ivo was dashing back then...

Agreed. I think her powerful, but unromantic.

I find the Chopin C-Sharp Minor Op 26 to usually be revealing.

This is V.L., seems indifferently played in spots, I'd like to hear what more experienced listeners think:



This is Halina Czerny-Stefanska (2nd track, starts at 14:26):



BTW: is Czerny on a Bechstein here? It has a wonky bass string and I still love her interpretation.

Do you turn the knob left or right to change it?

......makes me feel nostalgic for the days back in circa 2015, when VL, bless her, was in every thread (or a new thread on her was started by someone, somewhere, anywhere), the world was still (relatively) free & happy because a certain spiky bug never existed (or was in an animal far, far away) so we could all cruise (or even fly) to deepest darkest Antarctica to attend a concert by a child prodigy no-one has heard of, and hug & kiss everyone without worrying about catching anything more than the common cold from them.....

Hand on a sec, this is 2015!

I never really could get into the Liszt Sonata until I heard Horowitz's 1932 recording. Then, it suddenly made sense.

It still doesn't make sense to me.

Regards,

I knew it!!!

For what it's worth - and I know no one really gives a rodent's posterior - but I as a youngster was enamoured of this music. So much so that I bought the score after my RCM Grade X exam. My score shows date of purchase on the cover in my handwriting 27 May, 1956.

So? Yeah, so what! Taste changes, I guess.