Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Members Recordings - Pianist Corner Chopin Fantasie Op. 49 - Eek, This is a Hard Piece!

Got it - good point, and true!

I think this - generalized of course - might make a good thread in Pianist Corner. Something like "How well can a performer judge his/her own performances?" (1) I am certain that we've all had the experience of disappointment with a performance that we expected to go well, which we thought didn't, and which then everyone said was "yay, you totally rocked man/woman!" (2) There are also the other cases where we think we've done well and it did nothing for the audience, or (3) where we did OK and it was considered OK (mediocre), or (4) where we did badly and the audience recognized it. I think it would be great to hear examples of these different scenarios and how they played out or impacted members. (I count myself fortunate that I have twice performed at my best, you know, where everything becomes crystal clear and you just know nothing can go wrong, and the audience senses it and is entranced by it and loves it. )

This could also play into the significance of wrong notes generally. Is a meaningful interpretation of a great work spoiled by a few mistakes better than a cold, Pollini-esque version that's technically and Urtextually near-perfect? Is there a scale for judging and equalizing these phenomena? I mean, I know what the majority will think. But as for me, I hate Schnabel and, to a lesser extent, Rubinstein. I hate that Kempff seems to struggle with and work around technical problems when he plays difficult music. But I idolize Earl Wild, Andrei Gavrilov, Grafman, and, yes, Pollini (among numerous others - Augustin Anievas anybody?; of course, I'll never be able to place Horowitz in any category.) However, maybe this is potentially another and separate thread.

You want to start these threads, Mark, or shall I? Or we could split them?

I think that we often judge ourselves by accuracy and not by how expressive and communicative we are. We are much more self-critical in one category than the other, both in practice and performance.
But if we aren't communicating well, a performance can easily be boring, regardless of whether it is perfectly accurate or full of errors, and audiences hate to be bored.

So it sounds like you were a good performer at the performance! congratulations on a successful performance of this very difficult work!

I think you're right about a lot of this Heather. Here's some edited e-mail correspondence with another PW member who was there (and who himself performed beautifully, I must add):

Date: Monday, October 5, 2015 4:18 PM
To: Simon Finlow
Subject: Re: Thank You

Simon,

Yesterday was something, wasn't it? Thanks for the nice words about my stuff.

I was truly impressed by your performance. Your large sounds were never harsh, but what stood out for me was the clarity and consistency of your softer playing. The chorale section was just gorgeous. And I liked the way you controlled the tempo and dynamics in the end section. You let the music breathe, building very nicely to the final chords. You may have thought the "mistakes" were disqualifying, but I agree with your wife. Well done.

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 1:01 AM, Simon Finlow wrote:

Well done on your performance. Great stuff – I thought you did both pieces better than last week. Lots of confidence and finesse.

My wife said she [liked my live performance] better than the rehearsal version, but I am a hater of mistakes, so no.

Anyway, I confess, I'm still not seeing it, though I agree I did play the middle "hymn" section much better on the day. Maybe that's part of the explanation. The prayer is SO essential to this work, the expressive core even. And I know the audience was really listening in that section. BUT, why oh why did I mess up a section that I never flubbed in practice? I mean, never.

You're wrong.

She was right about all of it.

I am wondering if I should explain more here from audience's perspective on that day although I often feel I don't have authority to comment on anything due to my own skill level (or lack of).

First of all, it was Simon's first public performance with the group as a new member. The group is generally made up with amateurs (like me) and not used to this level of performances and pieces. The "WOW factor" was immediately noticeable. Watching Simon's (and the other person who exchanged emails with you) performance will probably stop me from being on the same stage with both of you, and that's OK too! I have no hard feeling at all.

I am more curious about the opening page as why you played it much slower than you did in the video. As you know, my partner (not a PW member) is also working on the same piece and he was at the audience watching you. He told me that you made interesting musical choices - most he agreed and some he did not. The biggest part is the opening as he liked to keep it as 60bpm. Maybe you two can compare notes in person.

Yes it was a big turnout - the crowd is getting bigger each time.


Congratulations again!

Well yes - she usually is!

Hey, there was plenty of fine performing! I really want to hear your Impromptu #3, which I am sure you will do very well having heard you play Beethoven, so please don't let anything like this change your plans!


It's all Mark C's fault! I'm only partially kidding. He said something somewhere about hating the way some people don't play the dotted rhythms crisply enough, which I agreed with. When I listened to the recording, I thought some of them seemed a little triplety. Unfortunately, as I tried to keep the 16th notes "crisp", I started hanging too long on the dotted 8th notes, so having started a tad slow, which was deliberate, I actually got slower, which was not deliberate. So I think you and LR are right - it got much TOO funereal. That's what comes of trying to correct something that didn't really need correcting at the last minute. I'd love to compare notes - the master class would be a perfect opportunity.

I'm terribly honored.


Wrong again!
I've said lots about how almost everyone doesn't play the dotted rhythms crisply enough!


Well of course!
All right-thinking people would!


There's almost no such thing.


I would love to hear a recording of it, if there is one.


There's no such thing.

To my ears, most people make the opening sound not funereal at all. I have no idea what they're thinking that it is.

I don't have time to listen to the whole thing, but I have a couple immediate thoughts after hearing a minute or so.

1) Slow the introduction down a little. Most people play it too fast.

2) There is no reason for a rubato leading into the C octave at 0:24. This is a declaration of what's to come, it needs to sound as such. Rubato should really be at a bare minimum throughout the entire funeral march anyway.

Thanks Joel.

(1) Not sure I agree. I played it slower in performance and at least two people whose opinions I respect didn't like it. I think consistent tempo and rhythm are crucial, which I do agree should be improved. Otherwise I don't think it should be too slow - solemn, but with enough forward momentum to sustain the various lines.

(2) I think your first point is something of a judgement call, though I definitely agree with your second sentence. The rubato at 0:24 and elsewhere needs to be extremely subtle if it's there at all. In my own comment, I admitted that everything in the opening needed to be tighter rhythmically and this is one of the things I was referring to. So we're on the same page here.

Thanks again for listening. Any comments you may have on the rest of it would be most welcome.

What emotion are you trying to communicate with this piece? I'd like to see you go through each section and imagine how you'd like the audience to feel during that section.

Obviously, in each section, you want them to feel "rapt with attention" at your magnificent playing, but other than that.

I played this again today and it was even worse. What is going on? I must have played it a couple of hundred times - at least - without mistakes at home. Yet this afternoon I kind of got lost twice and still feel bad about it after drowning my sorrows with three beers. I think one of the problems is that it's just really difficult late Chopin. But still. I'm now completely freaked about having to play the piece if I make it to the second round of Cliburn.

On a happier note, Midlife_Piano played Chopin Op 25. No. 7 and the Liszt Petrarch Sonnet 104 in the same recital and absolutely rocked. The best performance by far that I have ever heard from him. I think the new teacher is working wonders, but that's not to take away from his own natural talent and musical insight. These were very convincing renderings of complicated, difficult music. Bravo!

Take it easy; it was probably just a bad run. Even the greatest pianists aren't consistent in their delivery and sometimes flat out suck (for their standards). Forcing the music out of yourself won't help and will probably just make you feel frustrated. If you can relax before you try again, you'll likely do better.

Try to really, really understand what made you get lost. I'd guess it was at parts where sort of the same thing happens multiple times, and you sort of went in a direction from one of the other times.

If you feel like saying which parts they were, we could have some further thoughts about it....

Now when I make mistakes in music I learned when I was a teenager, I remember a Murphy's Law corollary: experience allows you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Here's one of the passages where I remember the problem happening (I actually can't remember where the other one was, if there even was another one):



So yes, you're right about the type of passage, but it wasn't that I started doing something from one of the other iterations, it was that I literally became disoriented, for reasons unknown. I lost my perception of the topography of the keyboard in relation to myself. It was a scary thing that's never happened before. I mean, I've had scary events happen, but nothing like this.

Happily, the problem did not recur during the masterclass with Ms. Dinnerstein. I've practiced memorizing the exact hand positions and chord sequences for every iteration of this passage and the tricky double-note section that precedes it, so hopefully I'll have the resources to recover from a future occurrence of this problem. If you all have any other thoughts, I'm all ears . . .

Thanks.

Each hand alone, eyes closed?