As a piano student, fingerings are possibly one of the things I've struggled most with. When I first started having lessons, the simple fingering patterns for playing scales in both hands completely confused my brain. I got used to it pretty quickly, and it soon became intuitive. Nevertheless, fingerings remain the problem I most often need to consult my piano teacher about, and they are a source of minor disagreement between us.
I started having lessons relatively late, at the grand old age of 11. Before that, I had taught myself to play, and learnt or attempted to learn some quite complicated pieces. As a result of having no guidance I developed a few 'bad' habits in my technique. Some of these habits disappeared once I started having lessons, but one persisted for some time (and continues to persist even now, in a way). This was my unconventional choice of fingerings - not in scales but in actual pieces (I usually stuck to the textbook version of things for scales.)
I firmly believe that since everyone's physical shape is different, there can be no RIGHT fingering for a certain passage. I rarely find the 'official' fingerings printed in scores, if there are
any, satisfactory without at least some tweaking for my individual
comfort. What feels quite natural to someone with large hands and long fingers, for instance, might be impossible for someone with smaller hands, and that person might find it easier to use a fingering which the person with larger hands finds very clumsy and awkward.
However, there seem to be certain conventions in modern piano playing
that state that some fingerings, in some situations, are
simply...forbidden. Illegal. 'You can't do that. It's not an approved
fingering.' That's the feeling I get, anyway.
In any case, my teacher and I usually disagree about what fingering
is the 'most natural'. The fact is, there is no absolute 'most natural'
fingering because what is natural for one person's hand shape can be
extremely uncomfortable for another's. This is actually the scenario that crops up quite often with my teacher these days: he has huge hands (able to span an eleventh) while I can only span a tenth, which is quite a big difference even if it only amounts to one note on the keyboard.
However, one of the reasons I like to consult my teacher about fingerings is that often he DOES come up with a much simpler and more natural solution, which, for some reason, I would NEVER have thought of myself. I have a strange tendency to devise fingerings which are unnecessarily complicated. Often I will write a
fingering onto a score which felt quite natural at the time, only to go
back to it later and wonder 'why on earth did I do that?!' The fingering I find 'most natural' at a particular time for a particular passage I've learnt may feel completely wrong in a years time when I go back to that piece and try to play it again. This is especially the case in Bach.
Bach is not pianistic music. It was written in a time when pianos as we know them today didn't exist, and where keyboard technique was far removed from the flowing, velvety legato that came into existence in the Romantic era. The fingerings in Bach are atrociously awkward, and more or less defy everything that the Approved Textbook of Fingerings tries to tell you (I just made that up, by the way...)
Very early on in my piano education, I half-learnt the first movement of Bach's 2nd partita. Despite having very little knowledge of the conventions of piano technique at that point, I actually learnt to play it at a considerable speed SOLELY because I used 'illegal' fingerings. At that point, I hadn't learnt any of the conventions of fingering, so it didn't feel unnatural or even awkward to break the rules. But today, as a pianist who plays Chopin and Rachmaninov and can hardly approach a black note without using the 4th finger on it, when I return to that partita it just feels...wrong. I can't play it at all anymore. The fingerings are too unnatural compared to the 19th-century Romantic technique that has become intuitive to me.
That's not to say that I have COMPLETELY dropped my unconventional fingerings - quite the contrary. I'm now learning Bach's D Minor Concerto, and while my fingerings might not be as outrageous as they were when I learnt the partita all those years ago, they still spark a lot of controversy during lessons!
I would be really interested to know what other pianists/ piano teachers thing about 'illegal' fingerings. Are there any fingerings you wouldn't let a student use, and if so, how can you justify it, since you can't BE them and experience what it's like to play a particular passage with their fingers?
Friday 7 December 2012
Saturday 20 October 2012
musings on the technique of great composer-pianists
I often think that one can tell a lot about the technique of a pianist (who also happens to be a composer) by the music they've written for the instrument.
On second thought, though, this isn't actually true. A good example is Ravel, who wrote some of the most atrociously difficult piano music in the repetoire, yet by all accounts wasn't an outstanding pianist himself, although he must have been a decent one to be able to play pieces like Gaspard de la nuit and Jeux d'eau.
However, if there is one pianist whose piano music is an indicator of their own piano technique, it would have to be Rachmaninov. It's easier to judge how Rachmaninov's technique relates to his piano writing than it is for many other composer-pianists, since he fortunately left behind what is a fairly extensive collection of recordings for someone who was alive when recording was only a recent invention.
There are a couple of things one immediately notices about Rach's pianism.
Firstly, he appears to have had an extraordinary technique. He was voted 'greatest pianist of all time' in Limelight and I think this is entirely justified, judging from the recordings I've heard. His playing had an incredible clarity and precision, combined with a gorgeous tone. Technical difficulties which would cause many other pianists to sacrifice tone, balance or clarity for accuracy didn't bother Rachmaninov at all. On top of that, his interpretation was very tasteful and simple, and he never over-used the pedal (as many pianists - even brilliant ones - seem to do these days.) This cleanness and understatement was quite unusual for his time, and I suppose his technique could be considered the forerunner of 'modern' piano technique (as exemplified by pianists like Pollini and Brendel.)
Secondly, Rach famously had very big hands (apparently he could span a 13th), and his piano music often incorporates impossibly large stretches which would have been quite easy for him and for anyone else with big hands, but can pose serious problems for other pianists! As I've discovered, however, the effect of Rach's technique on his writing for piano goes far beyond huge stretches.
For the past few days I've been working on a section of the 2nd concerto (specifically, the first movement, pages 19-20 in the Schirmer edition.) Rachmaninov never skimps on virtuosity in the left hand as well as the right, and beautifully written though it is, I've been struggling particularly with the second half of page 19 (for some reason, I don't have any trouble with page 20.)
I've found that in order to make the very dense and complex textures of this writing actually sound good, it's necessary to have a virtuosic command of the pedal, a very refined spacial awareness of where every key on the piano lies, and a lot of strength and dexterity. These qualities seem like something Rachmaninov would have had in great quantity.
After working on pages 19 and 20 of the concerto this evening, as usual I finished my practice by playing Chopin's Etude op. 25 no. 12.
Since this etude is the perfect way to instantly put a piano OUT of tune, I've actually stopped playing it at the end of practice sessions since getting my piano tuned a few weeks ago. Playing this etude is the way I build and maintain the muscle in my arms, and I notice very quickly if I don't play it for a while, so the last time I attempted it (a few days ago), it was a bit of a disaster.
When I tried again today, however, something had changed. I found myself hitting a lot more of the right notes than before, and had a much stronger sense of spacial awareness and coordination.
I feel quite certain that the intensive practice I did earlier on Rach 2 has improved aspects of my technique I wasn't even aware were lacking. Maybe the reason is that through his piano works, Rachmaninov has passed on his own technique to anyone prepared to spend the time and effort required to develop that technique?
On second thought, though, this isn't actually true. A good example is Ravel, who wrote some of the most atrociously difficult piano music in the repetoire, yet by all accounts wasn't an outstanding pianist himself, although he must have been a decent one to be able to play pieces like Gaspard de la nuit and Jeux d'eau.
However, if there is one pianist whose piano music is an indicator of their own piano technique, it would have to be Rachmaninov. It's easier to judge how Rachmaninov's technique relates to his piano writing than it is for many other composer-pianists, since he fortunately left behind what is a fairly extensive collection of recordings for someone who was alive when recording was only a recent invention.
There are a couple of things one immediately notices about Rach's pianism.
Firstly, he appears to have had an extraordinary technique. He was voted 'greatest pianist of all time' in Limelight and I think this is entirely justified, judging from the recordings I've heard. His playing had an incredible clarity and precision, combined with a gorgeous tone. Technical difficulties which would cause many other pianists to sacrifice tone, balance or clarity for accuracy didn't bother Rachmaninov at all. On top of that, his interpretation was very tasteful and simple, and he never over-used the pedal (as many pianists - even brilliant ones - seem to do these days.) This cleanness and understatement was quite unusual for his time, and I suppose his technique could be considered the forerunner of 'modern' piano technique (as exemplified by pianists like Pollini and Brendel.)
Secondly, Rach famously had very big hands (apparently he could span a 13th), and his piano music often incorporates impossibly large stretches which would have been quite easy for him and for anyone else with big hands, but can pose serious problems for other pianists! As I've discovered, however, the effect of Rach's technique on his writing for piano goes far beyond huge stretches.
For the past few days I've been working on a section of the 2nd concerto (specifically, the first movement, pages 19-20 in the Schirmer edition.) Rachmaninov never skimps on virtuosity in the left hand as well as the right, and beautifully written though it is, I've been struggling particularly with the second half of page 19 (for some reason, I don't have any trouble with page 20.)
I've found that in order to make the very dense and complex textures of this writing actually sound good, it's necessary to have a virtuosic command of the pedal, a very refined spacial awareness of where every key on the piano lies, and a lot of strength and dexterity. These qualities seem like something Rachmaninov would have had in great quantity.
After working on pages 19 and 20 of the concerto this evening, as usual I finished my practice by playing Chopin's Etude op. 25 no. 12.
Since this etude is the perfect way to instantly put a piano OUT of tune, I've actually stopped playing it at the end of practice sessions since getting my piano tuned a few weeks ago. Playing this etude is the way I build and maintain the muscle in my arms, and I notice very quickly if I don't play it for a while, so the last time I attempted it (a few days ago), it was a bit of a disaster.
When I tried again today, however, something had changed. I found myself hitting a lot more of the right notes than before, and had a much stronger sense of spacial awareness and coordination.
I feel quite certain that the intensive practice I did earlier on Rach 2 has improved aspects of my technique I wasn't even aware were lacking. Maybe the reason is that through his piano works, Rachmaninov has passed on his own technique to anyone prepared to spend the time and effort required to develop that technique?
Thursday 30 August 2012
Post-practice reflections: Speed versus musicality
In the past couple of days, I've been seriously considering what I want the final tempo of the 2nd movement of Rachmaninov's second piano concerto to be. The middle movement of Rach 2 has several quite drastic tempo changes. To me, these are extremely important. When I started learning the fastest, and possibly most technically challenging, section of this movement (right in the middle, leading up to the cadenza - marked 'Piu Mosso'), I had set a target speed on my metronome which, at the time, I thought the fastest REALISTIC speed I could achieve.
As it turned out, by the time I'd worked that section up to my target speed of crotchet = 70 bpm, I felt as if I could easily do it a bit faster. So I set a new target speed: 80 bpm.
I'd already made the decision that I wanted to take this movement very slowly, even in the faster sections. I wanted all the notes to be clearly audible, all the wonderful and bizarre chromatic harmonies to stand out. But once I'd perfected the 80 bpm speed, I suddenly realised that when I stopped playing with the metronome, the technical aspect was so effortless that I instantly sped up.
On all the recordings I've listened to the 'Piu Mosso' section is played incredibly lightly, nimbly, and the final part of it sounds almost more like a trill than proper passagework. When left to my own devices, free of the constraining metronome, I couldn't help but imitate this speediness now that I had the technique to.
Of course, different pianists DO take it at different tempos. I even went to the trouble of working out the tempos of my 3 favorite recordings: Rachmaninov took the fast section at a whopping 125 bpm, Yefim Bronfman at 115 bpm, and Van Cliburn (whom I admire specially for his slower interpretation) at 100 bpm.
Yet all of these pianist play the fast section much faster than I was aspiring to.
In my practice session tonight, I tried a number of different metronome speeds, ranging from my original target of 80 bpm to Van Cliburn's nimbler 100 bpm. I couldn't make up my mind which tempo was best. On the one hand, I wanted all the notes to be audible, and not to simply sound like a blur. On the other hand, it felt so much better to play fast, and this was my natural tendency as soon as I turned off the metronome. So I did a little experiment.
I played from a few bars before the start of the fast section at a tempo I found comfortable and thought sounded nice. When I reached the fast section, I let myself settle into the tempo that felt natural, and which I always reverted to when I wasn't consciously aiming for a particular speed.
Then I stopped and turned on the metronome, adjusting the tempo until it matched what I'd just been playing. It was 90 bpm - halfway between my target and Van Cliburn's tempo.
The issue of tempo choice is more complicated than just choosing an appropriate tempo for the fast section, however. There are, as I have already mentioned, several other tempo changes in this movement, and how they all relate to each other is vitally important. If I decided to change my target speed for one section, I have to adjust all the others to fit in with it - it's like a sort of tempo 'ratio'.
For now, I've decided that 90 bpm is my tempo of choice for the 'Piu Mosso' section, but the process has made me realise that I have to be careful about sacrificing my musical intentions for the sake of virtuosity. I'm not really interested in technique for the sake of technique. One needs technique to execute one's interpretation of a piece, but if the interpretation doesn't demand virtuosity, one has to know when to hold back.
P.S. On the spur of the moment I decided to video myself during my practice session this evening, which means I can now actually hear how the different tempos I was trying out affect the sound of the music and my degree of accuracy and so forth. I've never done this before, and it was very interesting. Here's a link to the video
As it turned out, by the time I'd worked that section up to my target speed of crotchet = 70 bpm, I felt as if I could easily do it a bit faster. So I set a new target speed: 80 bpm.
I'd already made the decision that I wanted to take this movement very slowly, even in the faster sections. I wanted all the notes to be clearly audible, all the wonderful and bizarre chromatic harmonies to stand out. But once I'd perfected the 80 bpm speed, I suddenly realised that when I stopped playing with the metronome, the technical aspect was so effortless that I instantly sped up.
On all the recordings I've listened to the 'Piu Mosso' section is played incredibly lightly, nimbly, and the final part of it sounds almost more like a trill than proper passagework. When left to my own devices, free of the constraining metronome, I couldn't help but imitate this speediness now that I had the technique to.
Of course, different pianists DO take it at different tempos. I even went to the trouble of working out the tempos of my 3 favorite recordings: Rachmaninov took the fast section at a whopping 125 bpm, Yefim Bronfman at 115 bpm, and Van Cliburn (whom I admire specially for his slower interpretation) at 100 bpm.
Yet all of these pianist play the fast section much faster than I was aspiring to.
In my practice session tonight, I tried a number of different metronome speeds, ranging from my original target of 80 bpm to Van Cliburn's nimbler 100 bpm. I couldn't make up my mind which tempo was best. On the one hand, I wanted all the notes to be audible, and not to simply sound like a blur. On the other hand, it felt so much better to play fast, and this was my natural tendency as soon as I turned off the metronome. So I did a little experiment.
I played from a few bars before the start of the fast section at a tempo I found comfortable and thought sounded nice. When I reached the fast section, I let myself settle into the tempo that felt natural, and which I always reverted to when I wasn't consciously aiming for a particular speed.
Then I stopped and turned on the metronome, adjusting the tempo until it matched what I'd just been playing. It was 90 bpm - halfway between my target and Van Cliburn's tempo.
The issue of tempo choice is more complicated than just choosing an appropriate tempo for the fast section, however. There are, as I have already mentioned, several other tempo changes in this movement, and how they all relate to each other is vitally important. If I decided to change my target speed for one section, I have to adjust all the others to fit in with it - it's like a sort of tempo 'ratio'.
For now, I've decided that 90 bpm is my tempo of choice for the 'Piu Mosso' section, but the process has made me realise that I have to be careful about sacrificing my musical intentions for the sake of virtuosity. I'm not really interested in technique for the sake of technique. One needs technique to execute one's interpretation of a piece, but if the interpretation doesn't demand virtuosity, one has to know when to hold back.
P.S. On the spur of the moment I decided to video myself during my practice session this evening, which means I can now actually hear how the different tempos I was trying out affect the sound of the music and my degree of accuracy and so forth. I've never done this before, and it was very interesting. Here's a link to the video
Saturday 25 August 2012
Composer series: Alberto Ginastera
Several years ago, my piano teacher sent me an email with a link to this recording, saying "You should do this for your next competition!" (He was referring to the local eistedfford.)
At first, I thought he was joking. Me, learn this diabolical-sounding piece in time for the eistedfford? It seemed impossible.
When I had my next lesson, my teacher brought along a copy of the score. It looked as diabolical as it sounded: the right and left hand staves were in different keys, and the rhythms were completely incomprehensible. However, I managed to read it, really liked it, and decided to try learning it.
Not only did I learn (and memorise) it, but I have since performed it several times (including in the eistedfford!)
So began my interest in the composer Alberto Ginastera, of whom I knew nothing at the time.
I can't really say very much about Ginastera, as the amount of repetoire by him that I'm familiar with is still relatively small. Instead, I'm just going to post links to my favorite pieces by him, and write a bit about each piece. I'll probably add to this list as I find new favorites :)
Danzas Argentinas (of course!) I now have the complete score of these little pieces, and have played through them (as well as hearing my teacher play them). One day I would very much like to learn all of them. The 2nd one reminds me of a well-known nursery rhyme or folk tune gone wrong... (interestingly, Ginastera used this same theme in one of his 'Piezas Infantiles')
Piezas Infantiles I looked up these pieces after reading about them, since I was curious to hear how Ginastera composed in his youth. They are absolutely gorgeous, and already show distinctive Ginastera trademarks.
Piano Sonata No. 1
1st movement
4th movement
Unfortunately there isn't a complete version of this on youtube that I like (I have Debora Halasz's recording of this, in my opinion it is the definitive one.) I discovered the last movement of this piece completely by accident while browsing youtube, and was absolutely blown away by it. I'd never heard anything like it (at least not in the realm of classical music), and I still haven't heard anything like it! The other movements are amazing as well.
I must confess I was heavily influenced (almost to the point of plagiarism) by the 5/8 descending fifths pattern in the first movement when writing a short piece for piano and percussion, earlier this year. It was just too good not to, erm, be influenced by!
Of course I bought the score for this fiendishly difficult sonata, in the hope that one day I'll manage to learn it... :S
Piano Concerto No. 1
1st movement
4th movement
I discovered this concerto through Emerson Lake & Palmer, who made a wonderful version of the last movement of it (which, incidentally, Ginastera himself thoroughly approved of.)
I dream of learning this concerto one day, but it will probably only ever be a dream.
Unfortunately I can't find the middle movements of this work on Youtube - at least, not played by João Carlos Martins.
At first, I thought he was joking. Me, learn this diabolical-sounding piece in time for the eistedfford? It seemed impossible.
When I had my next lesson, my teacher brought along a copy of the score. It looked as diabolical as it sounded: the right and left hand staves were in different keys, and the rhythms were completely incomprehensible. However, I managed to read it, really liked it, and decided to try learning it.
Not only did I learn (and memorise) it, but I have since performed it several times (including in the eistedfford!)
So began my interest in the composer Alberto Ginastera, of whom I knew nothing at the time.
I can't really say very much about Ginastera, as the amount of repetoire by him that I'm familiar with is still relatively small. Instead, I'm just going to post links to my favorite pieces by him, and write a bit about each piece. I'll probably add to this list as I find new favorites :)
Danzas Argentinas (of course!) I now have the complete score of these little pieces, and have played through them (as well as hearing my teacher play them). One day I would very much like to learn all of them. The 2nd one reminds me of a well-known nursery rhyme or folk tune gone wrong... (interestingly, Ginastera used this same theme in one of his 'Piezas Infantiles')
Piezas Infantiles I looked up these pieces after reading about them, since I was curious to hear how Ginastera composed in his youth. They are absolutely gorgeous, and already show distinctive Ginastera trademarks.
Piano Sonata No. 1
1st movement
4th movement
Unfortunately there isn't a complete version of this on youtube that I like (I have Debora Halasz's recording of this, in my opinion it is the definitive one.) I discovered the last movement of this piece completely by accident while browsing youtube, and was absolutely blown away by it. I'd never heard anything like it (at least not in the realm of classical music), and I still haven't heard anything like it! The other movements are amazing as well.
I must confess I was heavily influenced (almost to the point of plagiarism) by the 5/8 descending fifths pattern in the first movement when writing a short piece for piano and percussion, earlier this year. It was just too good not to, erm, be influenced by!
Of course I bought the score for this fiendishly difficult sonata, in the hope that one day I'll manage to learn it... :S
Piano Concerto No. 1
1st movement
4th movement
I discovered this concerto through Emerson Lake & Palmer, who made a wonderful version of the last movement of it (which, incidentally, Ginastera himself thoroughly approved of.)
I dream of learning this concerto one day, but it will probably only ever be a dream.
Unfortunately I can't find the middle movements of this work on Youtube - at least, not played by João Carlos Martins.
Wednesday 15 August 2012
On memorising things
As a musician for whom memorising music is important, I'm fascinated by memory. As I've also realised, however, memorising isn't just for music.
Although my visual memory isn't very good, I have a highly developed memory for touch. I use this (muscle memory) to memorise music, but it can also take on a different and rather bizarre form. I often form a memory of a particular sensation, such as the pain of a badly bruised toe or the ache from the prick of a needle, and this can be randomly triggered so I actually experience that sensation again, long after it originally ocurred. I can't make this happen at will and I can't figure out what causes it, but it's quite fascinating.
A short while ago I decided to learn Russian, because I love Russian literature, music and so forth and thought it would interesting to learn the language too. I've previously dabbled in Latin and Greek (a long time ago!) and, more recently, French. What I've discovered is that there are lots of parallels between music and language.
Learning the Russian Cyrillic script (which consists of 33 letters!) is rather like learning to read written music; learning grammar is like learning theory - harmony, counterpoint and structure; and learning vocabulary is basically memorising. However, I'm a lot better at memorising music than I am at memorising words, and the reason is that there is a physical, spacial dimension to learning a piece of music.
I know that different pianists have very different techniques of memorising, and I can really only speak for myself when I say that I rely almost entirely on muscle memory. That is, I form a memory of the spatial relationships between intervals, the way the keyboard feels under my hands, how much I have to stretch my fingers or reach with my arms to hit the right notes, and so forth. Of course I also make conscious decisions - 'here I have to play this note and that will lead me on to this section' - that sort of thing, but these are only momentary, and help me get through 'change-over points' in the musical structure. Once I've memorised a piece, I don't have to think about it - it just plays itself, allowing me to put as much feeling and expression into it as I like. In fact, as soon as I start thinking about what I'm doing, I'm likely to forget. My fingers know where to go, and thinking is a distraction.
I've heard a lot of people say that muscle memory is unreliable, and shouldn't be used for long pieces. Some people seem to be able to visualise the score in their head, but I have a very poor visual memory and although I could easily sing any of the pieces I'm learning at the moment, knowing what a piece sounds like does not equate to knowing where to put your fingers.
I can't consciously memorise an extensive section of music, either: I do, however, do this for very small sections that I'm having trouble remembering because they signal an important harmonic change in an otherwise uniform pattern that could be repeated endlessly without ever moving on. I have been known to start 'looping' a section of music like this (a notable example being Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 12, which can pretty much go on forever if you keep taking the 'wrong turn'!)
I often find it helpful to say to myself 'I have to play a B flat here' or 'This progression is a series of arpeggiated diminished 7th chords' to memorise an elusive passage. Once I've got it right enough times, I develop a spacial memory of it anyway and no longer need to give myself clues.
Memorising Russian vocabulary is a completely different matter! Although I've switched my Facebook and Twitter accounts to Russian and stuck a picture of a Cyrillic computer keyboard to my laptop, I'm not really using Russian on a regular basis so I have to make an effort to ensure I can remember the words I've already learnt. A technique I've found useful is to think of an English word or set of words that sounds a bit like a Russian word I'm trying to memorise (the results are often hilarious.) Unfortunately this doesn't guarantee I'll remember what the word is meant to mean!
I'd be interested to know what techniques other people use to memorise things, whether it be music, a language, or something else entirely! And I'm particularly interested in what pianists think about muscle memory and whether it's a good thing or not.
Although my visual memory isn't very good, I have a highly developed memory for touch. I use this (muscle memory) to memorise music, but it can also take on a different and rather bizarre form. I often form a memory of a particular sensation, such as the pain of a badly bruised toe or the ache from the prick of a needle, and this can be randomly triggered so I actually experience that sensation again, long after it originally ocurred. I can't make this happen at will and I can't figure out what causes it, but it's quite fascinating.
A short while ago I decided to learn Russian, because I love Russian literature, music and so forth and thought it would interesting to learn the language too. I've previously dabbled in Latin and Greek (a long time ago!) and, more recently, French. What I've discovered is that there are lots of parallels between music and language.
Learning the Russian Cyrillic script (which consists of 33 letters!) is rather like learning to read written music; learning grammar is like learning theory - harmony, counterpoint and structure; and learning vocabulary is basically memorising. However, I'm a lot better at memorising music than I am at memorising words, and the reason is that there is a physical, spacial dimension to learning a piece of music.
I know that different pianists have very different techniques of memorising, and I can really only speak for myself when I say that I rely almost entirely on muscle memory. That is, I form a memory of the spatial relationships between intervals, the way the keyboard feels under my hands, how much I have to stretch my fingers or reach with my arms to hit the right notes, and so forth. Of course I also make conscious decisions - 'here I have to play this note and that will lead me on to this section' - that sort of thing, but these are only momentary, and help me get through 'change-over points' in the musical structure. Once I've memorised a piece, I don't have to think about it - it just plays itself, allowing me to put as much feeling and expression into it as I like. In fact, as soon as I start thinking about what I'm doing, I'm likely to forget. My fingers know where to go, and thinking is a distraction.
I've heard a lot of people say that muscle memory is unreliable, and shouldn't be used for long pieces. Some people seem to be able to visualise the score in their head, but I have a very poor visual memory and although I could easily sing any of the pieces I'm learning at the moment, knowing what a piece sounds like does not equate to knowing where to put your fingers.
I can't consciously memorise an extensive section of music, either: I do, however, do this for very small sections that I'm having trouble remembering because they signal an important harmonic change in an otherwise uniform pattern that could be repeated endlessly without ever moving on. I have been known to start 'looping' a section of music like this (a notable example being Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 12, which can pretty much go on forever if you keep taking the 'wrong turn'!)
I often find it helpful to say to myself 'I have to play a B flat here' or 'This progression is a series of arpeggiated diminished 7th chords' to memorise an elusive passage. Once I've got it right enough times, I develop a spacial memory of it anyway and no longer need to give myself clues.
Memorising Russian vocabulary is a completely different matter! Although I've switched my Facebook and Twitter accounts to Russian and stuck a picture of a Cyrillic computer keyboard to my laptop, I'm not really using Russian on a regular basis so I have to make an effort to ensure I can remember the words I've already learnt. A technique I've found useful is to think of an English word or set of words that sounds a bit like a Russian word I'm trying to memorise (the results are often hilarious.) Unfortunately this doesn't guarantee I'll remember what the word is meant to mean!
I'd be interested to know what techniques other people use to memorise things, whether it be music, a language, or something else entirely! And I'm particularly interested in what pianists think about muscle memory and whether it's a good thing or not.
Tuesday 10 July 2012
Composer series: Rachmaninoff
I have the Sydney International Piano Competition to thank for my obsession with Maurice Ravel. It was during the 2008 competition that I first heard a piece of Ravel which left a huge and lasting impression on me, and I've written a blog post about my discovery of that composer which you can find here.
At the time of writing, I'm thoroughly immersed in the 2012 SIPCA and once again this year's competition is gradually causing me to fall in love with another great composer whom a few years ago I knew very little about - Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Towards the end of 2011, I happened to hear Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto, in quite an unusual context (I heard it in an art gallery as part of an installation.) Up until that point, I'd never particularly liked the piano concerto genre. Orchestral sound was, and still is, one of my least favorite musical textures, and to me a piano concerto was far too orchestral to be pleasant to listen to. But when I heard Rach 2 for the first time, I guess something about it must have resonated with me, because I became very interested in it.
I visited that art gallery while on a road trip to visit my grandfather in Brisbane, and while I was staying with him I found a CD of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto and played it. By this time, I'd decided quite firmly that I wanted to learn that concerto - I even told Grandad so! I can't remember what it was about Rach 2 that made such an impression on me at the time, but later when I was back in Melbourne I bought the 2-piano score.
So began my interest in Rachmaninoff.
This increased when I heard his famous C-sharp minor prelude on ABC Classic FM. They were promoting a CD of Ashkenazy playing the complete Rach preludes. Ashkenazy is one of my heroes, and I instantly fell in love with the music - in fact, I was quite astonished by it. I must have heard that famous prelude before as it seemed familiar, but perhaps I'd never really listened to it properly. I immediately decided to order the CD (I discovered when it arrived that the booklet contained some lovely pictures of a very young Ashkenazy!)
When I listened to the complete preludes, I was struck by their originality. No other composer sounds like Rachmaninoff, just like no other composer sounds like Prokofiev. I'd never heard anything like it, and it touched me in much the same way Ravel does - like I was hearing music that expressed exactly what was in my soul. Even the harmonies and textures that Rachmaninoff uses sometimes remind me of Ravel. And I'm intrigued by Rachmaninoff's very distinctive way of using chromaticism to create subtle, sometimes barely perceptible harmonic changes that somehow tug at your heart and make you feel like you're either falling into an endless abyss or floating up to heaven, depending on whether the modulation is descending or ascending.
Over these past few days I've heard a lot of Rachmaninoff in the Sydney International Piano competition, and all of it has left such an impression on me that since yesterday I've downloaded and printed out the entire Etudes-Tableaux, op. 33 and op. 39, and the entire Moments Musicaux! I followed the score when one competitor played the entire Etudes-Tableaux op. 33, which was very informative. I've also tried sight-reading some of the Etudes and most of the Moments Musicaux, which was great fun.
I feel like every piece of Rachmaninoff I've heard played by the competitors in these past few days is haunting me, just like Ravel's Une Barque Sur L'ocean haunted me after I first heard it in SIPCA four years ago. Listening to this competition is a wonderful, immersive experience during which a young musician like me can disover extraordinary new repertoire, and I'm looking forward to Round 4 when the competitors will play chamber music. I'm especially eager to hear the Ravel piano trio (which I can still remember Tatiana Kolesova playing, beautifully, in 2008) and Shostakovich's trio.
To finish, here are some of my favorite pieces of Rachmaninoff to date (including Rach 2, which I am now learning the middle movement of). This list will undoubtedly grow, as I'm still discovering Rachmaninoff's music. At the moment it's all piano music as you can probably tell! However, I'm currently waiting for a CD of the complete Rach symphonies to arrive in the mail...
2nd Piano Concerto
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 1
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 5
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 8
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 2
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 3
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 5
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 8
Moment Musicaux No. 1
Moment Musicaux No. 2
Moment Musicaux No. 3
Prelude in B Minor Op. 32 No. 10
Prelude in G minor Op. 32 No. 12
Vocalise
Symphonic Dances - 1
The Isle of the Dead
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
Symphony No. 1 - 4th mvt
At the time of writing, I'm thoroughly immersed in the 2012 SIPCA and once again this year's competition is gradually causing me to fall in love with another great composer whom a few years ago I knew very little about - Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Towards the end of 2011, I happened to hear Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto, in quite an unusual context (I heard it in an art gallery as part of an installation.) Up until that point, I'd never particularly liked the piano concerto genre. Orchestral sound was, and still is, one of my least favorite musical textures, and to me a piano concerto was far too orchestral to be pleasant to listen to. But when I heard Rach 2 for the first time, I guess something about it must have resonated with me, because I became very interested in it.
I visited that art gallery while on a road trip to visit my grandfather in Brisbane, and while I was staying with him I found a CD of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto and played it. By this time, I'd decided quite firmly that I wanted to learn that concerto - I even told Grandad so! I can't remember what it was about Rach 2 that made such an impression on me at the time, but later when I was back in Melbourne I bought the 2-piano score.
So began my interest in Rachmaninoff.
This increased when I heard his famous C-sharp minor prelude on ABC Classic FM. They were promoting a CD of Ashkenazy playing the complete Rach preludes. Ashkenazy is one of my heroes, and I instantly fell in love with the music - in fact, I was quite astonished by it. I must have heard that famous prelude before as it seemed familiar, but perhaps I'd never really listened to it properly. I immediately decided to order the CD (I discovered when it arrived that the booklet contained some lovely pictures of a very young Ashkenazy!)
When I listened to the complete preludes, I was struck by their originality. No other composer sounds like Rachmaninoff, just like no other composer sounds like Prokofiev. I'd never heard anything like it, and it touched me in much the same way Ravel does - like I was hearing music that expressed exactly what was in my soul. Even the harmonies and textures that Rachmaninoff uses sometimes remind me of Ravel. And I'm intrigued by Rachmaninoff's very distinctive way of using chromaticism to create subtle, sometimes barely perceptible harmonic changes that somehow tug at your heart and make you feel like you're either falling into an endless abyss or floating up to heaven, depending on whether the modulation is descending or ascending.
Over these past few days I've heard a lot of Rachmaninoff in the Sydney International Piano competition, and all of it has left such an impression on me that since yesterday I've downloaded and printed out the entire Etudes-Tableaux, op. 33 and op. 39, and the entire Moments Musicaux! I followed the score when one competitor played the entire Etudes-Tableaux op. 33, which was very informative. I've also tried sight-reading some of the Etudes and most of the Moments Musicaux, which was great fun.
I feel like every piece of Rachmaninoff I've heard played by the competitors in these past few days is haunting me, just like Ravel's Une Barque Sur L'ocean haunted me after I first heard it in SIPCA four years ago. Listening to this competition is a wonderful, immersive experience during which a young musician like me can disover extraordinary new repertoire, and I'm looking forward to Round 4 when the competitors will play chamber music. I'm especially eager to hear the Ravel piano trio (which I can still remember Tatiana Kolesova playing, beautifully, in 2008) and Shostakovich's trio.
To finish, here are some of my favorite pieces of Rachmaninoff to date (including Rach 2, which I am now learning the middle movement of). This list will undoubtedly grow, as I'm still discovering Rachmaninoff's music. At the moment it's all piano music as you can probably tell! However, I'm currently waiting for a CD of the complete Rach symphonies to arrive in the mail...
2nd Piano Concerto
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 1
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 5
Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 8
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 2
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 3
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 5
Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 No. 8
Moment Musicaux No. 1
Moment Musicaux No. 2
Moment Musicaux No. 3
Prelude in B Minor Op. 32 No. 10
Prelude in G minor Op. 32 No. 12
Vocalise
Symphonic Dances - 1
The Isle of the Dead
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
Symphony No. 1 - 4th mvt
Saturday 23 June 2012
Learning Oiseaux Tristes
A few years ago - I'm not sure exactly when, but it seems like a long time ago - I started learning a piece of Ravel (with the guidance of my piano teacher.) Although Ravel is by far my favorite classical composer, most of his piano music is so hard that I hadn't been able to tackle any of it yet.
The piece I was learning was Oiseaux Tristes from the Miroirs. I can't remember why I chose this piece, but it is relatively short and quite slow, so it probably seemed less daunting to me than some of the other works. I was also very familiar with it from having listened to Robert Casadesus's Complete Piano Works of Ravel literally hundreds of times.
As a result, I plunged into learning the Oiseaux with a very clear idea of how it was meant to sound, and didn't need to pay much attention to a lot of the written-in time changes, dynamics and unusual rhythms because they were already firmly embedded in my mind. In fact, I only realised how strange the timing is quite recently while re-working the piece - I'd never noticed before that there are two time signatures in the right hand, for example!
So, I managed to learn almost all of Oiseaux Tristes, or at least familiarise myself with how it felt to play it. But there were two things that prevented me from working it up to a performance standard.
One was the very fast demisemiquaver passage that begins the climactic middle section of the piece. I'd be playing the whole thing through, going quite well, then I'd hit that passage and have to suddenly stop and haltingly play it at quarter-speed, completely disrupting the flow. I just couldn't figure out how anyone could play that passage - it seemed completely impossible to me, and I felt like giving up.
Slightly less terrifying, but still off-putting, was the 'ad lib' section near the end. More recently, I decided to learn this section properly, and succeeded. But that first demisemiquaver passage in the middle of the piece continued to stop me in my tracks every time.
A couple of weeks ago, my piano teacher Stephen announced that he was planning his annual students concert, and asked me what I wanted to play. I had no idea! There were only 3 weeks left till the concert, but I didn't want to just play all the same things I'd been working on for ages and already performed once or twice. I racked my brains.
One night I randomly decided to sit down at the piano and play through some of the pieces I particularly love, but haven't learnt properly, or can only play bits of. This is something I do every now and then to make sure I don't forget what I DO know of these works.
One of the things I played was the Ravel Miroirs. As I was playing Oiseaux Tristes, I suddenly thought, 'I could work this up and play it at my teacher's concert!' Why I thought of this I have no idea, but the idea stuck and at my next lesson I played the piece for Stephen, taking the opportunity to beg for assistance with the monstrous demisemiquaver passage that had been hindering my progress for so long.
'It's easy,' Stephen explained, demonstrating (while I shook my head in disbelief). 'You just put a thumb under here.'
I tried it and voila! It actually was easy. I was astonished! How could something so simple have eluded me for so long, meanwhile preventing me from learning this piece that I loved so much?! A week later I found I could play through the once-terrifying demisemiquaver passage without a glitch.
Today I performed Oiseaux Tristes for the first time, in my teacher's concert. It was part of a diverse selection that included Bach and Bartok. To start with I was only going to play the Bach from memory, but two days before the concert I tried playing the other pieces from memory and found that not only could I do it, but my performance was much better as a result. So I decided to play all three pieces from memory.
Performing the Ravel was quite a new experience for me. Usually I feel oddly detached when I'm performing, as if my fingers are a machine over which I have no control and are completely disconnected from my brain. I played a movement from Bach's 1st keyboard partita (which you can hear here) right before the Ravel, which made it even weirder, as I was definitely playing the Bach in 'auto-pilot' mode. But when I started playing the Ravel, I forgot about the audience, and the fact that I was performing - forgot about everything except the music. It was very intense and emotionally draining. While this is something that often happens when I'm playing at home without any performance pressure or nerves, it's never happened in a performance before.
Inevitably I didn't play it perfectly, and I would very much like to make a 'studio' recording of this work later on (along with a video) so I can get a perfect take. In the meantime, here is the recording of today's performance of Oiseaux Tristes......
(Below is a photo of me playing on the day. Judging from the position of my hands I'd guess that I'm playing the last few bars of Oiseaux Tristes, but I could be completely wrong!)
The piece I was learning was Oiseaux Tristes from the Miroirs. I can't remember why I chose this piece, but it is relatively short and quite slow, so it probably seemed less daunting to me than some of the other works. I was also very familiar with it from having listened to Robert Casadesus's Complete Piano Works of Ravel literally hundreds of times.
As a result, I plunged into learning the Oiseaux with a very clear idea of how it was meant to sound, and didn't need to pay much attention to a lot of the written-in time changes, dynamics and unusual rhythms because they were already firmly embedded in my mind. In fact, I only realised how strange the timing is quite recently while re-working the piece - I'd never noticed before that there are two time signatures in the right hand, for example!
So, I managed to learn almost all of Oiseaux Tristes, or at least familiarise myself with how it felt to play it. But there were two things that prevented me from working it up to a performance standard.
One was the very fast demisemiquaver passage that begins the climactic middle section of the piece. I'd be playing the whole thing through, going quite well, then I'd hit that passage and have to suddenly stop and haltingly play it at quarter-speed, completely disrupting the flow. I just couldn't figure out how anyone could play that passage - it seemed completely impossible to me, and I felt like giving up.
Slightly less terrifying, but still off-putting, was the 'ad lib' section near the end. More recently, I decided to learn this section properly, and succeeded. But that first demisemiquaver passage in the middle of the piece continued to stop me in my tracks every time.
A couple of weeks ago, my piano teacher Stephen announced that he was planning his annual students concert, and asked me what I wanted to play. I had no idea! There were only 3 weeks left till the concert, but I didn't want to just play all the same things I'd been working on for ages and already performed once or twice. I racked my brains.
One night I randomly decided to sit down at the piano and play through some of the pieces I particularly love, but haven't learnt properly, or can only play bits of. This is something I do every now and then to make sure I don't forget what I DO know of these works.
One of the things I played was the Ravel Miroirs. As I was playing Oiseaux Tristes, I suddenly thought, 'I could work this up and play it at my teacher's concert!' Why I thought of this I have no idea, but the idea stuck and at my next lesson I played the piece for Stephen, taking the opportunity to beg for assistance with the monstrous demisemiquaver passage that had been hindering my progress for so long.
'It's easy,' Stephen explained, demonstrating (while I shook my head in disbelief). 'You just put a thumb under here.'
I tried it and voila! It actually was easy. I was astonished! How could something so simple have eluded me for so long, meanwhile preventing me from learning this piece that I loved so much?! A week later I found I could play through the once-terrifying demisemiquaver passage without a glitch.
Today I performed Oiseaux Tristes for the first time, in my teacher's concert. It was part of a diverse selection that included Bach and Bartok. To start with I was only going to play the Bach from memory, but two days before the concert I tried playing the other pieces from memory and found that not only could I do it, but my performance was much better as a result. So I decided to play all three pieces from memory.
Performing the Ravel was quite a new experience for me. Usually I feel oddly detached when I'm performing, as if my fingers are a machine over which I have no control and are completely disconnected from my brain. I played a movement from Bach's 1st keyboard partita (which you can hear here) right before the Ravel, which made it even weirder, as I was definitely playing the Bach in 'auto-pilot' mode. But when I started playing the Ravel, I forgot about the audience, and the fact that I was performing - forgot about everything except the music. It was very intense and emotionally draining. While this is something that often happens when I'm playing at home without any performance pressure or nerves, it's never happened in a performance before.
Inevitably I didn't play it perfectly, and I would very much like to make a 'studio' recording of this work later on (along with a video) so I can get a perfect take. In the meantime, here is the recording of today's performance of Oiseaux Tristes......
(Below is a photo of me playing on the day. Judging from the position of my hands I'd guess that I'm playing the last few bars of Oiseaux Tristes, but I could be completely wrong!)
Thursday 17 May 2012
The 'correct' interpretation...or not
It seems to me that classical musicians are expected - by audiences,
teachers, and other musicians - to perform music in a stylistically
'correct' way. Therefore, a lush, romantic interpretation of Bach on the
piano is frowned upon, a performance of a piece by Chopin or
Mendelssohn where the melody doesn't take precedence is 'eccentric', and
heaven forbid that anyone play Debussy or Ravel without masses of
rubato! (just to clarify: Ravel actually discouraged excessive rubato in his music, claiming that musicians should play only what was indicated on the score.)
I often wonder what the point of being involved in music is if one can't bring something unique and individual to the field. I have nothing against the stylistically correct interpretation of a piece of music, but if musicians limit themselves to playing a piece in a particular style because they think it's the 'only' way, they are limiting their potential to truly understand and appreciate the piece.
They are also missing the opportunity of allowing the audience to hear the music differently; not everybody will understand a piece of music in exactly the same way, and if all a listener ever hears is a stylistically correct interpration which they dislike, there is a lot of wonderful repertoire that person may never be able to appreciate.
I can think of a few examples of this. One is that I had to learn to understand Bach's music in my own way (which I have blogged about). As I recently discovered, playing Bach the way I understand it also involves completely disregarding my piano teacher's preference about how Bach should be played!
Another example is also to do with the interpretation of Baroque music on the piano. Recently I went to see the young virtuoso pianist Bezhod Abduraimov performing at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The first item on his program was a series of sonatas by Scarlatti. I don't know Scarlatti very well so I was hearing those sonatas for the first time. It was an interesting experience, as he played them quite unlike I'd ever heard Baroque music played before - lush, intense and romantic, without being excessively so.
Although I usually prefer the clean, articulated 'typewriter' interpretation of Baroque music, I don't normally find Scarlatti very interesting and it was refreshing and enjoyable to hear it played in such a different way.
I recently attended the open Piano section of my local Eisteddfod. Several competitors played well-known pieces by Chopin - pieces so well-known, in fact, that I've come to really dislike them. One of these was a Barcarolle (the number of which I can't remember) and listening to this performance, I realised that I had never truly heard ALL THE NOTES in that piece before. Most pianists would draw attention to the melody and let all the other little notes in between drift into non-existence, but the Eisteddfod competitor played every note with great clarity.
Afterwards someone commented to me, 'I didn't think it was beautiful enough. I'm used to hearing a particular interpretation of that piece.' I felt like replying, 'So am I, and that's why I hate the piece!'
On a more serious note, however, I think it's a pity that Chopin - and many other composers - agonised over every note they wrote, only for half of them to be barely audible in performance because the musician decides the melody should take precedence.
The point of this post is that interpretation is highly subjective; for both the listener and the performer, it's a matter of taste. In my opinion, as long as someone can appreciate the music, it doesn't matter if it's not played in the 'correct' style. The fact that it's appreciated is enough.
I often wonder what the point of being involved in music is if one can't bring something unique and individual to the field. I have nothing against the stylistically correct interpretation of a piece of music, but if musicians limit themselves to playing a piece in a particular style because they think it's the 'only' way, they are limiting their potential to truly understand and appreciate the piece.
They are also missing the opportunity of allowing the audience to hear the music differently; not everybody will understand a piece of music in exactly the same way, and if all a listener ever hears is a stylistically correct interpration which they dislike, there is a lot of wonderful repertoire that person may never be able to appreciate.
I can think of a few examples of this. One is that I had to learn to understand Bach's music in my own way (which I have blogged about). As I recently discovered, playing Bach the way I understand it also involves completely disregarding my piano teacher's preference about how Bach should be played!
Another example is also to do with the interpretation of Baroque music on the piano. Recently I went to see the young virtuoso pianist Bezhod Abduraimov performing at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The first item on his program was a series of sonatas by Scarlatti. I don't know Scarlatti very well so I was hearing those sonatas for the first time. It was an interesting experience, as he played them quite unlike I'd ever heard Baroque music played before - lush, intense and romantic, without being excessively so.
Although I usually prefer the clean, articulated 'typewriter' interpretation of Baroque music, I don't normally find Scarlatti very interesting and it was refreshing and enjoyable to hear it played in such a different way.
I recently attended the open Piano section of my local Eisteddfod. Several competitors played well-known pieces by Chopin - pieces so well-known, in fact, that I've come to really dislike them. One of these was a Barcarolle (the number of which I can't remember) and listening to this performance, I realised that I had never truly heard ALL THE NOTES in that piece before. Most pianists would draw attention to the melody and let all the other little notes in between drift into non-existence, but the Eisteddfod competitor played every note with great clarity.
Afterwards someone commented to me, 'I didn't think it was beautiful enough. I'm used to hearing a particular interpretation of that piece.' I felt like replying, 'So am I, and that's why I hate the piece!'
On a more serious note, however, I think it's a pity that Chopin - and many other composers - agonised over every note they wrote, only for half of them to be barely audible in performance because the musician decides the melody should take precedence.
The point of this post is that interpretation is highly subjective; for both the listener and the performer, it's a matter of taste. In my opinion, as long as someone can appreciate the music, it doesn't matter if it's not played in the 'correct' style. The fact that it's appreciated is enough.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
A collection of beautiful full-length performances
One of my favorite things to do is go onto Youtube and discover new music, or new recordings of music I already know and love. I often like to favorite interesting-looking clips to listen to later - I sort of 'queue' music videos in my favorites.
One of the frustrating consequences of the way Youtube works, however, is that it can be very hard to find full performances that are not split up into 3 or 4 (sometimes more!) separate videos. So recently I decided to create a playlist to which I can add full-length recitals or pieces of music to when I find them. Then, whenever I feel like listening to a lengthy piece of music, I can just go the the playlist and take my pick of beautiful performances.
I thought it would be nice to share this collection with everyone. At present it consists of a diverse mixture of Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Reich, Ravel, Bach, Gershwin, Prokofiev and Shostakovich (all works of theirs which I like, obviously!) Some of the works are split into 2 or 3 parts, but most are single, long clips.
The playlist will definitely grow and change over time as I find new videos to add, and possibly as some videos are deleted. Although I can't guarantee the legality of some of these recordings' presence on Youtube, like the users who uploaded these videos I simply want to share what I think is a great resource with fellow music lovers and musicians on the Web. Happy listening!
Here is a link to the playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2940B24A7CAE74A&feature=mh_lolz
One of the frustrating consequences of the way Youtube works, however, is that it can be very hard to find full performances that are not split up into 3 or 4 (sometimes more!) separate videos. So recently I decided to create a playlist to which I can add full-length recitals or pieces of music to when I find them. Then, whenever I feel like listening to a lengthy piece of music, I can just go the the playlist and take my pick of beautiful performances.
I thought it would be nice to share this collection with everyone. At present it consists of a diverse mixture of Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Reich, Ravel, Bach, Gershwin, Prokofiev and Shostakovich (all works of theirs which I like, obviously!) Some of the works are split into 2 or 3 parts, but most are single, long clips.
The playlist will definitely grow and change over time as I find new videos to add, and possibly as some videos are deleted. Although I can't guarantee the legality of some of these recordings' presence on Youtube, like the users who uploaded these videos I simply want to share what I think is a great resource with fellow music lovers and musicians on the Web. Happy listening!
Here is a link to the playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2940B24A7CAE74A&feature=mh_lolz
Monday 2 April 2012
Performing Bach's St John Passion: a transformative experience
You might be aware, if you've followed my twitter posts over the past 2 months or so, that I've been rehearsing with the Melbourne Bach Choir in the lead up to their first performance of Bach's St John Passion.
It took a lot of hard work, but it was the sort of hard work that's really enjoyable, and it all culminated in two performances at St Mary Star of the Sea in West Melbourne last week. Due to some unfortunate incidents, the first performance, on Friday night, was a bit of a let-down, but the performance on Sunday (yesterday) went beautifully.
We performed the Passion in English, and I'm glad we did, although I prefer the German because it's less clumsy. Singing in English made it possible for me - and hopefully everyone else, including the audience - to immediately grasp the drama and tragedy of the work. Rehearsing my part at home by singing along with a recording, I was able to understand the story and how the music relates to that, and the result was often very moving...although I have to admit, by the time I learnt the music, I'd gone over it so many times it had kind of lost its emotional hold on me!
The St John Passion is the most technically difficult thing I have ever sung. I sang parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio with another choir last year, but much as I loved it, it just doesn't compare with the insane difficulty of the choruses in the St John Passion. It's been amazing singing such beautiful music in such a great choir, and especially under the direction of the wonderful Rick Prahkoff. It's also been enriching in several different ways, as I discovered today while playing the piano.
I haven't really practised the piano 'properly' for about two weeks, as I've been busy 1) rehearsing with the Bach Choir and 2) writing the 3rd movement of my Piano Trio. Today I sat down and played through Bach's Keyboard Partita No. 1 for the first time in two weeks. I made a few discoveries. The first one is a bit irrelevant: my hands appear to have grown substantially - what feels like an octave, and used to be an octave, is now a ninth (I rely a lot on touch memory).
The second discovery is that somehow, singing the St John Passion has completely changed the way I play Bach, in a good way. Not only am I more focused and a lot tighter playing the really technical, fast stuff, but I feel like I have a better understanding of phrasing and expression. A lot of sticky spots in the Partita that have been troubling me for weeks have simply resolved themselves and I no longer have any trouble with them at all.
I also discovered I've got my agility back. I've been doing metronome practise on some of the movements of the Partita to improve my accuracy and muscle memory, and although in the long term metronome practise can be extremely useful, I tend to find I lose all agility and lightness of touch after using the metronome, often for days on end. This isn't a good thing when you're aiming for a similar approach to that of Glenn Gould!
All in all, it's been an incredible experience performing with the Bach Choir, and I'm really looking forward to being involved in their future performances. Thankyou so much to all the other choir members, the orchestra, soloists, and Rick for making it happen!
EDIT: As of October 2012, I have discovered that someone actually videoed the concert and it's on youtube! Here is the link
It took a lot of hard work, but it was the sort of hard work that's really enjoyable, and it all culminated in two performances at St Mary Star of the Sea in West Melbourne last week. Due to some unfortunate incidents, the first performance, on Friday night, was a bit of a let-down, but the performance on Sunday (yesterday) went beautifully.
We performed the Passion in English, and I'm glad we did, although I prefer the German because it's less clumsy. Singing in English made it possible for me - and hopefully everyone else, including the audience - to immediately grasp the drama and tragedy of the work. Rehearsing my part at home by singing along with a recording, I was able to understand the story and how the music relates to that, and the result was often very moving...although I have to admit, by the time I learnt the music, I'd gone over it so many times it had kind of lost its emotional hold on me!
The St John Passion is the most technically difficult thing I have ever sung. I sang parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio with another choir last year, but much as I loved it, it just doesn't compare with the insane difficulty of the choruses in the St John Passion. It's been amazing singing such beautiful music in such a great choir, and especially under the direction of the wonderful Rick Prahkoff. It's also been enriching in several different ways, as I discovered today while playing the piano.
I haven't really practised the piano 'properly' for about two weeks, as I've been busy 1) rehearsing with the Bach Choir and 2) writing the 3rd movement of my Piano Trio. Today I sat down and played through Bach's Keyboard Partita No. 1 for the first time in two weeks. I made a few discoveries. The first one is a bit irrelevant: my hands appear to have grown substantially - what feels like an octave, and used to be an octave, is now a ninth (I rely a lot on touch memory).
The second discovery is that somehow, singing the St John Passion has completely changed the way I play Bach, in a good way. Not only am I more focused and a lot tighter playing the really technical, fast stuff, but I feel like I have a better understanding of phrasing and expression. A lot of sticky spots in the Partita that have been troubling me for weeks have simply resolved themselves and I no longer have any trouble with them at all.
I also discovered I've got my agility back. I've been doing metronome practise on some of the movements of the Partita to improve my accuracy and muscle memory, and although in the long term metronome practise can be extremely useful, I tend to find I lose all agility and lightness of touch after using the metronome, often for days on end. This isn't a good thing when you're aiming for a similar approach to that of Glenn Gould!
All in all, it's been an incredible experience performing with the Bach Choir, and I'm really looking forward to being involved in their future performances. Thankyou so much to all the other choir members, the orchestra, soloists, and Rick for making it happen!
EDIT: As of October 2012, I have discovered that someone actually videoed the concert and it's on youtube! Here is the link
Friday 9 March 2012
Practice techniques...
I often see pianists discussing practice techniques on Twitter or their blogs. I was thinking about the different ways people practice today while I was practicing, and decided to write a blog post about it.
I use different techniques depending on what I'm aiming for in practicing, and the type of music I'm playing:
Technical work
Due to AMEB exams, I have to do a lot of technical work. Although I hate scales and arpeggios, I've figured out a practice schedule that works well for me and which I use as a warm-up, along with any exercises set by my teacher.
I play scales hands together, three times (each with a different rhythm) and then normally. Then I'll go through the different versions - p and f, crescendo/diminuendo, staccato and contrary motion. I have to perfect each version of a scale (including all the rhythms) before I move on.
Arpeggios are similar - I practice each hand separately, playing them with different rhythms first, and then normally. Finally I put the two hands together. This process is almost as obsessive as metronome practice...
Metronome practice
This is the most obsessive and mechanical sort of practice I do. It's a technique I only use for Bach, Mozart, Haydn, the more strictly rythmic works of Ravel, and 20th century pieces. I almost never do metronome practice on Romantic pieces - I've tried it and it doesn't work for me at all.
Before I start the actual metronome work, I spend a couple of days (sometimes longer) learning the notes so I'm not sight-reading when it comes to practicing with the metronome, and also writing in fingerings. I have to be able to play the whole thing accurately at a slow tempo before I can actually get any further.
I then set the metronome to a slow speed (sometimes it's slower than half my intended performance speed, sometimes faster). Depending on the nature of the music, I might practice each hand separately first before practising with hands together (with contrapuntal music like Bach, it's essential that I get to practising with hands together ASAP.) I don't allow myself to move on to the next step on the metronome, or to move to a different hand, until I'm perfectly accurate. This process is repeated for each step up the metronome.
I usually manage between 1 and 3 steps up in speed per practice session, but that really depends on how much progress I'm making.
Metronome practice is one of those things I hate sometimes, but if I'm in the right mood, I actually really enjoy it, especially when I try playing the piece at full speed and it's improved so much.
Non-metronome practice
I use this technique with Romantic and Impressionist music, like Chopin, Mendelssohn and most Ravel. I start by just playing slowly and writing fingerings and notes in, a lot like the first stage of my metronome practice. If it's quite a technical piece, like the Chopin etudes, I usually do very slow, bar-by-bar practice to ensure I have all the notes under my fingers, and gradually speed up. But with pieces that have less of a solid structure (i.e. not just a heap of arpeggios and broken chords) I can usually manage to play the piece at full speed with very little slow practice, once I know the notes. Usually it's very specific, short passages that trip me up in these kind of pieces, so I might work specifically on certain passages to get them under my fingers.
Interpretative practice
I usually only do this sort of practice once I'm completely confident playing a piece at full speed, and often once I've learnt it from memory. This is the stage where I start working on how I want to interpret a piece. Often that involves overcoming new technical hurdles as well, so it can be quite involved.
On average I do 1 and a half to 2 hours of practice each day (well, I try to practice each day, but I don't always manage it!) I think the most practice I've ever done in one day is 4 or 5 hours straight. Sometimes I just get carried away and don't want to stop.
I'd be very interested to hear about other pianist's techniques for learning pieces...
I use different techniques depending on what I'm aiming for in practicing, and the type of music I'm playing:
Technical work
Due to AMEB exams, I have to do a lot of technical work. Although I hate scales and arpeggios, I've figured out a practice schedule that works well for me and which I use as a warm-up, along with any exercises set by my teacher.
I play scales hands together, three times (each with a different rhythm) and then normally. Then I'll go through the different versions - p and f, crescendo/diminuendo, staccato and contrary motion. I have to perfect each version of a scale (including all the rhythms) before I move on.
Arpeggios are similar - I practice each hand separately, playing them with different rhythms first, and then normally. Finally I put the two hands together. This process is almost as obsessive as metronome practice...
Metronome practice
This is the most obsessive and mechanical sort of practice I do. It's a technique I only use for Bach, Mozart, Haydn, the more strictly rythmic works of Ravel, and 20th century pieces. I almost never do metronome practice on Romantic pieces - I've tried it and it doesn't work for me at all.
Before I start the actual metronome work, I spend a couple of days (sometimes longer) learning the notes so I'm not sight-reading when it comes to practicing with the metronome, and also writing in fingerings. I have to be able to play the whole thing accurately at a slow tempo before I can actually get any further.
I then set the metronome to a slow speed (sometimes it's slower than half my intended performance speed, sometimes faster). Depending on the nature of the music, I might practice each hand separately first before practising with hands together (with contrapuntal music like Bach, it's essential that I get to practising with hands together ASAP.) I don't allow myself to move on to the next step on the metronome, or to move to a different hand, until I'm perfectly accurate. This process is repeated for each step up the metronome.
I usually manage between 1 and 3 steps up in speed per practice session, but that really depends on how much progress I'm making.
Metronome practice is one of those things I hate sometimes, but if I'm in the right mood, I actually really enjoy it, especially when I try playing the piece at full speed and it's improved so much.
Non-metronome practice
I use this technique with Romantic and Impressionist music, like Chopin, Mendelssohn and most Ravel. I start by just playing slowly and writing fingerings and notes in, a lot like the first stage of my metronome practice. If it's quite a technical piece, like the Chopin etudes, I usually do very slow, bar-by-bar practice to ensure I have all the notes under my fingers, and gradually speed up. But with pieces that have less of a solid structure (i.e. not just a heap of arpeggios and broken chords) I can usually manage to play the piece at full speed with very little slow practice, once I know the notes. Usually it's very specific, short passages that trip me up in these kind of pieces, so I might work specifically on certain passages to get them under my fingers.
Interpretative practice
I usually only do this sort of practice once I'm completely confident playing a piece at full speed, and often once I've learnt it from memory. This is the stage where I start working on how I want to interpret a piece. Often that involves overcoming new technical hurdles as well, so it can be quite involved.
On average I do 1 and a half to 2 hours of practice each day (well, I try to practice each day, but I don't always manage it!) I think the most practice I've ever done in one day is 4 or 5 hours straight. Sometimes I just get carried away and don't want to stop.
I'd be very interested to hear about other pianist's techniques for learning pieces...
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Composer series: J.S. Bach
Growing up surrounded by people deeply involved in Baroque and Renaissance music, I've been aware of the reverence many musicians feel towards Bach for as long as I can remember. But it's only relatively recently that I have come to truly appreciate Bach myself.
All my life I've heard people saying things about Bach like 'His music encompasses the universe,' and 'The whole of life is summed up in his music,' and...well, you get the gist.
And I just couldn't relate. When I started to have piano lessons and began learning works by Bach, I began to hear even more of this sort of thing. And although I know it wasn't the case, at the time I felt like everyone expected me to understand Bach in the same way they did. I couldn't, so I had trouble interpreting his works, and ended up feeling that I didn't actually like Bach very much.
By the time I'd learnt a work, I would have come to absolutely loathe it just from having played it too much. So I would start playing the piece ten times faster than normal speed, just because I could, and because it alleviated the boredom. Eventually I would drop that piece altogether. When I played Bach at Eisteddffords, the adjudicators never approved of my interpretation, and I always felt a little bit silly getting up on stage and playing a 1-minute, relatively simple movement of a Partita while all the other competitors were playing Rachmaninoff and Debussy preludes and other, um, difficult music.
It wasn't very encouraging.
I can't really pinpoint when my 'Bach epiphany' occurred, but I think it was probably when I started learning the Capriccio from Partita 2 in the middle of 2011. I'd wanted to learn the Capriccio for a long time because it's a piece my piano teacher always plays (from memory) when he's trying out a keyboard instrument, and I liked it.
I found the Capriccio quite technically challenging at first, and I think it was the technicality that made me realise what it was I wanted to express when I played Bach. I have a collection of Glenn Gould's recordings which I started listening to more frequently around this time, and Gould's incredibly precise, mechanical playing was another thing that really changed the way I viewed Bach. (Gould is truly an inspiration - I now aspire to a similar sound myself, although I don't aim for my interpretation to be identical to his.)
So - to summarise how I've come to appreciate Bach: he brought the complexity of music to a high point which I don't think has ever been surpassed, and technicality and complexity is, to me, one of the most beautiful things in music. I've heard people say that Bach is 'mathematical' like it's a bad thing, but I love Bach for exactly that reason. (I might add though, that except in music, I hate maths...which is kind of odd now I think about it!)
At the moment, I'm in the middle of learning the first keyboard Partita, planning to learn the second, and at the end of this month I'll be in a performance of Bach's incredible, stunning, amazing, complex, beautiful, dramatic (I don't have enough adjectives!) St John Passion, singing as an alto in the Melbourne Bach Choir. I can't wait!
Finally, as promised when I started this series of posts, here are links to Youtube recordings of some of my favorite Bach works. I had trouble finding some of these pieces, and as a result I've had to leave out a few movements I would otherwise have included.
Sinfonia 1
Invention & Sinfonia 13
Sinfonia 15 (I love these outtakes...Gould is such a perfectionist. I would have linked to the final recording but couldn't find it)
Keyboard Partita 1 - Corrente (this recording is incomplete but I can't find another version.)
- Allemande
- Giga
Keyboard Partita 2 - Capriccio (this recording is also incomplete)
- Allemande
St John Passion - Opening chorus
St John Passion - some of my other favorite parts
St John Passion - more of my favorite parts (inc. the 'chromatic' choruses)
Christmas Oratorio - Fallt mit Danken
Christmas Oratorio - Ehre sei dir gott
PS: A while ago I read an amazing biography of Glenn Gould, which completely changed and, I think, enhanced my appreciation of him as a musician. You can find it here. Although this has nothing to do with Bach directly, I think it might be interesting to some pianists :)
All my life I've heard people saying things about Bach like 'His music encompasses the universe,' and 'The whole of life is summed up in his music,' and...well, you get the gist.
And I just couldn't relate. When I started to have piano lessons and began learning works by Bach, I began to hear even more of this sort of thing. And although I know it wasn't the case, at the time I felt like everyone expected me to understand Bach in the same way they did. I couldn't, so I had trouble interpreting his works, and ended up feeling that I didn't actually like Bach very much.
By the time I'd learnt a work, I would have come to absolutely loathe it just from having played it too much. So I would start playing the piece ten times faster than normal speed, just because I could, and because it alleviated the boredom. Eventually I would drop that piece altogether. When I played Bach at Eisteddffords, the adjudicators never approved of my interpretation, and I always felt a little bit silly getting up on stage and playing a 1-minute, relatively simple movement of a Partita while all the other competitors were playing Rachmaninoff and Debussy preludes and other, um, difficult music.
It wasn't very encouraging.
I can't really pinpoint when my 'Bach epiphany' occurred, but I think it was probably when I started learning the Capriccio from Partita 2 in the middle of 2011. I'd wanted to learn the Capriccio for a long time because it's a piece my piano teacher always plays (from memory) when he's trying out a keyboard instrument, and I liked it.
I found the Capriccio quite technically challenging at first, and I think it was the technicality that made me realise what it was I wanted to express when I played Bach. I have a collection of Glenn Gould's recordings which I started listening to more frequently around this time, and Gould's incredibly precise, mechanical playing was another thing that really changed the way I viewed Bach. (Gould is truly an inspiration - I now aspire to a similar sound myself, although I don't aim for my interpretation to be identical to his.)
So - to summarise how I've come to appreciate Bach: he brought the complexity of music to a high point which I don't think has ever been surpassed, and technicality and complexity is, to me, one of the most beautiful things in music. I've heard people say that Bach is 'mathematical' like it's a bad thing, but I love Bach for exactly that reason. (I might add though, that except in music, I hate maths...which is kind of odd now I think about it!)
At the moment, I'm in the middle of learning the first keyboard Partita, planning to learn the second, and at the end of this month I'll be in a performance of Bach's incredible, stunning, amazing, complex, beautiful, dramatic (I don't have enough adjectives!) St John Passion, singing as an alto in the Melbourne Bach Choir. I can't wait!
Finally, as promised when I started this series of posts, here are links to Youtube recordings of some of my favorite Bach works. I had trouble finding some of these pieces, and as a result I've had to leave out a few movements I would otherwise have included.
Sinfonia 1
Invention & Sinfonia 13
Sinfonia 15 (I love these outtakes...Gould is such a perfectionist. I would have linked to the final recording but couldn't find it)
Keyboard Partita 1 - Corrente (this recording is incomplete but I can't find another version.)
- Allemande
- Giga
Keyboard Partita 2 - Capriccio (this recording is also incomplete)
- Allemande
St John Passion - Opening chorus
St John Passion - some of my other favorite parts
St John Passion - more of my favorite parts (inc. the 'chromatic' choruses)
Christmas Oratorio - Fallt mit Danken
Christmas Oratorio - Ehre sei dir gott
PS: A while ago I read an amazing biography of Glenn Gould, which completely changed and, I think, enhanced my appreciation of him as a musician. You can find it here. Although this has nothing to do with Bach directly, I think it might be interesting to some pianists :)
Sunday 4 March 2012
Composer series: Ravel
If you've followed anything I've posted on the web about music you might know that my absolute all-time favorite composer is Maurice Ravel. This is the first in what will hopefully be a short series of posts about various classical composers.
The first time I was aware of hearing a piece of Ravel was during the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2008. I distinctly remember looking up what the piece was on the SIPCA website because it made such an impression on me. It was Une barque sur le ocean from Miroirs, played by a very good pianist whom I've since seen in recital, Hoang Pham.
After I'd heard it, Une barque sur le ocean haunted me for days on end. I remember having it stuck in my head one night and not being able to sleep because it was so beautiful.
I don't recall specifically looking into Ravel's music after this incident (I have no idea why I didn't, but there you go.) However, over the years I found that I would often hear a work of transcendental (to use a fancy but very apt word) beauty on the radio or somewhere else, and when I discovered what it was, it would turn out to be Ravel.
At this point I still tended to get Debussy and Ravel confused, so whenever I heard a piece which I identified as impressionist in style, I wasn't sure who the composer was. But the fact is, those 'transcendental' pieces, when I heard them, always turned out to be by Ravel. The more I got to know of Ravel's works, the more I realised how completely different his compositions were to those of his contemporary, and that Ravel touched something in me that Debussy couldn't. (I'm inclined to write a whole separate post on the comparison between these two composers, as I find it fascinating.)
Listening to Robert Casadesus's Complete piano works of Ravel ensured I became familiar with every piece of piano music Ravel ever wrote, and Youtube has helped me to discover the rest of his compositions. I have also read a biography of Ravel that is quite interesting because it is arranged chronologically into chapters documenting what he wrote during certain years (although I was annoyed that Tzigane, the incredible virtuosic work for violin, only got a very brief mention!) If you're interested in reading it, the biography is called Maurice Ravel: Variations on His Life and Work by Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt (Translated from the German by Samuel R. Rosenbaum.)
Finally, here are of some of my favorite pieces of Ravel, with links to recordings on Youtube (I didn't embed them because it was going to make this post too long.) In each case I chose my favorite interpretation of that specific work, and I've chosen to link to my favorite movement where I couldn't find a complete version of a suite (you should be able to find the rest of the movements in the related videos.) All of the piano works on this list I have at least tried to play...I kind of have this dream of recording the complete Ravel piano works one day - I don't know if it will ever happen.
Jeux D'eau
Miroirs
Sonatine
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Gaspard de la Nuit
Ma Mere L'Oye
Piano Trio (please watch all of the videos for this!)
Bolero
Trois Chansons
The first time I was aware of hearing a piece of Ravel was during the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2008. I distinctly remember looking up what the piece was on the SIPCA website because it made such an impression on me. It was Une barque sur le ocean from Miroirs, played by a very good pianist whom I've since seen in recital, Hoang Pham.
After I'd heard it, Une barque sur le ocean haunted me for days on end. I remember having it stuck in my head one night and not being able to sleep because it was so beautiful.
I don't recall specifically looking into Ravel's music after this incident (I have no idea why I didn't, but there you go.) However, over the years I found that I would often hear a work of transcendental (to use a fancy but very apt word) beauty on the radio or somewhere else, and when I discovered what it was, it would turn out to be Ravel.
At this point I still tended to get Debussy and Ravel confused, so whenever I heard a piece which I identified as impressionist in style, I wasn't sure who the composer was. But the fact is, those 'transcendental' pieces, when I heard them, always turned out to be by Ravel. The more I got to know of Ravel's works, the more I realised how completely different his compositions were to those of his contemporary, and that Ravel touched something in me that Debussy couldn't. (I'm inclined to write a whole separate post on the comparison between these two composers, as I find it fascinating.)
Listening to Robert Casadesus's Complete piano works of Ravel ensured I became familiar with every piece of piano music Ravel ever wrote, and Youtube has helped me to discover the rest of his compositions. I have also read a biography of Ravel that is quite interesting because it is arranged chronologically into chapters documenting what he wrote during certain years (although I was annoyed that Tzigane, the incredible virtuosic work for violin, only got a very brief mention!) If you're interested in reading it, the biography is called Maurice Ravel: Variations on His Life and Work by Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt (Translated from the German by Samuel R. Rosenbaum.)
Finally, here are of some of my favorite pieces of Ravel, with links to recordings on Youtube (I didn't embed them because it was going to make this post too long.) In each case I chose my favorite interpretation of that specific work, and I've chosen to link to my favorite movement where I couldn't find a complete version of a suite (you should be able to find the rest of the movements in the related videos.) All of the piano works on this list I have at least tried to play...I kind of have this dream of recording the complete Ravel piano works one day - I don't know if it will ever happen.
Jeux D'eau
Miroirs
Sonatine
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Gaspard de la Nuit
Ma Mere L'Oye
Piano Trio (please watch all of the videos for this!)
Bolero
Trois Chansons
A series of composers
I've been thinking that a good way to start blogging might be to write about some of my favorite composers, with links to recordings of some of their works, something about what pieces of theirs I play, how I discovered or 'got into' their music, and anything else interesting about them, like good biographies I've read etc.
So I'm going to start with my all-time favorite composers, Maurice Ravel and J.S. Bach, and see how it goes from there. Wish me luck with this little project! :)
So I'm going to start with my all-time favorite composers, Maurice Ravel and J.S. Bach, and see how it goes from there. Wish me luck with this little project! :)
My CD collection
As I really have no idea to start with blogging, but want to get posting as soon as possible, I thought I'd begin with something easy...a list of my favorite classical music CDs. I actually have a LOT more CDs than this (literally hundreds) but these are the ones that I listen to most frequently because they are the most relevant to the music I play or am interested in. I might add to this list as I discover more CDs I love.
By the way, I strongly reccomend any of the CDs on this list to anyone interested in classical music, especially the piano repertoire (which is mostly what they are). I've included links to where you can buy each of these discs.
Here goes!
Glenn Gould: Bach - The well-tempered Clavier II (2 discs)
Glenn Gould: Bach - Partitas 1, 2 & 3
Glenn Gould: Bach - Two and Three Part Inventions
As you can probably tell I am a big fan of Gould, at least when he plays Bach. I don't really feel the need to write something separate about each of these CDS. Suffice to say that Gould plays Bach the way I understand Bach. I hope to extrapolate on how I feel about Bach in a future blog post...after all, he is an incredibly important composer!
Beaux Arts Trio: Ravel & Chausson - Piano Trios
I first heard the Ravel Piano Trio in SIPCA 2008. I didn't know what it was then, although it struck me as being beautiful and completely unlike anything I'd ever heard. My mother dug this CD out of her collection and I have listened to it many times since. The Beaux Arts Trio are incredible musicians and play this trio better than anyone. The Chausson trio is also a beautiful piece of music and I think it complements the Ravel.
Robert Casadesus: Ravel - Complete Piano Works (2 discs)
I don't even know what to say about this CD. It's the music of my favorite composer in the whole world, played absolutely perfectly. I have listened to this too many times to count. Although I prefer other pianists playing certain piano works of Ravel (for instance, Pogorelich is the only pianist who I feel does Gaspard de la Nuit justice), I still always return to this CD when I'm learning a piece. It's the definitive Ravel piano works recording.
I feel I should mention that Gaby Casadesus, Robert's wife, makes an appearence on this CD, playing the piano duet works. She is also an incredible pianist.
Orchestre de Paris (conducted by Jean Martinon): Ravel - Orchestral Works
A couple of times I have heard Ravel's Bolero played on the radio, and the version they play has always been the only version I really liked. I decided to find out who was performing it. It was the Paris Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon. When I found out there was a whole CD of the Paris Orchestra playing Ravel's orchestral works I immediately had to get it. Apart from the Bolero - which, no matter what your opinion may be, I think is beautiful - my favorite track on this CD is the orchestrated version of the Forlane from Le Tombeau de Couperin.
Quartetto Italiano: Ravel & Debussy - String Quartets
I quite randomly picked this CD up for $10 at JB Hi-Fi one day. I'd heard some of the Ravel string quartet in the film Mrs. Carey's Concert, and really wanted to hear the whole thing. This turned out to be a great CD and it was interesting to also hear the Debussy quartet. I'm always fascinated by how different Debussy is to Ravel (more on this in a future blog post?)
Nelson Freire: Debussy
I've had this CD for quite a while and used to love listening to it in the background during the day. I don't listen to much Debussy any more, but this is a stunning recording. Nelson Freire really understands Debussy and plays superbly. I would definitely reccomend this CD to anyone wanting a collection of Debussy's well known works (preludes, clair de lune, children's corner.)
Alexander Gavryluk & SSO: Prokofiev - Piano Concertos 1, 2 & 4
In case you don't know about him, Alexander Gavrylyuk is a brilliant young Ukrainian pianist. He's one of favorite pianists - his playing is just perfect. I've been to 2 of his recitals and bought this CD at one of them (I got an autograph!)
I first heard Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto played by Yefim Bronfman and fell in love with it then, so I was incredibly excited when I found out Gavrylyuk had recorded it.
Ingrid Haebler: Schubert - Piano works (boxed set)
I was given this by my piano teacher and it's just beautiful.
Vladimir Ashkenazy: Chopin - Complete solo piano works (boxed set)
Nobody can play Chopin like Ashkenazy. Actually, nobody can play like Ashkenazy. Enough said. I think I've probably played the Etudes discs from this boxed set more than any of the other 7 or so discs.
Vladimir Ashkenazy: Rachmaninov - Preludes
I heard a few tracks off this disc played on the ABC a while ago and immediately had to get it. I wasn't very familiar with the Rach Preludes, and I just fell in love with them when I heard this CD.
Martha Argerich: The Art of Martha Argerich (3 discs)
I picked this up at my local bookshop because I love Argerich's playing and didn't have any CDs of hers. This set includes a heap of concertos as well as solo works, and comes with a beautiful booklet full of photos of Martha and previous album covers. It's really special.
Bach Collegium of Japan: Bach - St John Passion
I'm currently learning this so it's getting listened to a lot. The soloists are beautiful, as are all the other performers...and the music.
By the way, I strongly reccomend any of the CDs on this list to anyone interested in classical music, especially the piano repertoire (which is mostly what they are). I've included links to where you can buy each of these discs.
Here goes!
Glenn Gould: Bach - The well-tempered Clavier II (2 discs)
Glenn Gould: Bach - Partitas 1, 2 & 3
Glenn Gould: Bach - Two and Three Part Inventions
As you can probably tell I am a big fan of Gould, at least when he plays Bach. I don't really feel the need to write something separate about each of these CDS. Suffice to say that Gould plays Bach the way I understand Bach. I hope to extrapolate on how I feel about Bach in a future blog post...after all, he is an incredibly important composer!
Beaux Arts Trio: Ravel & Chausson - Piano Trios
I first heard the Ravel Piano Trio in SIPCA 2008. I didn't know what it was then, although it struck me as being beautiful and completely unlike anything I'd ever heard. My mother dug this CD out of her collection and I have listened to it many times since. The Beaux Arts Trio are incredible musicians and play this trio better than anyone. The Chausson trio is also a beautiful piece of music and I think it complements the Ravel.
Robert Casadesus: Ravel - Complete Piano Works (2 discs)
I don't even know what to say about this CD. It's the music of my favorite composer in the whole world, played absolutely perfectly. I have listened to this too many times to count. Although I prefer other pianists playing certain piano works of Ravel (for instance, Pogorelich is the only pianist who I feel does Gaspard de la Nuit justice), I still always return to this CD when I'm learning a piece. It's the definitive Ravel piano works recording.
I feel I should mention that Gaby Casadesus, Robert's wife, makes an appearence on this CD, playing the piano duet works. She is also an incredible pianist.
Orchestre de Paris (conducted by Jean Martinon): Ravel - Orchestral Works
A couple of times I have heard Ravel's Bolero played on the radio, and the version they play has always been the only version I really liked. I decided to find out who was performing it. It was the Paris Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon. When I found out there was a whole CD of the Paris Orchestra playing Ravel's orchestral works I immediately had to get it. Apart from the Bolero - which, no matter what your opinion may be, I think is beautiful - my favorite track on this CD is the orchestrated version of the Forlane from Le Tombeau de Couperin.
Quartetto Italiano: Ravel & Debussy - String Quartets
I quite randomly picked this CD up for $10 at JB Hi-Fi one day. I'd heard some of the Ravel string quartet in the film Mrs. Carey's Concert, and really wanted to hear the whole thing. This turned out to be a great CD and it was interesting to also hear the Debussy quartet. I'm always fascinated by how different Debussy is to Ravel (more on this in a future blog post?)
Nelson Freire: Debussy
I've had this CD for quite a while and used to love listening to it in the background during the day. I don't listen to much Debussy any more, but this is a stunning recording. Nelson Freire really understands Debussy and plays superbly. I would definitely reccomend this CD to anyone wanting a collection of Debussy's well known works (preludes, clair de lune, children's corner.)
Alexander Gavryluk & SSO: Prokofiev - Piano Concertos 1, 2 & 4
In case you don't know about him, Alexander Gavrylyuk is a brilliant young Ukrainian pianist. He's one of favorite pianists - his playing is just perfect. I've been to 2 of his recitals and bought this CD at one of them (I got an autograph!)
I first heard Prokofiev's 3rd piano concerto played by Yefim Bronfman and fell in love with it then, so I was incredibly excited when I found out Gavrylyuk had recorded it.
Ingrid Haebler: Schubert - Piano works (boxed set)
I was given this by my piano teacher and it's just beautiful.
Vladimir Ashkenazy: Chopin - Complete solo piano works (boxed set)
Nobody can play Chopin like Ashkenazy. Actually, nobody can play like Ashkenazy. Enough said. I think I've probably played the Etudes discs from this boxed set more than any of the other 7 or so discs.
Vladimir Ashkenazy: Rachmaninov - Preludes
I heard a few tracks off this disc played on the ABC a while ago and immediately had to get it. I wasn't very familiar with the Rach Preludes, and I just fell in love with them when I heard this CD.
Martha Argerich: The Art of Martha Argerich (3 discs)
I picked this up at my local bookshop because I love Argerich's playing and didn't have any CDs of hers. This set includes a heap of concertos as well as solo works, and comes with a beautiful booklet full of photos of Martha and previous album covers. It's really special.
Bach Collegium of Japan: Bach - St John Passion
I'm currently learning this so it's getting listened to a lot. The soloists are beautiful, as are all the other performers...and the music.
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