Liadoff, four more Preludes, Opp. 11/1, 24/1, 31/2 & 40/3

[rachfan]

Recently I had posted four Liadoff preludes which many listeners enjoyed, so I decided to present more of these pieces.  Anatol Liadoff (1855-1914) was a Russian late romantic composer who had studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and composition with Rimsky-Korsakov, and in 1887 joined the faculty teaching mostly composition.  The principal influence in his music was Chopin.
   
   Here are the next pieces I have submitted in this posting:

Prelude, Op. 11, No. 1 in B minor (1886) marked moderato;
Prelude, Op. 24, No. 1 in E (1890) marked lento and dedicated to A. Sergeeva;
Prelude, Op. 31, No. 2 in B flat minor (1893) marked largo and dedicated to Porfini Trifonov; and
Prelude, Op. 40, No. 3 in D minor (1897) marked lento.

   These miniatures are very short, altogether approximately 8 minutes total listening time, so I hope you’ll want to hear and enjoy the entire group.

Comments welcome.

P.S. If anyone would like the link to the preludes submitted earlier, it is here:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=41747.0

Piano: Baldwin Model L Artist Grand (6’3”) with lid opened on the singer stick.
Recorder: Korg MR-1000
Microphones: Earthworks TC-20 matched pair of small diaphragm omni-directional condenser mics in
A-B configuration    

[fbt]

Nice sensitive playing. A good addition to the Romantic repertoire. The lyricism of Chopin and the melancholy of Rachmaninov

[rachfan]

Hi fbt,

Thanks for listening.  I play mostly the late romantics, especially Russian, but this these two submissions of Liadoff pieces were my first.  So it was interesting delving into his composing idiom and especially his style of polyphony between the hands.  I even found his tempo and metronomic markings quite interesting at times!  Liadoff seems to be a bit neglected, so I was pleased to be able to give him a boost here.  I'm glad you enjoyed hearing this music.

David

[pianowolfi]

Hi David This is soooooo beautiful! And I think it's a very good selection too! Thank you so much for posting these preludes! It makes me itchy to play some of them myself.

[rachfan]

Hi wolfi,

Thanks for listening, and I'm glad you enjoyed these so much.  It was interesting for me to get a sense of Liadoff's style of composing, as I had not previously played his music (except for the other four preludes submitted here earlier).  Absolutely, you should play some of these preludes.  Liadoff wrote 30 of them, so plenty to choose from!  For the immediate future, I'll be taking leave of Liadoff but will continue with the Russian piano literature--but no hints yet. 

David 

[goldentone]

Hi David,

Listening to your second set of Liadoff preludes, it strikes me that he is able to say a lot in a short amount of time in these character pieces, able to stretch the canvas.  It's a nice set, and corroborates his stature as a composer.  Liadoff is one I'll definitely want to turn to in the future.  

Your playing is fine, as always.

[rachfan]

Hi goldentone,

Thanks for the compliment!  It was interesting to explore a bit of Liadoff's output, and among his miniatures I found many gems.  Yes, I think you'd enjoy looking into this composer's music too.

[lostinidlewonder]

Beautiful selection David. One thing that I am thinking about Liadoff in terms of teaching is that this is wonderful music to explore the musical expression used in the late romantics (and music as a whole) and written in such a pleasing pianistic way that it feels very comfortable under your hands. You get some composers who wrote beautifully but they are difficult for your hand, but Liadoff falls into the category for me at least as pianistic composers who really understood how the hand moves at the piano. That they are short "bite sized" pieces makes them very easily approachable. I have David to thank for focusing my attention to Liadoff and currently one student of mine is enjoying it very very much.

[rachfan]

Hi lost,

I agree with you that Liadoff represents the stylistic period of late romaticism very well.  He studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, although I have been unable to find any reference to his piano professor there.  He was far more interested in composition than performance.  Nonetheless, I think you're quite right.  He shows that he had a solid grasp of the principles of pianism such that he could always compose in a pianistic way for the piano.  If I were to think of a contrast to him, the first name that would comes to mind is Brahms.  In his younger years he was a fine pianist and had a sense for pianism. However... Brahms, who also wrote in large forms, sometimes thought orchestrally while composing for piano, making for some very difficult if not awkward passages for the pianist. Rachmaninoff poses challenges, but there were two factors there: 1) He had huge hands; and 2) He didn't write music for other pianists like you or me, rather he wrote it all for himself to use on his tours.  Thus the emphasis on virtuosity. We probably can't really blame him for doing so.  Liadoff on the other hand seemed always cognizant that he was writing a piano work and well knew both the potential and the practical limitations for pianists.  I guess he had an obvious empathy.  I'm glad that your student is enjoying Liadoff's music. I'm hoping that others here at PS will also want to look into this music.

Thanks for listening to these pieces.

David    

[scottmcc]

David, thank you for presenting these fine works.  I appreciate the time you must spend in researching them so thoroughly.  These preludes in particular are quite nice, and deserve more exposure.  How do you discover works like these?  It seems that every day you are teaching us about another forgotten gem.

[rachfan]

Hi scottmcc,

Thanks for listening and I'm glad you enjoyed these pieces so much!  I think that in every period of music there have been wonderful pieces that for whatever reasons of fate never made it to the "top of the charts".  Perhaps many of the pieces that we consider "standard repertoire" today simply were played more frequently in recitals in their day and benefited from repeated hearings, especially in earlier times when radio, TV, recordings, and the internet were not even thought of.  Those pieces then likely became entrenched in the piano literature while the sheet music was not only reprinted, but in different editions over time as well.  And even politics could enter into it.  Consider all the pieces of Catoire I presented here.  The last printing ever of his music was in 1928 in Russia, because the government there didn't feel that the music comported with the ideals of socialism in the arts.  Sometimes a promising composer could be black-balled by other composers in music circles.  Or music critics of the day could have been excessively harsh. I'm sure there must be many odd twists like that throughout history. Anyway, now there are many fine compositions collecting dust.  So if I can bring some forward and illuminate them a little, maybe other pianists will take more interest in them.

To your question on how I find these pieces:  Actually it varies.  Sometimes I rummage through the International Music Scores Library Project and find things of interest there in very old editions.  Then I download the pdfs and learn/record them.  pdf format is smaller than regular-sized sheet music, so sometimes it's a bear to read, but it's worth it.  Other times I'll hear just one great piece for the first time of an unfamiliar composer.  That will set me off on a search to find more of his music.  One time I received a score out of the blue from a touring artist.  I was later able to piece together that it most likely came to me through a chain of artists as follows: Paris to Rio de Janiero, to Montreal to NYC and finally to me.  The last pianist before me in the chain thought I might enjoy playing it.  Well, I liked it so much I recorded it too!  Everything I play though must meet one criterion:  It must exude exceptional lyrical beauty based on my own sense of musical aesthetics.  Otherwise I won't play even a note of it.  The problem is that the piano literature is unimaginably vast, while life is too short.  Given that fact, I tend to play whatever brings me the most pleasure.  That's why I so much enjoy the Late Romantic period and focus so consistently on it.

David

[ted]

Why does Op 11, No 1 stand out for me from the others in this set ? I am not sure. It has to be the music itself because your playing is beyond criticism, at least from me. I think it contains just that much more depth and variety of sentiment than the other three. Some nice chord changes help too.

I am not one of those who take much delight in hearing a notationally regular pulse being played metronomically. Even in ragtime I do not relish it. If it were an ideal then a computerised version would be all we require, and that is manifestly not so. Certain passages in certain music demand it of course, but rarely the romantic.

Op 31,40 and 24 all exhibit a regular pulse, which you are very sensitive at bending in appropriate places. I don't know if there is a musical term for it, "rubato" isn't quite all there is to it, but you are very accomplished at this "flexible pulse". One is aware that a pulse exists but also perceives that it is continually being challenged in a musically significant way. This is an important property I often find lacking in otherwise brilliant pianists I have heard, both classical and jazz, not that I hear many. It's either motoric or it's all over the place, and neither extreme is really good enough.

Well done.

[rachfan]

Hi Ted,

Thanks for listening to these other four preludes.  Op. 11, No. 1 is indeed a "standout".  From what I can determine it's not only the favorite in this foursome, but of all 31 of Liadoff's preludes.  It seems to be the most recorded and the best known and appreciated.  It does have a deep sentiment indeed.  I made a decision to allow the LH to participate in all the crescendos/diminuendos, knowing that it would make balancing the hands a challenge given the figuration.  Except for one spot where the LH got the better of the RH for a couple of seconds, I believe I succeeded with that effort.  Overall, it added much power to the drama.

I feel the same way as you about pulse.  It has to be sufficiently defined and apparent to create a sense of structure.  No accelerando, rubato, agitato, or other effect will be differentiated unless the meter is underlying it all.  In the worst case the structure could dissolve into chaos.  Having said that, there must certainly be times when the cantabile breathes, when a nuance blooms, when an allargando or calando is played, when rubato is created, an ad libitum comes into play, etc.  Metronomic playing is no better than unstructured playing, and may even be worse.  I appreciate that you could hear my  efforts to avoid both of those evils.  At the heart of it, the flexible pulse has to be judicious and in good taste so as to benefit the interpretation without doing violence or disrespect to the composer and his score.

Thanks for the compliments!

David