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Topic: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne  (Read 3600 times)

Offline fnork

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Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
on: February 19, 2013, 09:47:31 PM
just some work in progress. need to look at the end a bit more...

Offline furtwaengler

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #1 on: February 27, 2013, 06:08:28 AM
Very cool! I am glad that you play this, and it is sounding great. I love this transcription.
Don't let anyone know where you tie your goat.

Offline fnork

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #2 on: February 27, 2013, 02:33:33 PM
thanks for the comment. Brahms certainly wanted to make things as difficult for the pianist as it is for the violinist by letting the left hand do all of the job! Great transcription, once I have more time to practice I'll polish it up to decent performance level.

Offline furiouzpianist

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #3 on: February 27, 2013, 04:00:21 PM
wow, THIS IS REALLY IMPRESSIVE!! I listened with the score, ***, this looks nearly impossible. I love your dynamic range and wonderful legato.

This Brahms arrangement is much closer to Bach's original, unlike the romanticized Busoni arrangement.
I bet your left is 4x better now after you learned this, haha.  

Anyways, your playing is wonderful, everything is very clear and logical. Thank you for learning this seldom-performed transcription!!!!

when you get around to playing it in public, please post a recording here............

did you know that the great pianist Moriz Rosenthal was one of the few people of that era who played the Brahms and not the Busoni version of the piece? The Busoni version was played by: Busoni (haha), Hofmann, Horowitz, Lhevinne, Rachmaninoff, Friedman, Michelangeli, Petri, Ginzburg, Flier, Tiegerman, Grainger, Haskil, Brailowsky, Rubinstein, Kitain, Bolet.

haha, that list is not complete, of course.........

Offline fnork

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #4 on: February 28, 2013, 01:15:38 PM
Thank you for those very kind words. For someone playing Liszt mephisto, Beethoven concertos etc, I wouldn't say this piece offers a "nearly impossible" challenge, perhaps, but the challenge is certainly a very different one comparing to those pieces. I actually learned this piece while re-studying the Ravel left hand concerto, and I started realizing that one of the things that bugged me even in professional performances of fine pianists was that many of them didn't seem used to the concept of playing with one hand. It's a different sort of challenge, and it should be seen as such - perhaps thats why the Brahms arrangement is so clever, because by reducing it to left hand alone he almost reproduces the challenge that the piece offers for violinists. We cannot vibrate or do other things the violinists can, but the piano has advantages too - we are able to hold entire chords and therefore maintaining the bass line (whereas violinists have to break it), and we can articulate different voices as we wish. In the hands of someone like Sokolov, the Bach-Brahms comes out as a very convincing transcription.

Offline furiouzpianist

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #5 on: February 28, 2013, 02:44:45 PM
you are lucky you can hold down some of those 10ths, and pedal right after.......I can't really take a comfortable minor 10th.......

I will examine the Sokolov performance closely.

Offline fnork

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Re: Bach/Brahms - Chaconne
Reply #6 on: March 01, 2013, 06:16:03 AM
Well, I don't know if I would consider a large hand necessary for this music - just think of the violinists, they have to break many of those chords. Actually, there were some instances where I found imitating the breaking of chords (the way the violinist has to do it) a rather powerful expressive tool. The opening comes to mind, though I believe in this recording I ended up playing most notes simultaneously?
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