Prelude Op.23 No.5 -- Rachmaninoff

[escort]

A long while back I posted a horrendous recording of this up here...
Anyway, for kicks, I thought I'd bring it back, and with some different interpretations suggested to me by my current instructor, as well as access to a better mic/piano, I've made this recording.  It still has MUCH room for improvement, but that's another of reasons I'm posting it here:  Your comments/criticisms are always welcome (also, my apologies for posting two different versions of a piece that's only been posted about 8 thousand times on this site). 

~Brett

[escort]

Aha, I just noticed you can hear the pedal thumping in the background in spots...  It's not that I slam the pedal up a lot (I have more of a problem with that I don't release it enough most of the time), I think it's because I had the mic sitting on the piano because I didn't have a stand (I had a piece of cloth under it, but evidently that wasn't enough).

[pianistimo]

Good job!  Sometimes it has a rushed feeling.  Also, when it melts into that middle section - I feel we could have even more 'coloration.'  But, hey - everyone listens to the pros recordings on this piece and then compares it to that.  Sometimes just playing for yourself and keeping on a piece for a certain number of years on and off - helps to mature it.  Just playing this piece pretty well is a great achievement.  I have smaller hands - so Rach is more difficult for me than most - but, i roll chords, etc and get away with a lot.  I think Rach is very much easier for large handed people.  Someday I want to try one of those keyboards with smaller keys.  Just to see if my theories about playing Rach or Chopin would be true.  That it would be MUCH easier for me.

[pianogeek_cz]

*nasty surgeon voice* Oooh-kaaay, let's try some constructive criticism.
(You asked for it. )

I might disagree with your teacher on interpretative points (I've meddled with this beauty quite a lot and have a rather solid idea of how I want it to sound), in that case, feel free to disband those comments as rubbish.

One general remark: this might be the well-known insensitivity of mics to larger dynamics, but - only 12 bars of the whole piece are marked ff. Be stingy with your fortissimos!

To the A sections...
- When you play the repeated-chord accompaniment figure, it tends to sound, in the more silent parts, like Ta-da-DA. Keep it more equal; the subtle crescendo towards the last chord of the three will be there through the sheer fact of it falling on the beat and being supported by the two shorter chords beforehand.
- End of 0:06 and generally these figures: try more legato and, again, a fluent crescendo towards the beat.
- 0:16: Wow, the gold rush! Hold your horses here. No room for running forward.
- 0:31-0:35: Try to distinguish between the two voices: the distinction-bipolar tension is present from the very beginning, the stem-down and stem-up thingy, and this is where it resolves - in the g minor chord at 0:35.
Actually, this distinction thingy: try experimenting with the touch a bit. The stem-down voice, the leading one, wants a different approach then the stem-up, the (mostly) accompaniment voice. I held the stem-down notes down a bit longer, deeper, with more arm weight, while the chords were a rather short staccato from the wrist; this worked quite fine.
- 0:38-0:44: Okay, where do the chords on the 2nd half of 3rd beat belong? Are they a part of the melody? Are they a part of the accompaniment?
On a side note, I don't like the pedalling here (or lack thereof at 2nd half of beat 3), I think it breaks the flow of the melody towards the climax on the D's too much, but that's a subjective thing.
- What is -not- a subjective thing is that at 0:48, the chords are waaay too... jumpy, light, there is less sound than before, and we're at the climax! Don't be afraid of making them heavier, if you hold the pedal, the high A will roar enough.
- end of 0:48: Aaargh, distinction, as has been said earlier. The G and A are the melody coming all the way from the high A and it has to sound like that (it's written like that!). Again, not only dynamics, but touch is also a key feature. All your arm weight goes into these two notes AND the following D octaves should rise you from your seat, even!
- Personally, I tend to take enjoy the climax a bit more, including the octave run downwards, and take my time.
- Fix the rushing in the following section (main subject restatemnet -> end of section A), see comments 1 and 2 about the chord figure and legato.

Section B:
I have a general comment here, and that is - inconsistent chord density. Sometimes I can clearly hear all the notes of the chord, somethimes the thumb goes on holidays, sometimes there's just octave, sometimes the upper note is left the last of the Mohycan, and it has little connection to phrasing (this inconsistency would be perfectly acceptable, if it was used for phrasing purposes).
Another general comment, don't loose the bass. Have it there all the way until the next one sounds. Incomplete pedalling may do the trick, there's a lot of experimenting involved. Don't be afraid of holding the pedal for longer, there are places (1:38, for instance, and - ugh - 2:00, 2:09...) where the sudden pedal changes throw the breathing off.
That's about it to this section. Also, the brief silence at the transition is either a tad too short, or (more probably) shouldn't be there at all.

Back to section A...
Aside from stuff already mentioned (apply the said principles throughout the piece, of course), specific stuff:
- 2:59: Where did the bass go? Where did you hide it, stow it away under a mattress?
- 3:26: THIS is where the piece resolves, the catharsis. THIS is fortissimo unleashed! Or, ahem, should be. You sound kind of afraid here, rushing as to be finished as soon as possible. The chromatic melodies in the chords (the five-chord figures) are hair-raising, enjoy them! And crescendo them! Here the lion roars to kill...
- And, again, rush, rush, rush! There are no gold nuggets at the end of the piece!

Parts I really liked:
The accelerando after the B section, the tension as you put off the first beats was really nice.
The rhythmical nuances in the last few bars before the final run were, like, wow, tumbling to apocalypse. The only place where the rushing was positively awesome.

Overall, a quite decent job, definitely enjoyable, some very nice interpretative choices, some debatable. The rushing and lack of distinction between the upper and lower voice (or, if you prefer, accompaniment and melody) are the main overall problems, I would suggest metronome work and paying very close attention to what comes out of the piano tone quality-wise. A good idea would be to practice the part of one hand with both hands: one for the stem-down notes, the other for the stem-up. I would overally enjoy a bit more pedal, esp. in the fanfare like at 0:38-0:42, it definitely needs to be more fluent in the middle section.

I have also posted extensively on this prelude over here.

Keep going. This can get really good.

I hope this helps; if there are unclear points, feel free to discuss and/or PM.

[escort]

Pianistimo, you're right about having big hands helping with Rachmaninoff.  I have pretty large hands, and I haven't had tooo many troubles with the technical aspects of this piece (besides consistency in the repeated notes, and occasionally I get very tensed up on the short octave run (I'm not fond of octaves in the right hand, aha)).  I think this piece could be very frustrating for someone that would be stretching to reach all chords. 

Pianogeek, wow, lots of info!  Going back to what Pianistimo said, I do tend to rush in this piece.  At 0:38-0:44, my instructor is having me voice the top note of beat one as melody, and playing the descending chords as accompaniment, so that short note on the 2nd half of beat 3 should still be accompaniment (at least based on this interpretation, that's what I've been trying to do, aha).  I had originally been pedaling that spot like you suggest, but we opted for a little different approach to phrasing, as it gives a bit of relief (and before that I'd been using a yet another approach that was marked in the music, where there would have been a break after each of the descending repeated chords).
On section B, you're spot on with the inconsistent chord density.  A couple of days before I made this recording my instructor decided that I wasn't voicing the tops of the chords enough, so she has been trying to get me to play so that you can barely hear the rest of the chord, so it's been a little sketchy as of late with me trying to work on that.
On the resolution of the piece, I think I AM a bit afraid of that segment, aha.  It tends to be inconsistent; some days it goes great, other days I struggle with consistently repeating those big chords.  Part of the inconsistency is probably due to my rushing.

Thank you for all the notes, including the ones that I didn't go over in my reply.  This is very helpful info!