Chopin Sonata #3, Op. 58

[thracozaag]

4th movement

koji (STSD)

[e60m5]

By far my favourite recording of the finale.

Post your recording of the first movement... pleeeaaaaaaaassssssssseeeeeeeee........   

[Mozartian]

Yes do post the first movement!
I've heard Yundi Li's and Kapell's and they are as different as night and day...

[Ziggy]

Koji, iirc, you had the 1st movement posted on pianosociety - is that correct?
It was a very interesting interpretation 




4th movement - wow

[Antnee]

Wow... Nicely Done...  I love the third sonata. You play the last movement with amazing grace and character. Do us all a favor and hit us up with the first movement as well.

-Tony-

[simaaili]

With great passion and good skill!
cool!good job!

[chopiabin]

Ummmm, I'm confused. Where's the little link to the recording? I really love the third sonata and would really love to hear your recording of it.

[piano121]

I can´t see the link either

[thracozaag]

Re-post.

koji

[zheer]

Ok so you decided to kick our ass, and Chopins ass for that mater, honestly you made this MVT sound like a composision by Rachmaninoff playd by RICHTER on a bad day, you dont need to beat the piano up. It sounds like you are shouting all the time. Purhaps a crescendo at the opening chords. NOw that i have heard this i feel like i have had a head on colusion in my car, and i think you brake strings from time to time. Your tecknique is sharp accurate clean reliable like a VOLVO, but you need a little bit of sensativity.Anyway you are without a doubt a great pianist and this performance will be a sucsses with the audince at the wembly football stadium. Why am i sounding like a F***ing music critic.Anyway all the best.

[thracozaag]

LOL;  Richter on a bad day, I think I'll use that as a press quote, thanks.

  (the recording was unfotunately miked WAY too close, I'm afraid)

koji

[thracozaag]

  Here's a more "moooosical" performance to soothe your shattered ear drums.

koji

[zheer]

LOL;  Richter on a bad day, I think I'll use that as a press quote, thanks.

  (the recording was unfotunately miked WAY too close, I'm afraid)

koji

Hay like i said you are a great pianist.

[zheer]

I just heard you play the Mazurka and i liked it a lot, i cant see haw it can be improved in any way, however i will carefull with my choice of words. I think it was poeticly playd and you gave it that element of sadness which is so often found in Chopins Mazurkas, it also sounded reflective.
      Is a Mazurka a polish dance, am gessing ?

[jamie_liszt]

GREAT!! nice playing, the mic was a bit to close, ouch!

how long did it take you to learn this? im currently working on this, and chopin etude 10/1 (which is hard for me ARGH)!

nice playing

[henrik]

Very nice recordings both the sonata and the mazurka. I would recommend you to listen to, which is my favourit recording of this sonata movement, by Garrick Ohlsson (if you haven't yet). It is very steady rhytmically and not too fast which is so powerful and comfortable to listen to. Like soldiers walking thrue the concert hall

[gaer]

Ok so you decided to kick our ass, and Chopins ass for that mater, honestly you made this MVT sound like a composision by Rachmaninoff playd by RICHTER on a bad day, you dont need to beat the piano up. It sounds like you are shouting all the time. Purhaps a crescendo at the opening chords. NOw that i have heard this i feel like i have had a head on colusion in my car, and i think you brake strings from time to time. Your tecknique is sharp accurate clean reliable like a VOLVO, but you need a little bit of sensativity.Anyway you are without a doubt a great pianist and this performance will be a sucsses with the audince at the wembly football stadium. Why am i sounding like a F***ing music critic.Anyway all the best.

Man, I could not disagree more. Different strokes…

First, I happen to like this movement played "all out". I think it's a wonderful performance. My God, can't you make an adjustment in your head for the over-miking? If the recording technique had been better, you might have a different reaction. Also, you didn't hear the whole thing. What if the 3rd movement sounded like a dream? If the 2nd movement is light, and the 3rd is very thoughtful, a totally "on the verge of out of control" finale can be a real adrenaline booster for the audience.

I'll bet your reaction would have been totally different if you heard such a performance live, in an audience. Have you played this piece? It's a monster. When the theme repeats the 3rd time, now with 6 notes against three (LH), it's an absolute witch to get that without reducing tempo, which most pianists do but which is NOT marked.

You felt assaulted I felt excited. I'd KILL to play that piece that well, although I will admit that a bit more dynamic contrast would make it even more amazing. Have you played this piece yourself? There are few pianists in the world who could play the last movement from start to end at that tempo and with that power without crumbling, and it's as solid as a rock.

And Richter? Richter, on a bad day, playing Rachmaninov, in my opinion played better than most pianists playing most anything on a good day. So we really disgaree on that too.

Man, I know there are all sorts of different opinions about how things should be played, but your critique was HARSH.

Gary

[zheer]

The last thing i would do is argue with you gaer. What you said makes sense and yes am no expert on this sonata infact the last time i sight read throught this MvT was around 9 years ago. From my varios record collection and my own instinctive reaction to it i feel that it need less force, but since the mic was too close to the piano am obviously wrong. Infact even Kolji admited that it was a little too loud.
I still feel that he has been influenced by Richters piano playing, Richter would bash the piano like that in his younger days, it was only in later years that he created a butifull pianisimo. I gess when you are young you have something to prove.

[gaer]

The last thing i would do is argue with you gaer. What you said makes sense and yes am no expert on this sonata infact the last time i sight read throught this MvT was around 9 years ago. From my varios record collection and my own instinctive reaction to it i feel that it need less force, but since the mic was too close to the piano am obviously wrong. Infact even Kolji admited that it was a little too loud.

I have no intention of arguing with anyone. Let me just make one point about "too loud".

Sometime in the early 1970s I heard Horowitz play in Miami. On this particular evening he played, in my opinion, far better than in any of the more famous live performances that were recorded after 1965. Perhaps he was more relaxed. The thing that surprised me most was that his playing was not extraordinarily loud (though certainly as loud as it needed to be). In fact, he played softer than any other pianist I've heard, and that was the big surprise for me. It made the climaxes sound thunderous, but it was contrast that did it. I had gotten a very different impression from listening to his recordings. So I am hyper-aware that when listening to recordings, what sounds wrong to us may be the fault of the technicians who do the recording, not the artist. And sometimes you can adjust for this to some extent. You might listen to the same recording "turning down the treble", to get closer to a sound that might have been considerably darker under live conditions. Again, if the whole sonata has been recorded with the same settings—which is likely—we can get a pretty good idea where the problem might be coming from. Judging from other performances I've heard from this same player, I judge him to be highly musical, so I'm apt to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I still feel that he has been influenced by Richters piano playing, Richter would bash the piano like that in his younger days, it was only in later years that he created a butifull pianisimo. I gess when you are young you have something to prove.

I think we should ask Koji who he was influence by.

Many people do not realize that Richter often played on rather poor pianos. While people in the West have been pampered, given only the best to use—think of Horowitz traveling with his own piano—my information has been that Richter played on just about anything, and in the old Soviet system that could be pretty bad. I've heard some things I love by Richter, other things I do not like at all, from all time periods. However, I do agree with you that many pianists, if not most pianists, develop different priorities as they get older. For one thing, I think the older we get, the more we realize that no matter how fast and loud we play, someone else will play faster and louder. Perhaps that was your point.

Regardless, I have no desire to offend anyone or cause any problem. I just wanted to point out that there were many things in this performance to admire too, which I think is only fair.

Gary

[zheer]

I agree Gary , i can find more things to like than not like about this  recording.

[gaer]

  Here's a more "moooosical" performance to soothe your shattered ear drums.

koji

Absolutely beautiful playing. I would still like to hear the rest of the Bm Sonata!

Gary

[rimv2]

playd by RICHTER on a bad day,

That's a complement right

[march05]

koji,

i'm also learning this sonata at the moment. i'm finding the scherzo to be the hardest to play up to speed... i wonder if this was also your experience when practising this work?

nice recording, by the way!

[crazy for ivan moravec]

wow! i love both the 4th movt and the mazurka! wow! WOW!  

[electrafingers]

great playing! what can I say? unfortunately the recording isn't as great...
anyway, come on! post the rest of the sonata

[electrafingers]

Oh and I forgot to say, the mazurka is just fantastic! I also heard the rest of the mazurkas you played in whitekeys and they were BEAUTIFUL. I mean really, at least one of my 2-3 favorite recordings of them.

[thracozaag]

1st and 2nd movements (with the same crappy miking, sorry)

koji

[gaer]

1st and 2nd movements (with the same crappy miking, sorry)

koji

Okay, Koji. Now I see why Zheer's reaction was so strong. I was listening on small computer speakers, and I could get a pretty good idea of what you were doing. Tonight I listened on very good headphones, and yes, it nearly pierced my eardrums.

The problem is far worse than too close miking. I examined the file in Sound Forge, and there is almost zero dynamics due to clipping. In other words, the recording volume was set WAY too high, to the point that your softest parts are only a few decibals below max. Who made the recording?

In fact, it does not even sound to me as though the problem is that the mikes were too close. Rather, it appears that whoever made the recording simply mis-set the volume. If the mikes were very close to the strings, you would not get the kind of echo I hear. Man, I hope you can perform this so well another time when you are recorded right. What a shame! I have not yet tried to listen to the new movements, because I was so shocked at the recording problems in the 1st movement alone, which I had not noticed the other night.

This has nothing to do with any kind of criticism of your playing, just wishing the recording had been done right!

Gary

[wzkit]

As someone who places a premium on good recording quality, I'll agree with what Gary has said, and go one step further: I think the recording engineer should be impaled and roasted on a spit 

Seriously, I enjoyed your energetic and vigorous approach to this sonata, which is quite a refreshing change from the many more "moosical" versions that are available on the market these days. That's not to say koji's version is not musical in and of itself.  I usually dislike "whambang" playing (since my own style is quite the opposite), but in this case I can adjust for the poor recording quality, and I don't think it takes much can tell that the dynamic range is indeed wider than suggested by the recording. The changes in tone colour are apparent and it doesn't take a stretch of imagination or extrapolation to play it in your head.

Sometimes a completely different approach (Richter"ish" on a bad day or not)  is very refreshing and interesting. Great job!

[wzkit]

Forgot to add that the mazurka certainly shows Koji to be the able to sound like Richter or Horowitz on a good day . Great ability to control the lower end of the dynamic range. What a poet!

[gaer]

Forgot to add that the mazurka certainly shows Koji to be the able to sound like Richter or Horowitz on a good day . Great ability to control the lower end of the dynamic range. What a poet!

I think the Scriabin 10the recording makes it clear that Koji has a huge dymanic range and many, many colors, so I'm quite sure that what is missing in this recording is a good recording, not a fine preformance.

Gary

[superstition2]

I just got through the first movement, and although the playing shows great talent, the emotional temperment (much of the time) of the performance doesn't fit the piece. It sounds like Myaskovsky with a Chopin veneer. Some of it is quite strident for Chopin.

Frankly, I think you could do the world a favor and professionally record the early Myaskovsky sonatas. Richter's absolutely brilliant live #3 is great, but suffers from poor sound quality.

As with the Scriabin 10th, the dynamic range is lacking. It is sometimes too heavy. I realize the recording is squashed, but even so, it seems like there isn't a huge range.

I'd suggest listening to Artur Rubinstein's recording of the Chopin 3rd. It's very straight. Very moderate. Perhaps a tiny bit dull, but certainly not lacking. Your performance is a bit too wild. I'd reign it in, or play something like the Myaskovsky 3rd with that wildness. Rachmaninov said every movement has a single climax and every piece has an overal single climax. I'd try to work from that concept. You seem to spend too much time in climax mode, in the Scriabin also.

Just my opinion after a short listen. I'll have to listen to the other movements. Unlike Scriabin's sonatas, I don't claim to be an expert on this piece. I know it rather well, but not intimately. I recently saw Zimmerman play the 3rd movement as an encore, and his speed and dexterity was astounding, but I'll still give the edge of Rubinstein for musicality.

[zheer]

I have changed my mind, i like it a lot, sounds like a man playing the piano. Had i not known its Kolji, i would have said Richter.