this is why you should listen to more than one recording!!

[Tash]

i finally got around to visiting the con and having a major burn fest in the library today(shh!!) and i am seriously glad i did. because, the only recording i have listened to previously of debussy's toccata was by roy howat, and it's lovely! absolutey beautiful and so i was entranced by it. and thanks to the influence of the one recording, it has apparently very much shaped the way i play it- though i found some odd inner voices he brought out and i was like where did that come from?? so anyway, i get recordings by percy grainger, benno moiseiwitsch and zoltan koksis, where i have discovered that all of them play it in a WHOLE MINUTE faster than howat and it's completely unlike how howat plays it, so i was like what!! and now it's scaring me...haha. thus the whole being influenced by more than one performer is a good thing, or you'll get screwed like me by listening to some bizarre recording that isn't the traditional way! not saying that the non-traditional way is wrong, but in terms of the inflencing factor it's gonna sound pretty obvious i'm somewhat imitating him, like if i only listened to glen gould's recordings and was completely unaware of his bizarre tempos and stuff, then people'd be like ah you're blatantly imitating gould and you'd be like i am? i thought that's how it was meant to be played...

yes that's my rant cos i'm hell scared now!!

[henrah]

The same thing happened to me with the Rach 2&3. I got given a CD of Rachmaninov's own recordings of those two concertos and loved them both, and listened to them nearly every night as I went to sleep. Then, when I heard an excerpt of his second on the radio played by someone else I immediately thought it was crap as it wasn't the same, and the same for the third when I heard a different recording.

The thing is, if you are learning the piece, it would be a good idea to listen to as many recordings of it as possible so you wouldn't be subconsciously imitating one pianist's version. It will also give you a broader understanding of the piece. However, if you are just listening to it and have no desire to learn it (the Rach 3 with me as it's so monumentally difficult) then listen to as many or as little versions as you like, find one you prefer, and if you want just stick with listening to that version.

Roy Howat is a good friend of my fathers, and he is an excellent Debussy interpretor (sp?). He played a concert at my house in my father's recital hall (which is awesome, it has an organ he designed himself) of Debussy, Faure, Ravel and some ragtime, and he is a wonderful pianist. At times during the Ravel I felt my eyes drooping and my body literally sinking into the music...it was wonderfull...

[Waldszenen]

To be honest, I try as hard as possible to learn it somewhat thoroughly first without having heard any other interpretations - then after a few weeks (or months, depending on how hard it is), I begin to listen to different recordings. This way, you maintain your own creativity and by listening to other recordings, you can get a range of different ideas and implement them.


But you're definitely right about the one-recording thing - never do it (and especially not when that single artist is Horowitz or Lang Lang).

[henrah]

Unfortunately that wouldn't work so well with me as the majority of pieces I learn are from previously hearing/seeing them being played and thinking, "Hm, that sounds nice, I should learn it". The downside to this is that most of the 'nice' pieces I hear are very technically demanding, and my father keeps saying that I should learn simple things, like Bach's two-part inventions or some simple Beethoven sonatas. But suprisingly I can play my new adventure quite well (Gnomenreigen after seeing Cziffra play it) which impresses my father, but he still nags on about simple pieces. If they sound nice, then I'll play them.

[m1469]

Sure, listening to more recordings than one is probably better.  These days, I am not convinced anything is truly better than anything else though.  But, in the spirit of this thread, something that is also a good idea is to have a clean score with each recording you listen to, and mark in different nuances that you hear with each performer.  As a side note, this is particularly interesting with Bach and the varied ways that people decide to play his music.

Other than that, it is not as though somebody can copyright a ritardando or a staccato and so on, and we as pianists all must use these anyway.  So, really, what's the big deal if a person "imitates" another pianist ?  It will still be a person's own interpretation as it is actually impossible to play it exactly the way somebody else did.


m1469

[henrah]

It will still be a person's own interpretation as it is actually impossible to play it exactly the way somebody else did.

And even more impossible with Cziffra as everytime he played a piece he played it differently

[Tash]

yeah what henrah said- i picked the toccata because i loved the recording, in fact i probably wouldn't have been so keen to learn it right now had i listened to someone else's recording...thus henrah if you ever talk to howat then tell him some random from australia thinks his interpretation of the toccata is absolutely lovely!! well i think it was howat, could've been roger woodward, i should go check that...no it is howat!

[BoliverAllmon]

'J'aime presque autant les images que la musique' Debussy
for Janice- a different pic whenever i remember! https://tinypic.com/k0ls3r.jpg watercolour updated 10/01/06

so you developed time travel already? WOW you are a genius. LOL

[Tash]

what??