Recital Recording - Beethoven 32 Variations in C Minor

[jlh]

Masters recital, 02.20.2007:

Second set:

Beethoven 32 Variations in C Minor

Comments?

Edit: mp3 replaced

[piano121]

Beautifull. It΄s a very powerfull performance, I like it very much. What else can I say?  ::)great respect... trhu. You play to well. I have a recording o Perahia playing it on laser disc, I always liked that interpretation a lot. you make justice to Beethoven and to the piece. You are very high level. Thanks for sahring it!

[jlh]

Speaking of which... I just saw the movie "Immortal Beloved", a movie about Beethoven, last night.  I couldn't help but notice the high level of whomever was playing piano (Gary Oldman was playing the part of Beethoven).  In the credits it said that Murray Perahia played the piano for the whole soundtrack!

[Mozartian]

Wooo, nice performance, Josh! That was really great!

I might have to rack your brain on these in the near future- my teacher is darkly hinting at having me work on them to "help my technique." Are they as difficult as they sound?

[jlh]

It's not a cake piece to play, no.  The problems begin when you've actually learned all the notes.  You have to create a sense of continuity between the variations while giving a musical performance as well.  You only get one chance to do each variation (no repeats) and everyone's got an opinion on how best to put the individual variations together as a coherant whole.  I played this in a masterclass for a couple well-known pianists and they told me that the tempo must remain constant throughout the set.  I don't think that is a functional solution to the coherance problem.  I think that rather there are sub-sets of variations throughout the set, and these sub-sets should be played in a tempo-consistant manner -- but not the entire set of variations.  I got tired of listening to conflicting answers from everyone I talked to about this, so for the recital I played it how I thought it should be played.  Listen to which variations I play at the same tempo (the first few variations are a good example) and you will see what I mean.

Josh

[jlh]

The mp3 has been replaced, since I got the recording back form the studio.