famous pianists cheating

[demented cow]

How much cheating (simplifying pieces by leaving out notes, fiddling with tempo/rhythm) is commited by well-known pianists? Can you name some examples? I'm not necessarily against cheating, but I thought it would be interesting to see (with your help) how common it is.
Some examples to start with:
-Dimitris Sgouros (youtube recordings): leaves out some left hand notes in Chopin 10/4 and turns some LH octaves into single notes in Liszt sonata.
-Most people simplify the bars with four semiquaver octaves in Wilde Jagd by dotting the first octave (e.g. Arrau, Bolet, F. Kempf, Berman)

Part of my interest of this subject is as a kind of hearing test. I've read that some people omit notes in say Feux Follets and Chopin 10/2, but I just can't hear this, and I'm curious to see whether there I can train myself to listen to things that other people might hear easily.

[hodi]

ask richard kastle

[stucoy]

Or David Helfgott (remember him?) - for example, in his recording of 'Rach 3'.

[leahcim]

Or David Helfgott (remember him?) - for example, in his recording of 'Rach 3'.

Was it him that did a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who did not exist?  Someone who championed the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless in a world of criminals who operated above the law?

No? Ok...I'm guessing that Richard Kastle didn't have dedication either?....

[richard black]

Busoni used to simplify the penultimate page of the Dante Sonata - he argued that since it's pretty much impossible for the listener to tell whether the player's right hand is playing the middle chord of each group of three at the printed octave or one octave above (i.e. much closer to the other two chords of the group), why both doing big jumps?

[slobone]

Earl Wild played the top part of Liszt's Un Sospiro with his right hand only instead of crossing over. BUT I'm not sure if it's harder or easier that way.

[invictious]

me.

only a man like me can simplify the whole HR no.2 into 3 notes.

[term]

Busoni used to simplify the penultimate page of the Dante Sonata - he argued that since it's pretty much impossible for the listener to tell whether the player's right hand is playing the middle chord of each group of three at the printed octave or one octave above (i.e. much closer to the other two chords of the group), why both doing big jumps?

That's cool. 
I mean, if you don't care and the listener can't tell, why bother? If only a few people with specialized ears can hear it, who cares?

I don't omit notes simply because i like challenges and difficulties. But if i need to prepare a piece in a short time and there are still some parts which are too insecure, i wouldn't hesitate to simplify if possible. It does no harm to the music.

Example: On the youtube recording of horowitz playing scriabin 8/12, he omits chords near the end. It has been deleted, but is probably still there under a different name (some chinese if i recall correctly)

[theodore]

My  piano teacher was relating to a professional recital he attended and told me of a section in a later Beethoven Sonata where the left and right hands have a devilishly difficult rhythmic configuration. He also told me that only one out of 199 pianists can play this 2 bar section with reasonable accuracy.

The professional  pianist  (un-named) played this section with spectacular clarity, accuracy, and a certain reckless abandon which both impressed and astounded my piano teacher.

After the recital he congratulated the performing pianist and cited the passage in question as being the best rendition of it that he had ever heard.

The performer leaned over and whispered to my teacher that he had shadowed his left hand motions and that his page turner had snuck in his right hand and assisted in playing 2 bar section.

Theodore

[franz_]

My  piano teacher was relating to a professional recital he attended and told me of a section in a later Beethoven Sonata where the left and right hands have a devilishly difficult rhythmic configuration. He also told me that only one out of 199 pianists can play this 2 bar section with reasonable accuracy.

The professional  pianist  (un-named) played this section with spectacular clarity, accuracy, and a certain reckless abandon which both impressed and astounded my piano teacher.

After the recital he congratulated the performing pianist and cited the passage in question as being the best rendition of it that he had ever heard.

The performer leaned over and whispered to my teacher that he had shadowed his left hand motions and that his page turner had snuck in his right hand and assisted in playing 2 bar section.

Theodore

No way!

[the_duck]

cziffra cheats quite flagrantly in his grand galop chromatique (he changes 2 octave leaps to one octave, and misses out chordal notes). i'd imagine it's physically impossible to play it as written at the cziffra speed which surely suggests that liszt didn't intend it to be played that fast.

[the_duck]

don't get me wrong though, cziffra is still a level 10 pianist

[franz_]

Duck, can you tell us where and at what second he do this at the youtube video?

[the_duck]

cziffra misses out the right hand leaps at 0.42 (where the top E-flat has been brought down an octave each time the leaps exceed a tenth).  And some smaller running notes inside the right hand have been missed out in 1.21-1.24 (cf the similar phrase immediately before it). he also adds his own bass notes all over the place.

[mennea]

My understanding of musicians, practically all of them, and of all genre of music, is that the performance you hear on the CD is always faster than what they actually play in the studio. Makes them look more virtuosos. As to leaving out notes, I think that’s a no brainer, of course they do. 

[wizardfingers]

Earl Wild played the top part of Liszt's Un Sospiro with his right hand only instead of crossing over. BUT I'm not sure if it's harder or easier that way.

much harder, and ... impossible really

[thierry13]

much harder, and ... impossible really

hrm ... ? impossible ? i've seen much worse things for left-hand alone. Harder than the original way, but definitely not quite that hard.

[cygnusdei]

My understanding of musicians, practically all of them, and of all genre of music, is that the performance you hear on the CD is always faster than what they actually play in the studio. Makes them look more virtuosos. As to leaving out notes, I think that’s a no brainer, of course they do. 

Noooooo .... ! Class action lawsuit?

[i heart xenakis]

Everyone cheats opn the HR2

[jinfiesto]

Earl Wild played the top part of Liszt's Un Sospiro with his right hand only instead of crossing over. BUT I'm not sure if it's harder or easier that way.

What? I don't believe that's even humanly possible. Plus I'm watching him play right now, and he's clearly using two hands.

[point of grace]

Glenn Gould in some bach...
i remember when i had to play the 2 and 3 part inventions and i looked for a recording of him, and noted he dropped many trills or notes!!
so i went on and copy many things i liked... then my teacher wanted to kill me!!!

[lostinidlewonder]

Lots of people miss out notes when they play that is a human thing to do. The only time that they don't is in a studio recording where you can have many takes to make what you play sound ideal. How totally obsessed about 100% accuracy I was when I first hear some recordings of Hamelin. Then I learnt that to get what was on that CD he actually took many takes and pasted together the best attempts. 

If inaccuracies happen only very small % of the time then it really doesn't matter. There are varying degrees of disruption to the music that errors cause. A single note in a very fast string of notes usually does not disrupt the music being played very much, however if this inaccuracy exists at the start or end of the group of notes it can increase in disruption effect, if it happens in between groups of notes these can be hard to notice or encourage a displeasing effect on the listener.

If you slow down a recording of any fast piece it sounds nothing like it does on paper. As Chopin said no one really can hear the unevenness of something played fast. How many times are rhythms inaccurate when we slow down recordings, but when sped up it becomes difficult to detect the inaccuracy?

[slobone]

What? I don't believe that's even humanly possible. Plus I'm watching him play right now, and he's clearly using two hands.

You're right! I don't know why I had that impression, but since my first post I've checked him out on youtube and he does it the same as everybody else.

[faulty_damper]

Earl Wild played the top part of Liszt's Un Sospiro with his right hand only instead of crossing over. BUT I'm not sure if it's harder or easier that way.

How is this cheating?

[michel dvorsky]

How is this cheating?

Haven't you heard? The goal of piano playing is to execute any given passage in the most complicated and difficult manner conceivable. It's what Arrau called: "street cred", or as he explained "to show dat u is da baddest motha***** this side of compton".

[steinway43]

Once in recital I heard Claudio Arrau leave out the fugue in the Liszt Sonata. Tragic.

[franz_]

Once in recital I heard Claudio Arrau leave out the fugue in the Liszt Sonata. Tragic.

I think this isn't cheating but forgetting...

[optima]

Glenn Gould in some bach...
i remember when i had to play the 2 and 3 part inventions and i looked for a recording of him, and noted he dropped many trills or notes!!
so i went on and copy many things i liked... then my teacher wanted to kill me!!!

I am not sure( cause i don't know the specific parts you have in mind) but many trills in Bach vary according to the edition one has..

[liszt1022]

Glenn Gould reconfigured Weber's Variations, mvt 2 to take out all the crossing and jumping hands - a very important feature of the composition!
You can only tell after you play it - there's no way he's playing the hands as written

[pla635]

Stravinsky's Petrouchka is a professional pianists cheating heaven.  Check out weissenberg or oudenitch -they don't do the impossible l.h. double thirds trill in the third movement.  Instead, they fake through it rather convincingly. 

I think the most famous instance of cheating is in Brahms 1st piano concerto-Rubinstein paved the way for countless number of pianists to cheat the octave trill.  Fleisher took up this trick as well-Instead of an octave rill, they play chord clusters spread between both hands like alternating octaves. 

[theodore]

Many pianist composers  assign slow melodies  to the high register of the right hand. These melodies either sound  feeble and the performing pianist is forced to play them a few dynamic degrees louder than what is indicated in the original score.

Johannes Brahms frequently defeats the purpose of his melodic line by being overly fussy and using too many notes with his lower register accompaniments. The balance is bad and the harmonies are a complete overcompensation.

Mozart on the other hand knew exactly what was required either pianistically or orchestrally.  Dimitri Shostakovitch, was asked, in an interview, which composer was most effective in the purpose and clarity of his compositional technique immediately answered Mozart. 

Liszt quite often broke the rules when playing the music of Chopin and Chopin had to agree that certain of his pieces sounded better in Liszt’s hands.  Liszt was quite free in his interpretations and cited as well as emulated the bizarre virtuostic mannerisims of the virtuoso violinist Paganini .

Sometimes composers don’t know the most effective way to compose music and just look at the musical line . Even Ravel had his problem. He orchestrated the “Pictures at an Exibition” and assigned a solo part to the Tuba that required the utmost virtuosity for the tuba player. Not only was it difficult to play but the result was muddy and forced. In the real world, many tuba players change instruments and play these passages on the euphonium with very pleasing results.

Theodore

[thierry13]

In the real world, many tuba players change instruments and play these passages on the euphonium with very pleasing results.

Euphonium has the exact same register and almost the same sound as trombone.

[jehangircama]

I've heard the appasionata performed live twice, in both performances the pianists cheated on the 4-5 trills in the 1st mvt- where you have to hold a chord and trill while the left hand is playing repeated notes down in the bass. both times they just played the chord and then trilled 2-3, using the pedal. both were good musically though.

[point of grace]

horowitz in liszt... pff!!

[ahinton]

No one has yet mentioned Joyce Hatto in this thread; what she lacked in fame she surely made up for in cheating - and to a degree unequalled even by the sum total of all the pianistic cheats in musical history.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

I remember watching in ashtonishment when my teacher kept using his left hand to execute some of the right hand jumps in La Campanella.

"You can't do that" says I , that is cheating.

"Is not the idea to make everything as easy as possible" says he.

I won't tell you what he did with Chopin 10/1.

Thal

[ahinton]

I remember watching in ashtonishment when my teacher kept using his left hand to execute some of the right hand jumps in La Campanella.

"You can't do that" says I , that is cheating.

"Is not the idea to make everything as easy as possible" says he.

I won't tell you what he did with Chopin 10/1.

Thal

Interesting! Although discretion prompts you to refrain from telling us (and I, for one, will refrain from asking you to identify your teacher!), one may easily imagine the kind of cheating in which he indulged in Chopin Op. 10 no. 1 but the point here is, of course, is how one might seek to cheat in playing Chopin Op. 10 no. 1 in the first Godowsky version where any such redistribution between the hands is no longer possible because both hands have the arpeggiated figurations. It's abit like the trill issue dealt with in another thread recently; it's all very well using the thumb and alternating fingers to execute a single trill and there's nothing wrong, or even "cheating", about doing that, but one still has to be able to trill between adjacent fingers when executing certain double trills (such as the example that I cited).

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

but the point here is, of course, is how one might seek to cheat in playing Chopin Op. 10 no. 1 in the first Godowsky version where any such redistribution between the hands is no longer possible because both hands have the arpeggiated figurations.

I did try to interest teacher in a couple of these masterpieces via the recordings by MAH, but he preferred the originals. It would be difficult i feel to apply any cheating to the Chop/God 10/1, but i admit i have not tried as i have nowhere near the required facility to approach it in the first place.

Got some nice cheats for Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso though.

Thal

[ahinton]

I did try to interest teacher in a couple of these masterpieces via the recordings by MAH, but he preferred the originals.

Maybe you should have another go with the Carlo Grante CDs (which, incidentally, were released during the 1990s some while before M-AH's).

Best,

Alistair

[richard black]

My understanding of musicians, practically all of them, and of all genre of music, is that the performance you hear on the CD is always faster than what they actually play in the studio.

No, that's obviously not true - there are plenty of live recordings by all sorts of musicians which one can compare with their studio versions and in fact the studio one may often be _slower_ if they're being more careful to avoid bum notes. Studio recordings are sometimes patchworks of lots of painstakingly recorded bits, but not always - MAH is a classic example of someone who does rather few takes (I have that on the authority of one of his recording producers) because he's on top of the notes anyway. And you know what? It's not always worth the bother. I recorded some songs by Alan Bush a few years ago with _horribly_ difficult piano parts, one of which I recorded in little bits over and over (this was just the intro, you understand - wouldn't have done that to the singer!) because I knew from _feel_ I was playing wrong notes. But when I got it back home and edited it, I realised that I couldn't hear anything wrong with most of the longer takes so I saved myself editing time and used those. I mean, if I couldn't hear it (and obviously I know the pieces, I had the score, I've got pretty sharp hearing and I was listening on top quality equipment) Joe Doe was pretty unlikely to.

However, I have also done some very dodgy edits to recordings that have been made in a hurry with not quite enough takes - I've done things like removing wrong notes, adding missed notes, retuning dodgy notes from singers and string players, you name it.

Coming back to the original subject of 'cheating', it's worth remembering that most pianist/composers hardly ever play a piece of their own the same twice - what seemed like a good idea last week may feel all wrong today, so they'll modify it a bit. Is that cheating? And why should anyone care? So, since most of the most difficult pieces are actually by pianist/composers, what's wrong with a little tasteful modification here and there? In all probability the composer would be the last one to care.

[birba]

Got some nice cheats for Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso though.

Thal
[/quote]Reveal, reveal!  I have to play it (again!) soon.  It's not really that difficult, though.
Anyway, you people.  Reveal also the following:  HR2 and MAH -you're talking to an OLD one here.

[communist]

LISZT'S FAKING LIST OF 20th CENTURY RECORDING ARTISTS
Descending octaves faking club
BRENDEL faking hands together +mess up 10:12
BULVA faking hands together +mess up 9:07
PADEREWSKI faking hands together +mess up 8:21
CORTOT faking hands together +mess up 9:07
HAMBOURG faking hands together, leaving out octaves, slows down +mess up 7:34
DICHTER faking hands together 8:43
CAMPANELLA faking hands together 9:26
PIZARRO faking hands together 4:49
PENNARIO -plays in slow motion 9:37
RACHMANINOFF makes it easier by not hammering and playing quietly. His ending is boring, simplified and has wrong notes 10:17 it's history.

[lostinidlewonder]

When we look at a painting we look at it in its entirety. The same applies when you listen to a musical performance. I don't think it is very intelligent to look at small parts of a painting and critique the brush stroke or precise shade of color used. So too I find it a waste of time to look at small parts of someones performance and critique it. It is helpful if we are an adjudicator or examiner but even then we would be considered "hard markers" if we let small parts of a performance cause a great effects on the overall score.

As listeners we shouldn't be thinking this way at all, unless that increases your enjoyment of music. I could hardly enjoy listening to music if all I did was look out for things that might not be totally "perfect". It is fine to say, well I don't like now they played this phrase, I prefer how xxxxx does it, but if we listen to a performance and constantly think, oh no so and so is better, we destroy the enjoyment of music.

[richard black]

LISZT'S FAKING LIST OF 20th CENTURY RECORDING ARTISTS

Which piece are you referring to?

[ronde_des_sylphes]

*places a mental bet it will be the 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody..*

[m]

*places a mental bet it will be the 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody..*

Ah, then there is one clown out there who is on top of the things.

Best, M

[birba]

LISZT'S FAKING LIST OF 20th CENTURY RECORDING ARTISTS

What piece ARE you talking about?  The sonata?
And again:  What is HR2 and MAH??

[drpiano]

Ah, then there is one clown out there who is on top of the things.

Best, M

No small task, given the 'level 10 difficulty'  of the piece....

[communist]

What piece ARE you talking about?  The sonata?
And again:  What is HR2 and MAH??

HR2 stands for "Hungarian Rhapsody no.2" and yes that is the piece.

[db05]

And again:  What is HR2 and MAH??

I'm guessing MAH means Hamelin?