Beethoven Sonata 16 improved - again

[slow_concert_pianist]

Cum on Perfect...you must admit I am improving!!!!!

We are getting to the "business end" of this progression. I haven't read your comments to my previous entry - deliberately. But I will read comments on this one.

We are getting close to the point where a few of might question whether I am the performer, so I continue with the "grot bag" recordings. I will explain this in more detail next post.

Perfect Pitch....one week to go old mate......& I don't care about your excuses - I expect to see your recording!!!!!!!!

So now for Beehoven's Sonata 16 1st movement. You can really hear all the notes now PP

https://www.box.net/shared/bmg34fdupu

compared with the earlier "almost concert standard" recording....

https://www.box.net/shared/868jf85oyy

and here is how the 3rd movement has progressed. In particular compare the triplets......!...

https://www.box.net/shared/x9kl7lv8nu

.........with the last offering

https://www.box.net/shared/87fti66ogp

[perfect_pitch]

Perfect Pitch....one week to go old mate......& I don't care about your excuses - I expect to see your recording!!!!!!!!

I didn't give you any excuses... I gave you a reason... so for the last time - You ain't going to get a recording from me. Stravinsky & Brahms are keeping me busy.

Don't like it? *** off! I got my own sh*t to do, and I don't have to prove anything to you, of all people.

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In an effort to sound like a lesser prick than yourself... I offer you these words which I offered to fredericfrancoischopin who posted on here a while back (who I haven't seen in ages). He was just like you in the fact that he attempted pieces that he had no control over, and was not technically able yet. I want you to think about this:

I started piano when I was 9 years old - pretty late for someone who wanted to become a concert pianist and although my parents pushed me into doing piano, after 3 months I continued on because I LOVED the piano.

For the next 9 years I spent most of my piano education being instructed by self-taught amateurs who had very little experience when it came to performing and didn't have the ability to refine my musicality... nor did they seem to know what the hell voicing was, correct posture or correct hand-shaping was.

For those 9 years I continued to aim for harder and harder pieces playing them in a rough style - I thought that the respect would come with the pieces I chose to learn, and when I got to university - I realised that name of the pieces didn't mean 'sh*t' if you can't play them well (just think of how many dodgy Rach 3 recordings there - it may be the hardest piece in the world, but it don't mean jack is you play them badly)

For the first 3 years of university, I had to try and re-learn how I approached a piece of music and to try to slow down and aim for clarity over speed... And I slowly managed to do it.

Thinking I was close to playing in a clean manner, I told my teacher that I wanted to sit the Licentiate exam for Piano (AMEB) in 2006. I probably learnt the 4 hardest pieces on the list - The Bartok Improvisations, Chopin Scherzo No. 1, Francks Prelude, Choral and Fugue and the Liszt Paganini Etude No. 3 in E flat.

I FAILED THE EXAM! and looking back - I deserved to... My teacher told me from the very beginning that I wasn't ready and I ignored her... I pressed on only to fail. It was then that I realised, that I wasn't even close. I then decided to try 4 new pieces and to sit the exam in 2007, but when it came to September, my teacher thought that I could 'possibly' pass but didn't want me to sit it until I was truly ready. I sat the exam in 2008 with yet again - 4 new pieces - The Chopin Ballade No. 2, The Brahms Variations on a theme by Schumann, the Tocatta from Ravels Le Tombeau de Couperin and the Chromatic Fantasia by Bach.

I PASSED after 3 years of continually trying to perfect my playing do a level that was so much cleaner than ever before. I'd say it was good... but not perfect - but I'm still working at it. And just a few weeks after I passed, I listened to a recording of my first attempt and I was disgusted at how I used to play.

Let me be perfectly clear - if you hope to be a performer or to even pass late High School music performance exams... if you play like you did in the recording above - YOU WILL FAIL!!! I KNOW THIS because I have been in your position... that's not a fabrication of the truth, it's just the truth.

And when I look at your signature - I realise that you're just like I was when I was in High school... ambitious... but not the slightest bit ready... yet. The Eccosaise is about Grade 7 level for gods sake and you're trying to tackle it already? Aim for clarity rather than the difficulty - believe me - it's worth it.

If you truly want to refine your skills before it's too late - then do it today. Pick up a Grade 3 or 4 book and try a piece out of there. Aim for cleanliness rather than trying to do it as a rush job and PROVE to YOURSELF that you are capable of playing Music, rather than just notes. It took me 6 years to correct all my bad habits... don't let the same happen to you.

[sashaco]

Slow, Several people are rather nasty to you on this site, so I can see why you don't pay attention to them.  Nonetheless, their advice is not really off the mark.  While I'm impressed, nay, VERY impressed,  that you can do a rudimentary learning of so many pieces so quickly, your critics are not unfair in saying that it is just that, rudimentary.  If you really can't hear that the first two bars of that sonata are crudely and unevenly played, you might spend more time listening to good music, not neccessarily only to the piano.  Singers in particular can show you the virtues of even a single note.  (Maybe it's just singers that think so.)  I used to listen again and again to one Faure song just to hear Elly Ameling's entrance on the second verse, and to another just to hear her pronounce the word "papillon!"
To people who devote a great deal of time and thought to exploring the possibilities in the pieces you play, whether to searching for the composer's intent, or to "self expression" or to any number of interpretive paths, your cursory readings seem like an attempt to reduce music to a sport.  It's as though an out of shape character has run a 5 hour marathon, and then demands that serious runners watch a film of the whole thing. While you may play how you like in the privacy of the practice room, people see your insistence on posting so many efforts as abusive of the music and insulting to their dedication to it.
I am not much of a player, and I certainly couldn't learn the notes to as many pieces as you do so quickly,  but I can assure you that you're missing out on the real pleasures of the instrument.
Why don't you take some simpler piece, as others have suggested, and try to hear it in a variety of ways?  The f minor Invention can be played in a traditional "baroque" style, or played very "romantically" and become two completely different pieces.  Some may argue that certain playings are historically "invalid" but in the privacy of the practice room all is permissible.  Spend some real time with a piece, hear how every phrase may take on a variety of meanings, and you will come to feel a responsibility to the music infinitely more satisfying than the look-what -I-can-do school of playing.  We are all, with a few exceptions perhaps, (I'm not one) subject to that desire, and you can find an audience for it if you try, but the thing you miss out on is the music.

Best wishes,  Sasha Cooke

[stevebob]

Slow, Several people are rather nasty to you on this site, so I can see why you don't pay attention to them....

If anybody is "nasty" to s_c_p, it's been provoked by his own far nastier attitude of entitlement and/or angry delusions and/or outright dismissal of any constructive criticism.

That such a person continues to garner such constructive criticism and even friendly overtures from some quarters may be an inspiring testament to the cockeyed optimism of human nature, but it's also the sustenance that keeps him coming back here with more nonsense.

[arielpiano]

Slow, who is your "idol" for this particular sonata (I mean, your favorite interpretation)?

[perfect_pitch]

Slow, who is your "idol" for this particular sonata (I mean, your favorite interpretation)?

Probably Lang Lang???   

[zong]

Most definitely not...