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Remembering the great Maurizio Pollini
Legendary pianist Maurizio Pollini defined modern piano playing through a combination of virtuosity of the highest degree, a complete sense of musical purpose and commitment that works in complete control of the virtuosity. His passing was announced by Milan’s La Scala opera house on March 23. Read more >>

Topic: Chopin - Sonata no.2 in b-flat minor, op.35 - III. Funeral March  (Read 11565 times)

Offline andhow04

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from a concert at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center.  the hall was set up like a dinner theatre, with the piano on a little stage, and the audience seated at so many round tables... no food was served, but they could buy drinks at the bar before the concert and during intermission.  it was a nice setup, i don't see why people can't do that in other venues... i remember going to a broadway show once ina very nice theatre, and people were allowed to bring their drinks into the hall.
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Offline becky8898

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Hi: i liked the way you did this very much. You seem to have a knack for making the piano easily do what you want it to.  KInd of like you and the piano are one seamless unit.  But if you dont mind I have a question.  When your dealing with venues of different sizes, do you always get a chance to rehearse before hand so you get a feel of where your playing, you know for things like any sound adjustments you might make.  Also if you dont , are there clues you have before you sit and play to make those adjustments for the hall your in? Im asking because I have still have trouble with that Myself.

Anyway, thanks for the post. I would love to hear more of your playing, 

Cheers, Becky

Offline andhow04

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Hi: i liked the way you did this very much. You seem to have a knack for making the piano easily do what you want it to.  KInd of like you and the piano are one seamless unit.  But if you dont mind I have a question.  When your dealing with venues of different sizes, do you always get a chance to rehearse before hand so you get a feel of where your playing, you know for things like any sound adjustments you might make.  Also if you dont , are there clues you have before you sit and play to make those adjustments for the hall your in? Im asking because I have still have trouble with that Myself.

Anyway, thanks for the post. I would love to hear more of your playing, 

Cheers, Becky

thanks for your nice words.  i almost always get a chance to rehearse in whatever venue i am playing in, when it is empty... it wll sound different with ppl in the room but it gives a chance to get used to the instrument.  especially when you play at places that are not used to having specifically piano recitals, the pianos are not always well tended, and in fact they weren't even going to tune, i insisted as part of the contract that it be tuned no earlier than a day before the concert.  they told me the tuning was "fine," and this was a week or two before.. i put on a big show and threw a little fit and they had it tuned the day of.  BUT, the tuner doesn't always and probably won't go through and voice the piano evenly, that was the case with this instrument, and i almost never have a chance to go over the piano with the tuner, so i can't make any input on that, even though i would like to.

even tho i get a chance to rehearse in the hall, i always improvise a little something very softly before i play the first piece of a program.. this helps to hear the instrument with people int he hall, even tho it is only soft, and also to calm nerves as you canp lay at your own pace.  pianists of old did this all the time, and in fact often imrpvosied right into the first piece.  actually in thsi concert you can see it on video that i did it, though put a break before the actual music:



i remember reading that richter said he never tried a piano beforehand, because it should be like walking a tightrope.  i dont enjoy that philosophy!

Offline becky8898

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Thank you so much for your full and quick answer.  That was very nice of you.  I went and listened to some of your other postings and I admire your art very much. IM still trying to find my own artistic voice.  If you want you could take a listen to one of my postings.  I just put up the Scriabin op 8 #12. It would be nice to hear the opinion of someone who plays as well as you.

Thanks, Cheers Becky

Offline emill

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Hi (Nathan)!!

I have listened to several of the pieces you played here and in YT and my ... you are one excellent pianist.  And despite that you have posted and played pieces which are not familiar and popular with the general audience, I am sure you can easily sustain our interest despite our short attention spans ;D as you project your music very well with good clarity of tones. The Sonata in g minor by Q. Kim really has put me on a proper mood before church this Sunday morning.  THANKS.

May I just second your requirements before a performance. I do not agree with "there are no bad pianos only bad performers" ... but rather subscribe to - a good performance becomes better with a properly maintained piano.  When my son Enzo gets invited to perform, sometimes I think we raise eyebrows with our requirements:   1. a chance to practice with a properly tuned and maintained piano and  2. a final tuning 1 or 2 hours before the performance. As his teacher often tells us ...  a pianist in an off day with a bad mood who plays with a "bad" piano will surely end up with a "bad" reputation among audiences. :(

emill
member on behalf of my son, Lorenzo

Offline birba

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This was the same piano that you played the polish songs on?  It sounds like another instrument.  Wonderful playing.  Great sustaining tension.  I play it a hair faster.  But I got used to your speed.  Have you ever tried that crescendo that some pianist recomended somewhere or maybe i heard it in a master class, I don't remember.  You begin softly the reprise and gradually make a crescendo to the d-flat major part and then a big diminuendo after that to the end.  It's a wonderful effect.  They play this a lot in villages here in Italy, and the effect is really that of a band coming from a distance and passing on. 
I hope this was an excerpt and you played the whole sonata, right?
As far as trying out the piano before, I have played on some real beauties in my life and no amount of practising before would have would have helped me to overcome certain "deficiencies".  Nikita Magalof told a funny story once where he came to try out the piano on the day of the concert in some obscure monastary in Portugal somewhere.  He found an upright waiting for him.  He was dumbfounded and made a big scene and said if he came that night and didn't find a grand piano he would refuse to play.  The organizers (the monks of the abbey) were equally dumbfounded and didn't know what to do.  When Magalof arrived that evening he found the same upright with a black cover draped over a huge crate that lengthened the upright and made it appear as a grand piano!!  He was so touched by their naivete that he went ahead with the concert anyway!

Offline andhow04

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Hi (Nathan)!!

I have listened to several of the pieces you played here and in YT and my ... you are one excellent pianist.  And despite that you have posted and played pieces which are not familiar and popular with the general audience, I am sure you can easily sustain our interest despite our short attention spans ;D as you project your music very well with good clarity of tones. The Sonata in g minor by Q. Kim really has put me on a proper mood before church this Sunday morning.  THANKS.

May I just second your requirements before a performance. I do not agree with "there are no bad pianos only bad performers" ... but rather subscribe to - a good performance becomes better with a properly maintained piano.  When my son Enzo gets invited to perform, sometimes I think we raise eyebrows with our requirements:   1. a chance to practice with a properly tuned and maintained piano and  2. a final tuning 1 or 2 hours before the performance. As his teacher often tells us ...  a pianist in an off day with a bad mood who plays with a "bad" piano will surely end up with a "bad" reputation among audiences. :(

emill

thanks for your kind words, and i am glad you enjoyed Quentin's sonata which has become an important piece in my repertoire... in fact he is playing it himself, in April, at carnegie hall in new york city.

i think as pianists we have to be very demanding about the instruments, though to remember we can't alla fford to travel with a personal technician from steinway or wherever.  but i think it is good to remmber, that when we are demanding towards the concert presenters, it can earn more of their respect than their irritation, because they want the concert to go well too after all - but don't always know what is most important from an instrument point of view.

some pianists i know have the skills to work on the piano themselves, which is probably a good idea because as i said you hardly ever actually meet the technician for the concert.  you can't tell him about voicing problems or other things, and they don't do it- generally - if nobody asks specifically.  in my experience, tehcnicians will often never touch the soft pedal, and sometimes the soft pedal pushes a hammer over too much, so it hits two strings.  they don't know, because they don't tune with the soft pedal.

the pianist ivan moravec reputedly takes out the whole action and shaves down all the hammers to get a specific sound out of the instrument...

thanks again

Offline andhow04

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This was the same piano that you played the polish songs on?  It sounds like another instrument.  Wonderful playing.  Great sustaining tension.  I play it a hair faster.  But I got used to your speed.  Have you ever tried that crescendo that some pianist recomended somewhere or maybe i heard it in a master class, I don't remember.  You begin softly the reprise and gradually make a crescendo to the d-flat major part and then a big diminuendo after that to the end.  It's a wonderful effect.  They play this a lot in villages here in Italy, and the effect is really that of a band coming from a distance and passing on. 
I hope this was an excerpt and you played the whole sonata, right?

thanks for the comments.  yes it was the same piano and yes i played the whole sonata, but wasn't happy with everything so i will only post this movement.  I have heard of that effect, and i heard that it originated with anton rubinstein.  i have a very strange edition of the chopin sonatas edited by someone i think caled A. Brugnoli (it's very old and i don't have the title page).  it opens with a treatise on the notation of rhythm then gives the sonatas.

there are a lot of footnotes, like in schnabel editions, where he says this is what this or that pianist did.  he miust have been sucking up to busoni, because everytime busoni's ideas came up, he says something like "This is most recommended."  in one funny passage (the reprise after the middle section in major) in the funeral march, he is suggesting putting the first chord of every other bar an octave lower.  he writes: "Busoni played every second bar the first chord of the left hand an octave lower, imitating very impressively the tolling of the bell.  Paderewski does the same thing, only at every bar.  I do not hesitate to advise the first of these variants."

when i performed the sonata, i actually considered a lot of things that can be done.  i did consider the rubinstein effect, as well as the busoni octaves; i also wrote a simple counter melody for the last time we hear the d-flat major theme.  i decided against all of them, even though i do believe these things can be justified if a piece is heard over and over again and known by every living person in the room, which this was.

in the end the only "unusual" thing i did was repeat the first movement back to the very beginnig, rather than to the doppio movimento.  if you look at the oldest score of the sonata that exists (theres no manuscript), it is clear that there is no beginning repeat sign at the doppio movimento.

another word about my score, there are some strange things that i cannot understand what they mean.  there are these marks everywhere in there: "1C." or "3C."  in the first bar of the doppio movimento, it says "1C."  in the third bar it says "3C."  in the fourth bar (?) it says "1C."  they are scattered around, seemingly randomly... i can't find anywhere in the score where it says what these would mean.  any ideas?

Quote
As far as trying out the piano before, I have played on some real beauties in my life and no amount of practising before would have would have helped me to overcome certain "deficiencies".  Nikita Magalof told a funny story once where he came to try out the piano on the day of the concert in some obscure monastary in Portugal somewhere.  He found an upright waiting for him.  He was dumbfounded and made a big scene and said if he came that night and didn't find a grand piano he would refuse to play.  The organizers (the monks of the abbey) were equally dumbfounded and didn't know what to do.  When Magalof arrived that evening he found the same upright with a black cover draped over a huge crate that lengthened the upright and made it appear as a grand piano!!  He was so touched by their naivete that he went ahead with the concert anyway!

that is a hilarious story!  thanks for sharing...

Offline scottmcc

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very nice nathan!  I don't have anything concrete to add, as others have already provided excellent analysis.

Offline emill

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Hi again Nathan!! :)

So sorry, I got so engrossed with the Sonata in g minor by Q. Kim that I forgot to mention about the Chopin (funeral march) .... would just like to say it was beautifully played and you can just evoke other sceneries or situations in your mind far more pleasant than a funeral.. ;D  :o

thanks again..

emill
member on behalf of my son, Lorenzo
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