To continue our discussion from PW I'd like to know: when you do the edits, do you feel or fear that there is a tradeoff between musicality and perfection? I am not talking about correcting mistakes here but for example, if there is a slightly uneven run and you correct it to be absolutely even, do you also lose something? Cannot small imperfections due to physical limitations in some sense be part of the interpretation, and even foreseen by the composer? While this comes naturally when playing I imagine it to be quite difficult to take into account in the editing.
Yes, this is a good question.
Ok you mentioned the danger of perfectly even runs. Well, this is out of the question. The reason is, the worst thing you can do when proceeding like this is removing what is good, which is the musical side. so you have to be able to recognize what you DON'T WANT TO REMOVE. And this is the hardest part, you don't want to do a bad trade off, something that sounds musical but with several imperfection, for something that sounds perfect. Maybe my experiment as a programmer mixed with performer, gave me some ability to make the right balance. I actually to this very quickly cause I know if how to make the distinction of what to keep and what to improve. When I record a passage and after listening to it I feel the emotion from it, this becomes a bit delicate, you don't want to change that feeling. So sometimes I change very little if nothing. But other times, something isn't right, example, On Op 25 no 5, I kept listening to the bouncy part and couldn't put my finder on what was wrong. After a while I realize I wasn't accentuating the dissonant grace note enough, when I increased the velocity of those notes, it completely change the Étude, suddenly I enjoyed listening to it, and in this sense it became educational as maxtrainfla pointlessly mentioned, from now on when I play it, I will accent these notes. In fact a lot of the changes I done, I now include them in the way I play, because my ear has become sensitive to them. Sort of like when a teacher plays to the student how it should sound. And I must admit this research was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed listening tons a great pianists play these Études, how each played a certain passage. I know i'm not being very specific about the changes I done, let's see, what else? Let's take the example of Op 25 No 6, Étude in thirds. One of my fav. I have heard a lot of pianists play that one, and it seems like a race, some play it really fast, and the faster they play it, the louder it is with many harsh corners. When I recorded it I had set the MIDI sensitivity so my the range of my dynamic would be in the softer end. I wanted the entire piece to revolve around softer and delicate dynamics with the exception of a few bars. As for my speed, it's certainly not the fastest, in fact all my versions not among the fastest, I could find one pianist for each Étude that plays it faster and for some, much faster. So getting the right speed was important. Another example is Op 25 No 2, I would think Chopin played this very delicately, but who can play it prestissimo and pianissimo end to end? I know I can't. So by lowering the velo though out, it added so much to the piece, and remember that Chopin's piano was not heavy sounding like the pianofortes of today. So I think Chopin would of enjoyed that version.
As to other things i did, Hmm! make little velo adjustments to shape melodies, anything to add expression. I would always sit back, listen to the passage, and then stop immediately the curser and say: "Right there!!!" and fix something, then again i'd start from the beginning and do the same process over and over until I was fully happy.
The last phase was to play it to someone I trusted had good taste, and he'd give me some comments, I would continue to make extra alterations with the comments I agreed on. Once again, I don,t know if I'm answering the question of what i done, how I done etc but feel free to ask for more clarifications.
Topic: Chopin's 24 Études (Realization by Guy Bacos with new approach)