cheating in liszt transcendental etudes :)

[johnannsb]

I am currently learning liszt's chasse-neige, however, having seen a few live performances many people tend to ignore Liszt's directions in terms of jumping and play the beginning with two hands to make it sound smoother.
I have to play this in a competition where the judges all have a copy of the score... what do you recommend?
It sounds much simpler with the two hands but liszt clearly does not ask for this... 

[j_menz]

If you need to use two hands for the opening bars, you're going to be screwed for the rest of it.

[philb]

There are actually many pianists who play the opening with two hands, most notably Lugansky. If it sounds smoother, I would actually advise it.

[danhuyle]

I've tried both ways of playing the opening 4 bars of TE12.

I wouldn't call it cheating. You're just redistributing. Besides, the left hand cross over Lugansky does is actually better. Then there's the ascending chromatic in La campanella, where you can use either 23 interlock or just one hand. No right or wrong there.

How about TE9 where there's 10th chords. I wonder how people get through that? Chances are you'd have to omit some notes.

[werq34ac]

I've tried both ways of playing the opening 4 bars of TE12.

I wouldn't call it cheating. You're just redistributing. Besides, the left hand cross over Lugansky does is actually better. Then there's the ascending chromatic in La campanella, where you can use either 23 interlock or just one hand. No right or wrong there.

How about TE9 where there's 10th chords. I wonder how people get through that? Chances are you'd have to omit some notes.

I'm not looking at the score right now, so I'm not sure, but are you sure they have to be omitted? Can't they be arpeggiated/blocked/rolled?

Anyway, I suppose you can play it with two hands, but later on for sure you're going to have to be able to do it with one hand (later on in the piece, I mean, not later on in life)

[fftransform]

Berman plays it as implied in the score.


For all intents and purposes, whatever Berman does in the TE's is probably the "right" thing to do =P

[pytheamateur]

Berman plays it as implied in the score.


For all intents and purposes, whatever Berman does in the TE's is probably the "right" thing to do =P

Which Berman are you talking about?

[fftransform]

Which Berman are you talking about?

Lazar.  Not sure if Boris has recorded the TE's.

[nyiregyhazi]

I am currently learning liszt's chasse-neige, however, having seen a few live performances many people tend to ignore Liszt's directions in terms of jumping and play the beginning with two hands to make it sound smoother.
I have to play this in a competition where the judges all have a copy of the score... what do you recommend?
It sounds much simpler with the two hands but liszt clearly does not ask for this...  

It's not as clear cut as you may think. Composers used grand stave notation- which is not necessarily specific to which hand is which. Chopin's etude op 10 no. 3 notates much of the r.h. accompaniment in the bass clef (often changed by editors but he wrote it that way). It's not necessarily prescriptive of the hand.

[pianist1976]

We reach a controversial issue

In my opinion this piece is an impressive piano poem but it also still is a etude (that is, a pedagogical piece written in order to learn to overcome a difficulty). In my humble opinion, the opening is intended by Liszt to exercise finger independence while achieving a convincing musical, expressive result, using just one hand (just like Paganini Etude no. 1, except for in that case it's played by the left hand). I used to play that way but I must admit that while I tried hard, I never achieved to play the tremolo soft enough so now I play tremolo with left hand and melody with right hand.

Claudio Arrau was a fanatic of playing everything as it was written, respecting the very exact way the distribution of notes at hands on the score. His argument was that arranging the original distribution of hands changes the color. In fact, listening to his Chasse Neige rendition we perceive how strong sounds the opening tremolo. While I usually agree with that Arrau statement, I think that there can be some exceptions and the final musical effect must have priority. While I usually love Arrau's playing, I'm not specially fond of his beginning of Chasse Neige.  

I'm thinking now about Alfredo Casella. He said that while respecting the score, the pianist isn't obligated to suffer useless difficulties and he cites the reduction on one note of a very, very fast chord in Schumann Etudes Symphoniques. Its up to the performer to decide if the jumps that follow the tremolo passage are a useless difficulty that can be arranged/facilitated or they have a expressive value on their own that must be respected. In this case, I really think that the effect changes completely by eliminating the jump with the help of the left hand. You eliminate the risk but you also eliminate a fluctuation in rhythm due to the jumps that may be intended by the composer. This is a very personal choice. You decide.  

[nyiregyhazi]

Claudio Arrau was a fanatic of playing everything as it was written, respecting the very exact way the distribution of notes at hands on the score. His argument was that arranging the original distribution of hands changes the color. In fact, listening to his Chasse Neige rendition we perceive how strong sounds the opening tremolo. While I usually agree with that Arrau statement, I think that there can be some exceptions and the final musical effect must have priority. While I usually love Arrau's playing, I'm not specially fond of his beginning of Chasse Neige.  

The problem is that only a modern eye takes the notation to be prescriptive as to the hands that are "supposed" to be playing. While Liszt did not ask for two hands, neither can his notation be strictly regarded as specifically requesting only one. A pedantic stance can be very dangerous- and Arrau is a pianist who often let results suffer in favour of pedantry, especially when he was in later life.