Please do not use the pedal on Rondo Alla Turca (Mozart)

[lamadoo]

The pedal wasn't out at the time when Mozart wrote the piece. Its a cheeky piece, staccato like and crisp. Stay clean fellas, even the professionals are pedaling it hard on the rolled chords and octaves all over youtube



This is a clean performance by Glenn Gould, rare to find a proper performance that isn't modernized with the pedal.

Rachmaninoff playing with no pedal

[awesom_o]

The pedal wasn't out at the time when Mozart wrote the piece.

Now, I completely agree with you that Rondo Alla Turca needs to be played with the utmost precision and clarity!

However, I would encourage you to do a little bit more historical research on the pianos of Mozart's time before saying something like this!

[lamadoo]

oh fortepiano? 

[pianoman53]

... And they had pedal...

[jy_]

I'm not sure when they started to use pedals, but I would say that the earliest recorded usage would be in the Moonlight Sonata and Haydn's HOB XVI:50...

Think there is a pedal marking at the opening of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Conc, but i'm not sure if the piece came before/after the Moonlight.

Don't take my word for it though maybe someone more experienced can comment...

[kalirren]

Viennese piano manufacturers were really adventurous, actually.  I watched a documentary that showed an actual piano from the period with no fewer than seventeen, yes, 17 pedals hooked up to all sorts of gizmos...arguably the real error is in assuming that Mozart's "Ped." indication is a sustain.

The pianist in that documentary played that Rondo alla Turca with a pedal that was hooked up to a bell, which went "ding!" every time you pushed it along with those rolled chords!

[cabbynum]

What documentary?
That sounds interesting.

[cometear]

The Mozart Sonata No. 11 (which were talking about) was written as early as 1778 but is considered to be 1783. In 1778, fortepianos were built with pedals. In the time this sonata was written there was, in fact, pedals. I use pedal in Mozart to enhance the music. There are parts when I would disdain the use of pedal but there are also parts I would disdain not using the pedal!

[kalirren]

What documentary?
That sounds interesting.

Sorry, I don't remember.  My piano teacher showed it to me and two other students in a group lesson over a decade ago, he played it off of a DVD.  It was a documentary, narrated by an Eastern-European husband and wife, that started with the development of Cristofani's hammer action and proceeded through ~3 centuries of piano technology and recording technology to arrive at the present.  The finale was a clip of the husband accompanying himself in the 4-hand version of Schubert's Marche Militaire.

Those...are the only things I can think of.  Maybe search Youtube for " "rondo alla turca" pedal bell "?

edit:  It's this one!

The History of the Pianoforte: A Documentary in Sound (Publications of the Early Music Institute)

[lamadoo]

wow a bell and drum, just found a clip on your documentary

skip to 3:55

[vansh]

wow a bell and drum, just found a clip on your documentary

skip to 3:55

Heh...it's actually at 2:55, not 3:55. That was pretty funny to hear.

[pianoplunker]

The pedal wasn't out at the time when Mozart wrote the piece. Its a cheeky piece, staccato like and crisp. Stay clean fellas, even the professionals are pedaling it hard on the rolled chords and octaves all over youtube



This is a clean performance by Glenn Gould, rare to find a proper performance that isn't modernized with the pedal.

Rachmaninoff playing with no pedal

I have never studied the history of the pedal, but I would take your comment a step further and say the pedal is overused on many pieces, not just because the pedal was not used by the composer, but because it can sound convoluted.   Even with pieces which have pedal markings from the composer, they did not mean to stand on it for entire measures and thus blurring everything.  I agree, please dont do it. Be thoughtful with the pedal usage.