Totentanz (solo) - Liszt

[liszt1022]

All right, so here's where my Totentanz is this week.
I don't have a deadline, I'm just playing it because I like it and as a personal challenge.
This was recorded with a GoPro camera on my head. I was visiting some family and decided it might be fun to run through this.
That piano... ehhh. The non-working A was constantly distracting, but there's only one spot I really lost focus because of it. There are still plenty of other unrelated errors, but I thought the video might be of interest here.
It's still a work in progress and will likely be for quite some time.

[cbreemer]

Kudos to anyone who tackles this piece with I think is not at all trivial. However the
atrocious sound and giddy camerawork make this impossible to watch. I had to switch it off
after a couple of seconds. Sorry.

[liszt1022]

Thanks for responding at all! This place is pretty quiet.
I agree it can be hard to look at and listen to.

Try this one:
https://danielbrown.vgpiano.com/audio/Totentanz-Kareshi.mp3
It was recorded on the same awful piano, but with a nicer mic and no camera.
As with your Peter Grimes, this one /\ is assembled from a few takes.

Aside from these, I've tried recording it on my digital piano, which is in tune of course but sounds so artificial. Also it's a lot harder to play well without real piano key action.

[cbreemer]

That sounds a lot more palatable indeed. Still not very nice though, you poor old grand just does not have the tone and sonority for it. I've never played this piece so I don't know if it is anywhere near as hard as it sounds; I guess as a whole it may not be, though some passages seem pretty devilish. You seem to have all the notes down well but are not ready to make them thunder and scream as yet. A good piano could be more inspiring towards that end. I did not hear any real problems, just many places where you still need to build enough confidence to take risks.
Listening with score it seemed to me you do not quite observe many of the different staccati and sforzandi, and dynamic contrats should be much more extreme. I'm not sure how well the piece works in its solo version - it seems to go on a bit and I find the closing bars quite disappointing. Is this Liszt's own version ?

Still, a commendable job, and much potential. Do get your hands on a real grand one day, you
might surprise yourself (and to hell with a couple of missed notes).

[liszt1022]

That sounds a lot more palatable indeed. Still not very nice though, you poor old grand just does not have the tone and sonority for it.

It's just a very tired upright in a basement room.

I've never played this piece so I don't know if it is anywhere near as hard as it sounds; I guess as a whole it may not be, though some passages seem pretty devilish.

It's been quite a challenge for me, although I'm trying my best not to show too much of that.

I did not hear any real problems, just many places where you still need to build enough confidence to take risks.

Good call on the lack of confidence. I plan to review the score one page at a time, and especially to decide for sure how I want this pedaled. The pedaling as written obscures a bit too much for my taste.

Listening with score it seemed to me you do not quite observe many of the different staccati and sforzandi, and dynamic contrasts should be much more extreme. I'm not sure how well the piece works in its solo version - it seems to go on a bit and I find the closing bars quite disappointing. Is this Liszt's own version ?

Dynamics I can partially attribute to the piano's lack of dynamic range, partially to the microphone, but whatever. Many staccati written in the score are then covered up by a pedal indication, and I try to follow the exposed ones. Yes, this is Liszt's own one-piano arrangement, I'm not entirely sure why shortened the ending- perhaps because it -was- going on a bit? Various pianists restore the ending to something closer to the original.

There are optional cuts that bring it down to about half the time duration (the slower piano cadenza before the fugato, and the entire subordinate variations.) But to anyone who has heard the whole thing, the cut version seems to be missing too much. I do think it works better with an orchestra, and some of the parts don't really make sense in a solo setting (like where the orchestra cadences, cuts off to make room for the piano cadenza, it's just piano cutting off and starting right back up.) But I don't think the solo version is ineffective, just different.

Thank you for listening. I'll post again here if I make a new video or recording.