VIDEO WITH AN IN TUNE PIANO: Resignazione by Franz Liszt

[michael_sayers]

1940 N.Y. Steinway D.

[j_menz]

Are you just cleaning out your digital equivalent of the garage?

[michael_sayers]

Are you just cleaning out your digital equivalent of the garage?

I read a story in the news not too long ago about a man who died.  He had accumulated seven million dollars worth of gold coins and bars.  These were stashed in his garage and none of his friends or relatives knew about it.

Are you here to critique recordings, or just to enquire about members' digital garages?

I might have some musical "platinum" in there too, and not only musical "gold".  Maybe I should go and have a look.  

[stoat_king]

I like this.
Well, insofar as I'm able to - I'm dont like the piece much at all. Its a bit miserable for me.

I could say your playing is slow and ponderous - but thats entirely in keeping with the piece I think.
Maybe a touch faster would also work - other faster versions feel lighter though, so maybe your way is right.

Also, in places you are playing quite heavy-handedly, but in a way that suggests (to me at least) agitation or frustration (58, 1:30, 1:40) in some places and despondancy (2:00).
Also works for me.

Given that its called 'resignation', I think you've conveyed that feeling better than many other versions that I've heard.
Its not a feeling I like - thats my problem.

[michael_sayers]

Hi stoat_king,

Thanks for listening. I think maybe it is a bit too forte at times . . . it is hard to say, it didn't sound too forte in person, on the recording though it sounds louder.  That wasn't really a modern Steinway D - even a 1940 one doesn't project as well at the keyboard end as the contemporary ones do - and maybe I was pushing for tone too hard instead of just trusting that it would be there out away from the (very large) piano.

I wasn't very well connected to Liszt's late music until two years before this recording, when a friend's body was found floating in a Texas lake in the winter.  It was a suicide.  Liszt's late music was a part of the way I worked through the searing pain, guilt [though I did nothing wrong] and uncertainty.

To anyone here who is thinking of such an action, there always are alternatives even though you may not be aware of them.  Just email me and we can even talk by phone - international rates dialing from Sweden to the U.S. are at around 14 cents per hour.  I turn my back on no one in such a state of mind.

Maybe I should go listen to a Sousa March now.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I think this is one of your more successful recordings - in particular it sounds like there is good control over the shades of pp-mp. At the louder treble notes I think the attack is slightly harsh.

I've listened (and read) the comments on quite a few of your recordings; whilst I've not commented on many I'd like to make a small generalisation, re this alleged position (I don't know how many people truly subscribe to it, and for clarity's sake I am not making the generalisation in the context of this performance)

playing was bad because... I didn't really play the music because it was not presented exactly as notated

Firstly, it's a position I personally would utterly repudiate - it runs contrary to everything we know about 19th century piano practice, and notation is often, especially in florid passages, of necessity imprecise, as it usually tells you nothing regarding the details of tempo shaping / ornamental rubato within the bar. For example, if someone plays a Lisztian scale flourish with every notationally equal note strictly equal in duration, imo they are the sort of person who should not be playing Liszt, nor quite a lot of other composers for that matter.

This is one thing. However, secondly, I do fear that you often go so far in the direction of totally free interpretation of the score that you are imposing your own personality on the music to a level which goes well beyond conventional interpretation and it is ultimately to the detriment of the musical affect. I would accept your approaches unquestioningly if the title was "X - as reimagined by".

Finally, whilst I don't agree with a lot of what you do, I'd like to reiterate what I think I said on an earlier performance, i.e. that I'm glad, in a peculiar way, that someone does think outside of "acceptable" boundaries.