Wagner-Liszt - Isoldens Liebestod (from Tristan und Isolde)

[throwawaynotreally]

It's been a dream piece of mine since about 4 years ago Please forgive my many wrong notes!

[throwawaynotreally]

Anyone?? Would love some feedback!

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Ok, as this has been one of my repertoire pieces for a long time now, I'll have a go!

Brief running commentary -

0.12 this is an admitted idiosyncrasy of mine, but I'm always a bit uncomfortable with the gracenote slide happening as a near-acciaccatura. It's not very Wagnerian and I do prefer to distort it slightly so it's slower.

0.28 when the soprano enters here, be careful to announce her entry, rather than it be dropped out of the texture. Likewise you need to be careful regarding consistency of balance - later on there in the first page there are also some other melodic notes which seem to go astray (e.g. 0.56). Well done with the tremolando, it's unobtrusive and keeping it quiet is imo the hardest thing about the piece.

I think the following cresc  which ends c. 1.10 gets too loud too early and leaves you with nowhere to go; also I wouldn't go fully ff with it.

1.13 - 1.26 I thought was very good with the exception of the inconsistency at 1.20 with the B at the top of the lh broken chord.

From here up to 1.50 also good, you seemed to observe the semiquaver v triplet semiquaver distinction which is easy to miss out on.

Interesting playing in the next minute, really quite dreamlike and you did bring out some countermelodic material in the left hand. If you are going to play it in a dreamlike manner, I would be careful to minimise the slight impetuosity I sense in your playing, eg 2.23, it's for consistency of mood really. I quite like your overall approach though.

I think the cresc from 2.47 gets loud too quickly for maximum effectiveness, and feel you've overdone the rhetorical pause at the end of it.

The section from 3.03 is I think also a difficult problem, because in an ideal world you want to project the soprano line over the chordal texture, you want the chords pp, the soprano p, and you want to get the counter-melodies in the lh as well! It's asking a lot. You get the soprano line across well, one thing I would suggest is to find a little more time for the demisemiquaver turns - they can be very expressive, and you can be sure a soprano would "bend time" a little bit for them.

The cresc from 3.59 I again feel you get loud too early and leave yourself little room for the molto cresc at the end.

In the next section it's good, but I think you have a slight tendency towards thumping the bass notes on the beat. I am informed that performance tradition suggests it's acceptable to return back to pp on the chord at 4.45 - this gives you a little more scope to exploit the poco a poco cresc directly before it (and after it).

The halt/rhetorical pause at 4.57 was one of the very few things I really didn't like about the performance - I think it was exacerbated by the chord appearing to be staccato.

At 5.36 I would be careful to both arrive on the Ic6 chord and then place the various descending chords in a precisely controlled dim; your second chord of the bar is out of place sonically, if one is going to be fussy.

Last line, don't let the tremolandi become intrusive.

It seems like I've maybe made a lot of criticisms, but there are a lot of things I like about this performance. Well done.

[birba]

I, too, enjoyed your performance very much.  It's my dream piece, too!
I particularly liked your descreet inner voicing, the sparse use of pedal and general tone.
I thought some of your subito pianos were exagerated at times.  They tended to break the flow in the second section. 
But as a performance it was masterful and very convincing.

[throwawaynotreally]

Ok, as this has been one of my repertoire pieces for a long time now, I'll have a go!

Brief running commentary -

0.12 this is an admitted idiosyncrasy of mine, but I'm always a bit uncomfortable with the gracenote slide happening as a near-acciaccatura. It's not very Wagnerian and I do prefer to distort it slightly so it's slower.

0.28 when the soprano enters here, be careful to announce her entry, rather than it be dropped out of the texture. Likewise you need to be careful regarding consistency of balance - later on there in the first page there are also some other melodic notes which seem to go astray (e.g. 0.56). Well done with the tremolando, it's unobtrusive and keeping it quiet is imo the hardest thing about the piece.

I think the following cresc  which ends c. 1.10 gets too loud too early and leaves you with nowhere to go; also I wouldn't go fully ff with it.

1.13 - 1.26 I thought was very good with the exception of the inconsistency at 1.20 with the B at the top of the lh broken chord.

From here up to 1.50 also good, you seemed to observe the semiquaver v triplet semiquaver distinction which is easy to miss out on.

Interesting playing in the next minute, really quite dreamlike and you did bring out some countermelodic material in the left hand. If you are going to play it in a dreamlike manner, I would be careful to minimise the slight impetuosity I sense in your playing, eg 2.23, it's for consistency of mood really. I quite like your overall approach though.

I think the cresc from 2.47 gets loud too quickly for maximum effectiveness, and feel you've overdone the rhetorical pause at the end of it.

The section from 3.03 is I think also a difficult problem, because in an ideal world you want to project the soprano line over the chordal texture, you want the chords pp, the soprano p, and you want to get the counter-melodies in the lh as well! It's asking a lot. You get the soprano line across well, one thing I would suggest is to find a little more time for the demisemiquaver turns - they can be very expressive, and you can be sure a soprano would "bend time" a little bit for them.

The cresc from 3.59 I again feel you get loud too early and leave yourself little room for the molto cresc at the end.

In the next section it's good, but I think you have a slight tendency towards thumping the bass notes on the beat. I am informed that performance tradition suggests it's acceptable to return back to pp on the chord at 4.45 - this gives you a little more scope to exploit the poco a poco cresc directly before it (and after it).

The halt/rhetorical pause at 4.57 was one of the very few things I really didn't like about the performance - I think it was exacerbated by the chord appearing to be staccato.

At 5.36 I would be careful to both arrive on the Ic6 chord and then place the various descending chords in a precisely controlled dim; your second chord of the bar is out of place sonically, if one is going to be fussy.

Last line, don't let the tremolandi become intrusive.

It seems like I've maybe made a lot of criticisms, but there are a lot of things I like about this performance. Well done.

Wow...Thank you so so much, this is an amazing commentary! To me the more someone has to say means the more to listen and consider.
I have to admit I agree with pretty much all of your advice, I feel it's going to really going to enhance my understanding and experience of this work. Thank you.

[throwawaynotreally]

I, too, enjoyed your performance very much.  It's my dream piece, too!
I particularly liked your descreet inner voicing, the sparse use of pedal and general tone.
I thought some of your subito pianos were exagerated at times.  They tended to break the flow in the second section.  
But as a performance it was masterful and very convincing.

Many thanks Birba, that means a lot

Listening back I think another reason for the brokenness could be my poor pedal-handling of those tricky chromatic modulations. I'm trying to completely clear the previous harmony and it's hard to find a good way to bridge these sections, especially when you have small hands

I had the pleasure of playing this for my one of my current teacher's former teacher last week for a masterclass course. I'm still digesting the immense amount of information he's hurled at me - he's transcribed this aria for soprano, quartet and piano (iirc) so he knows the music inside out.  I thought you'd might find this interesting: he studied with your mentor, Agosti apparently.

Will get to work now, I'm playing it in a competition abroad in a couple of days!