Franz Liszt, Liebestraum #3

[yzou2]

I am an enthusiastic Piano amateur. This is the first topic I post a topic in Pianostreet.com. It's great to see that there is a forum for everyone helping each other in playing piano!

Liebestraum # 3 is my favorite piece. I want to play it well so badly. I have spent more than 2 months on learning only this piece (average 1-2 hours/day), and try my best to improve playing this piece. However, since I am a self-learner, there will be something I ignored. So hope you guys could provide some comments about my current performance. Any comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

[xdjuicebox]

Some tidbits:

-Make the melody clearer in general
-Cleaner pedaling
-Cleaner LH during the arpeggiated parts, you want them smoother (I'll go into detail later)

Good job! It was pretty clean in general. Here's what I think though.

In general, it sounds kind of robotic. All of the notes are perfectly in time, and roughly the same volume, and you don't really want that.
First thing's first; you have to sing the melody. "Dolce cantabile" (at least that's how I remember the score, I forget), so really sing it, and make it really sweet. The piece is called "Liebestraume," which translates to "Dreams of Love" I think. Loving, sweet, and really sing it. Like you love the person. There's a poem on the front cover of my edition, you might want to read that.
I want more swells/rises and falls in the arpeggiated notes in the beginning. Think like harps, or wind in curtains, some kind of "flowy," sound. Smooth, delicate. Sorry if I sound super abstract, it's kind of hard to describe what I mean. Listen to Rubenstein or Arrau, they do it incredibly well

Very clean 1st cadenza good job :]

Make your dynamics more audible, I kind of heard the same dynamic level throughout with a little bit of variety here and there. And you could stand to be a bit more melodramatic too - remember the guy who wrote this once pretended to faint because he started playing a piece way faster than he should have(/could handle!) (or at least, according to the Art of Piano Playing by David Dubal, he did) Don't like super overdo it, but you can be a little less subtle with Liszt.

In the middle section (B major I think), less harsh of tone! It sounds like you're on an electric piano, but don't pound on the melody notes there! It's really tricky because you need the notes to stand out, but you don't want to get that harsh singing. It's still pretty dolce cantabile.

In general, I want to hear more rubato from you. Don't just slow down though, remember the rule: rubato means steal, so you have to give as much as you take. The total time you spend playing should equal the exact metronomic time, but it's just...stretched/deformed a bit. Add emphasis to where you think it should be, and give me a phrase with more hills and troughs as opposed to one straight thing. I overdo it sometimes LOL so take what I say with a grain of salt

As you go to the big E major chord, more crescendo! Start smaller so you can crescendo!

Great second cadenza, but keep the notes together in both hands more

The final Ab section needs to be REEEEEEALLY sweet. Super sweet, so sweet that you'll melt me from how sweet it is. Also the chords on the top need to be really gentle and delicate, kind of "whimsical." Like the way you'd tap the shoulder of your loved one to get his/her attention. SUPER gentle and delicate. I'm not really good at using words to describe this, but I hope you know what I mean

Does it say ritenuto during the part with the descending tenths? I vaguely remember it saying so, but even so, let it slowly settle down to that Ab arpeggio

When you play the final chord parts, make sure you voice the top note!

In general, pretty good performance, but the next thing to work on is subtle details, and how you balance the volumes of the different notes. I look forward to hearing it again!

[yzou2]

Hi xdjuicebox, thanks so much for your valuable and detailed suggestions. I totally agree with you about the clearer and sweeter melody, more audible dynamics, etc. I will try to improve along the direction you pointed out.

Actually I have noticed all these points in rehearing my performance before. Accordingly, I tried to do some specific things (such as playing melody separately, and then add harmony, etc) to improve the subtle details you mentioned. But as you hear, it seems that results from these practice are not very good. So any suggestions about how to carry out the practice to make my performance more Dolce cantabile? Any suggestions, or reference books, links are all greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

[xdjuicebox]

Everyone achieves the sound they desire slightly differently, but I guess I'll tell you what works for me, though it might not work for you.

1. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen! I particularly LOVE Rubenstein's rendition (the one on the record, though the one he did on that one TV show is pretty nice too). Compare the different renditions, pick out what you like, what you don't like, compare it to the score

2. Listen SUPER CAREFULLY to your own playing. More often than not, that's all of you really need to actually. Once you hear it you'll be like "oh this is terrible, I need to fix it," (queue the self-esteem issues, at least I have them lol) and usually you'll find a way. The trick is to listen to yourself, and as simple as it is, it's harder than you might think. Try playing the easier sections with your eyes closed. REALLY listen.

3. I can't explain singing tone over the internet, you might want to seek a teacher for that. Idk I'm not that great with words haha. You might understand what I mean by listening to some other pianists though. It's a big mix of articulation, phrasing, tone, and so many other things that I don't fully understand myself. In fact, I barely understand it and could use a lot of work on that myself, so I'm not the best person to ask...

4. In terms of which notes are loud and which notes are soft, since I play with more "weighty" technique, I kind of just imagine more of my weight in whatever fingers need to be louder, and less weight in whatever fingers are more quiet. I found it by trial and error. Let me know how that goes for you.

5. There are a ton of books you should read! The Art of Piano Playing by Neuhaus is one of my personal favorites.

Good luck!

[yzou2]

 

[yzou2]

Thank you very much for the kindly suggestions. It seems there is a long road ahead for me to achieve outstanding performance. But I thinks it's rewarding.  

Thanks again!

Everyone achieves the sound they desire slightly differently, but I guess I'll tell you what works for me, though it might not work for you.

1. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen! I particularly LOVE Rubenstein's rendition (the one on the record, though the one he did on that one TV show is pretty nice too). Compare the different renditions, pick out what you like, what you don't like, compare it to the score

2. Listen SUPER CAREFULLY to your own playing. More often than not, that's all of you really need to actually. Once you hear it you'll be like "oh this is terrible, I need to fix it," (queue the self-esteem issues, at least I have them lol) and usually you'll find a way. The trick is to listen to yourself, and as simple as it is, it's harder than you might think. Try playing the easier sections with your eyes closed. REALLY listen.

3. I can't explain singing tone over the internet, you might want to seek a teacher for that. Idk I'm not that great with words haha. You might understand what I mean by listening to some other pianists though. It's a big mix of articulation, phrasing, tone, and so many other things that I don't fully understand myself. In fact, I barely understand it and could use a lot of work on that myself, so I'm not the best person to ask...

4. In terms of which notes are loud and which notes are soft, since I play with more "weighty" technique, I kind of just imagine more of my weight in whatever fingers need to be louder, and less weight in whatever fingers are more quiet. I found it by trial and error. Let me know how that goes for you.

5. There are a ton of books you should read! The Art of Piano Playing by Neuhaus is one of my personal favorites.

Good luck!