A poll on the preference of our taste in musical interpretation.

[distantfieldrelative]

Suppose that anything can happen in our hotel; if I wanted I could get a homeosexual African American Adolf Hitler to partake in Passover if I so wished.

Now behind closed doors I allow pianists to play for the guests of my hotel but i do not allow the identity of any of the pianist to be revieled.

You hear a Chopin ballade played with hands out of synch and with the most nouvelle ruboto and all in under 7 minutes. Do you call it a fraud?

You hear a Chopin etude played "far too slow" but it has such a unique liquid sound to it... Shall you capitalize on the tempo and lack of a steady tempo at that?

Then you grasp Liszts sonata and it startles you. How can someone believe that this sounds good? He rushes and delays and starts and stops far too often. 

What if you heard then Bach played vigorously and with great passion as if it were a scherzo by Berlioz.

What are your reactions?

Please be honest as to how you would react if you heard pieces played in such a fashion.

  Best

[chopinlover01]

In order to truly give my impressions of those performances.. I'd have to hear them first.

[mjames]

i may be self taught but im still a product of the institution. for me you'd have to play 'properly' and give it your own spin to it, it sounds like im imposing my beliefs on the performer because yeah I am, *** it.

soooooooooooooo
if I hear say
Scriabin's sonata played in grave, Im gonna say "*** you suck"
or chopins ballades, I don't mind sentimental playing but rubato every 5bars...."srry bro but you sck"...especially if you can't play the runs on synch lol
etc etc

I'm as biased as Ted Cruz is on evolution.

Sounds like you'd be a big fan of the anti-institutional like  movements from the second half of the 20th century like spectralism and whatever the fck Stockhausen did.

[piulento]

It's really hard to say without listening to the actual playing.
Sometimes people can play a certain piece in a way you never imagined (even after listening to dozens of different interpretations), but somehow it really works, so you tell yourself that although it's not a conventional intepretation, it's still "right". E.G:

(this just blows my mind away)

But sometimes their artistic choices are just not to your liking, so you choose to see their intepretation as "wrong" (even though you just listened to somebody "destory" a piece and said it was okay). E.G:

(I think this is just blasphemy)

It all eventually comes down to personal taste of musical choices. We don't like things based on amount of rubato, but based on the choice of rubato (and taste can also change over time).

[mjames]

i agree with you but your choices arent really portraying distant's OP. We're not just talking about "uniqueness" but rather performances that defy every aspects of it that we treasure. A person can still take a unique approach to it but still sound coherent...
Aren't we talking about radical choices? Lisitsa's choices maybe tasteless but they're not radical imo


Example (he who must not be named):

...

I think we're talking about stuff like this.

[outin]

I too can only make my mind after hearing the actual performance. Sometimes what in all rationality should suck actually is great. And the other way round. Generally I can enjoy both respectiful note perfect interpretations and the "old style" creative interpretations as long as I can connect with what the pianists is doing. I cannot connect with either Mrs. Lisitsa or Mr. Sayers.

[distantfieldrelative]

Ballade:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=COohl5ZtcVE

Etude:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwx_HaZOm80

Sonata:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0HMEt2x_zLQ

Bach:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WV8MA0miKxA

Please ignore the performers name and date of recording as it would be unfair to the thought experiment.

[mjames]

lol listening to the ballade, there's some nice parts to it but overall I dont like it. it sounds like a mess tbh...sounds like me LOL

Haven't checked the pianist yet.

edit: lol its godowski.........................

[huaidongxi]

it might be unfair to godowsky to evaluate his music by any of his recordings.  he was rarely comfortable making them, and unsatisfied with the results.

[mjames]

I'm actually familiar with godowki's playing, it's just that that particular recording was quite surprising. However to be fair it is a piano roll.

[outin]

Ballade:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=COohl5ZtcVE

Etude:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwx_HaZOm80

Sonata:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0HMEt2x_zLQ

Bach:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WV8MA0miKxA

Please ignore the performers name and date of recording as it would be unfair to the thought experiment.

It's difficult to evaluate playing on piano rolls or technically ancient analog recordings. I would much rather compare something from 30's to 50's with today's recordings, since audio  technology was evolved enough to be somewhat comparable. The first recordings were experimental and I doubt the pianists could really bring out what they would in live playing. Also the style of playing and the way pianists prepared their pieces had to change when recording became common practice.

As for the Bach, no I didn't like it... at least not the parts I listened before I had enough.

OT: Does anyone else get this horrible ad with BABIES making disgusting noises when opening YT videos. Imagine the shock when you are expecting some lovely piano sounds to emerge and instead you get babie noise and some woman who talks like she's retarded...trying to sell you a pregnancy test...I could get it if she was adverticing contraceptives 

[piulento]

Sometimes radical choices in playing can be interesting and enjoyable. I enjoyed most of the ballade and some parts of the sonata. I can tell that the pianists understand the music.
Sometimes radical choices make me think the pianist only understands himself, and not the composer (like the performance of the WTC, which makes me terribly mad every time I listen to it).
It really depends on the specific performance.