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Topic: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????  (Read 3228 times)

Offline ignaceii

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Hello,

I wonder quite some time how we have to see or approach some pianists with respect to their repertoire.
Nowadays any named "Great Pianist" devores the Rachs and the Proks.
Richter only played the 1st and the 5th.
Brendel none of all that to my knowledge. Perhaps attempts as he was young. ???
He said to be affraid of playing Skarbo out of Gaspard de la nuit having heard it played by Pauls Badura Skoda.

Richter one day was so upset as he could not overcome a prelude and fugue from the Sjostakovitch Preludes and Fugues.

Richter to my opinion could eventually if he wanted play everything.
Yefim Bronfman still plays with the Philarmonic the demonically diificult 2nd prokofiev.

Ashkenazy to my opinion is underrated as his repertoire and standards set, have seldom or rarely been met. As a Queen Elisabeth winner, competition now live in Brussels, he became a unique pianist conductor much like Barenboim but as it comes to repertoire bigger and technically more difficult than Barenboim.

So rating pianists based on their repertoire is not a good idea.
Brendel became king of the classical movement.
But he had to share the throne with Andras Schiff to my opinion.

Richter played as much as he could, on the highest level. How unbalanced in tempi he plays Schubert, his first movement of the D960 nobody dares to take it so long and still make a heavenly piece of it.

Rach and Prok or not it is just a question of taste.
My fellow country man, 6th at the last Queen Elisabeth played the 3rd Prokofiev.
These are competition horses.

But Brendel gets 3 cds in the best pianists og the 20th century whereas Weissenberg 1,...
And this is unfare. Brendel commercially sold hmself better I think.
He one tried to concince Andreas Staier to step over to a Steinway in stead of the pianoforte cause it paid better ???? Staier wisely stayed with the pianoforte.

And Horowitz's piece was Rach 3... No Prokofiev.

Strange how we interpret the repertoire of a pianist, more by the man than the repertoire.

But then again, you can ponder down a Prokofiev 2 and go down in an immensely different world like Schubert, and never be able to play Schubert like it should.

Greetings from the Queeen Elisabeth competition for piano in Brussels, semi-final week.

Ignace.
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Offline klavieronin

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #1 on: May 11, 2016, 11:41:55 PM
I did read somewhere that Horowitz wouldn't play Godowsky's Passacaglia making the joke that you'd need four hands to play it.

Offline preludetr

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #2 on: May 11, 2016, 11:56:41 PM
Some pianists specialize in virtuosic repertoire and some don't. The ability to play music in a way that people really enjoy and want to hear is simply not the same thing as the ability to play very fast and complex passages accurately. Two different skillsets. For instance, Andras Schiff does not include Liszt and Rachmaninoff in his repertoire, and I remember reading that admits that he does not feel physically equipped to play such music.

Offline stevensk

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #3 on: May 12, 2016, 05:52:36 PM

To avoid playing pieces isnt a matter of "too hard". Its a matter of taste

Offline ignaceii

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #4 on: May 12, 2016, 07:49:08 PM
Actually it could lead us to the discussion of the interpretation of neglected repertoire.
Trifonov played at the Proms Glazounovs 2nd piano concerto for which I thank him.
Pianists with a broader repertoire, introvert and extravert can better take us into different worlds yet undiscovered.
Schiff, how much I love the man and his visions will not do that, compared to a Hamelin who constantly reaches the highest like Alkan.
Lots of the piano repertoire (I have a 3000 pages dictionary and explanations of all pianist composers in french). A young Lyapunov interpreter carries the same 2 volumes of very fine paper all around.
Our repertoire since 1916 hasn't changed in 100 years.
And no one pays attention to the Scharwenka concertos or Herselt or Riess...

Brendel, Schiff, ... keep on hammering the hamerklavier :)
As for the Beethoven cycles they are all beaten by Kovacevich.
So, what is left for them.

Study the contemporaries and play them god damn it.
Dussek in the Wigmore Hall was a huge success.
Hummel, Clementi, yes...even Cherny wrote interesting solos and concertos.

We keep being banged by the same old gods.

Myaskovsky, so admired by Shostakovich, no one hears his music.
Roth, died very young, but the father of the modern symphony , quoted Mahler.

The versatility more than the specialisation keeps music alive. Discovering new repertoire, as Bartoli does as a Mezzo with Napolitan composers.

Your reactions are thin and do not invite to debate about it, but lots of neglected pianists deserve crowns others wear.
As for versatility as a poet, a Mystic, the virtuoso... as the box set goes 10/10 to Richter.

We are caught up in a cocoon the musicians built for us, without are insteak.

Brendel could have matched Beethoven with Ries and Raff.
Schiff could match Haydn with Clementi and Hummel.

The gold to discovering new grounds goes to Howard Shelley as a pianist and conductor .
And beware when he plays the basic difficult repertoire he does it over and over again.
Like the Hyperion edition on romantic composers.
Recordings only.

Too risky for the podium ?
Bullshit. People come to hear the pianists now as rockstars and will happily eat whatever he has prepared for dinner.

I hope one time they will see, they only played 5% of the 3000 pages.

Lots of work.
But every newcomer must have his Chopin album, his Liszt album,...

Piers Lane, Shelley, ao, deserve a special place. For their courage. As Stephen Hough.
No Lang Lang tricks.

I wish Brendel a nice after musicians life reading about this missed history of Music and Musicians.

Offline ronde_des_sylphes

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #5 on: May 12, 2016, 10:51:32 PM
I suspect professional training nowadays is more "uniform". Did Horowitz not say he couldn't play Chopin's 10/1 (or 10/2 - I forget the anecdote)? Whereas nowadays either etude will be a standard part of conservatory training.

In any case, what people play in terms of "difficult repertoire" v. "normal repertoire" is probably often a matter of temperamental suitability as much as anything else.

All that said, (re ignaceii) it is very disappointing that so many pianists fixate (understandably - in their teens) on the Chopin and Liszt etudes but never seem to move on in terms of intellectual and musical curiosity. Are there not career advantages to playing fringe and rarity repertoire? I'm bored stiff by mid-20s, perfectly technically capable and formed pianists churning out YET ANOTHER recording of Chopin Ballades, Beethoven Sonatas, etc. Do they really think they have something new and vital to say?
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Offline klavieronin

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #6 on: May 13, 2016, 10:23:02 PM
I'm bored stiff by mid-20s, perfectly technically capable and formed pianists churning out YET ANOTHER recording of Chopin Ballades, Beethoven Sonatas, etc. Do they really think they have something new and vital to say?

Tell me about it. Though I have a feeling the musicians themselves are not entirely to blame. I remember reading an interview with Hamelin where he said he would love for focus on neglected repertoire and his own compositions but that it just isn't commercially viable. People want to hear the same familiar thing over and over. Anything new tends to scare people.

Offline abel2

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #7 on: May 16, 2016, 04:23:18 PM
I did read somewhere that Horowitz wouldn't play Godowsky's Passacaglia making the joke that you'd need four hands to play it.
Six hands, I heard. It is a formidable piece, after all xD

Offline abel2

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #8 on: May 16, 2016, 04:35:05 PM
Hello,

I wonder quite some time how we have to see or approach some pianists with respect to their repertoire.
Nowadays any named "Great Pianist" devores the Rachs and the Proks.
Richter only played the 1st and the 5th.
Brendel none of all that to my knowledge. Perhaps attempts as he was young. ???
He said to be affraid of playing Skarbo out of Gaspard de la nuit having heard it played by Pauls Badura Skoda.

Richter one day was so upset as he could not overcome a prelude and fugue from the Sjostakovitch Preludes and Fugues.

Richter to my opinion could eventually if he wanted play everything.
Yefim Bronfman still plays with the Philarmonic the demonically diificult 2nd prokofiev.

Ashkenazy to my opinion is underrated as his repertoire and standards set, have seldom or rarely been met. As a Queen Elisabeth winner, competition now live in Brussels, he became a unique pianist conductor much like Barenboim but as it comes to repertoire bigger and technically more difficult than Barenboim.

So rating pianists based on their repertoire is not a good idea.
Brendel became king of the classical movement.
But he had to share the throne with Andras Schiff to my opinion.

Richter played as much as he could, on the highest level. How unbalanced in tempi he plays Schubert, his first movement of the D960 nobody dares to take it so long and still make a heavenly piece of it.

Rach and Prok or not it is just a question of taste.
My fellow country man, 6th at the last Queen Elisabeth played the 3rd Prokofiev.
These are competition horses.

But Brendel gets 3 cds in the best pianists og the 20th century whereas Weissenberg 1,...
And this is unfare. Brendel commercially sold hmself better I think.
He one tried to concince Andreas Staier to step over to a Steinway in stead of the pianoforte cause it paid better ???? Staier wisely stayed with the pianoforte.

And Horowitz's piece was Rach 3... No Prokofiev.

Strange how we interpret the repertoire of a pianist, more by the man than the repertoire.

But then again, you can ponder down a Prokofiev 2 and go down in an immensely different world like Schubert, and never be able to play Schubert like it should.

Greetings from the Queeen Elisabeth competition for piano in Brussels, semi-final week.

Ignace.
Lisitsa won't play Alkan, for some reason. I have no clue why.

Offline richard black

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #9 on: May 19, 2016, 10:14:11 PM
Lisitsa may simply not like Alkan. But 'too hard' doesn't necessarily mean 'impossible to get one's hands around'. I have a good friend who's got a decent international solo piano career, who has said there are quite a few substantial and difficult works in the not-so-standard repertoire that he would like to play, but purely as a business proposition he can't justify it - it would take too much time that he just doesn't have and not enough concert promoters would want to book him to play them. That may sound cynical but I see his point. He is much in demand, mostly to play fairly standard stuff (he's got a huge repertoire, starting with over 50 concertos, that being just the ones he could name over dinner one night), and doesn't get enough time to spend with his wife and kid as it is...
Instrumentalists are all wannabe singers. Discuss.

Offline ignaceii

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #10 on: July 29, 2016, 05:35:02 PM
Marc Andre Hamelin is the answer. Wonderful musician and out of this world virtuoso.
End !

Offline rachmaninoff_forever

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Re: Some repertoire too hard for some great pianists ????
Reply #11 on: July 29, 2016, 07:02:32 PM
I heard Rubinstein wouldn't play petrushka
Live large, die large.  Leave a giant coffin.
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