Schubert Erlkoenig plus a couple Ives

[furtwaengler]

I was asked the other day for tips by another pianist about to perform the infamously demanding Erlkoenig and it caused me to look up the last time I played it back March of 2016. No, I have not mastered it and reckon it an actually impossible feat to sustain no matter the care of the technical apparatus, and not something to repeat often. Nevertheless, preserved here is the riskiest, most daring, and most successful rendering of this barrage of repeated octaves and chords to come from my hands, part of the risk being I chose not to do any of the Gerald Moore tension saving cheats, though I did arrange some of my own without dropping a note from the score. There are a couple places I got stuck, a couple places I got "off the tracks" (but without derailing!)...but from a purely pianistic standpoint it pleases me.

The same night featured two of my favorite Ives songs sung at my request, He is There and Charlie Rutledge, which this young baritone (actually an undergraduate theater major) quickly learned for me to my great joy, our way of commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Concord Sonata. He is there is a war song and despite the patriotism, or caricature of patriotism, it is quite a frightening song in the war torn landscape of the 20th century. Charlie Rutledge too, from the Cowboy songs in Ives' collection can be seen as more serious than the rather obscene, humor driven theatrics we played up here (to the which I was fully guilty, wearing a hat, turning the piano bench sideways and riding it like a horse, and ignoring some of Ives' instructions in order to go along with the bombast...though in the moment I refrained from screaming the optional "Yippy kiyay Git along little doggies"...Ives' own humor and bombast).

A word about the recording source. It is not my equipment, but the school's video streaming feed, so I guess the camera in the back of the room was recording the audio which accounts for some of the deficiencies. The other is that no matter what I have tried, I cannot load a smooth stream, but it constantly stops and skips. I did the best I could using audacity to find and truncate the silences, and all things considered this was as smooth a sound as I know how to get. I hope that does not detract from the worth of the experience. I think the performance is still there (It is there! It is there!).   

I greatly enjoy sharing this with you, and I enjoy writing these descriptions and self reviews. I do hope you can find some joy in it as well, and you may chime in with your thoughts.

Dave   

[dcstudio]

I love the Erlkoenig....das kind was tolt. Damn that one scared the piss out of me as a kid. Lol.  My family is German so I heard the leider as a child. Nice singing and playing.  Very enjoyable. Thanks for posting and sharing this with us.

[ted]

I enjoyed the Ives, Dave. Surprising as it might seem, his approach to music within the context of life was an inspiration for me, and still is to some extent. I find it necessary to ignore his jingoism, though, in much the same way as I have to ignore that of Elgar or T.S. Eliot. The first sonata seems a more interesting work than the Concord to me, especially Noel Lee's playing of it, which I bought over fifty years ago and still enjoy.

You are certainly a player of diverse taste and talent, but we knew that.