Warmup improvisation - Die Fledermaus

[ronde_des_sylphes]

There's been an unusual glut of improvisations here lately!

Anyway, this is me warming up before rehearsing some more formal material. An improvised, rather self-indulgent, paraphrase around Die Fledermaus. There's a fair amount of showy stuff already written around this thematic material and there are a few nods to it creeping in - a very obvious Strauss-Godowsky reference at the start and an allusion to Cziffra's paraphrase as well. I did get a bit carried away and slightly lost control during a couple of places, but it's all good old-fashioned frivolous fun..  

The audio quality is not quite what it might be, sorry about that.

[furtwaengler]

After studying a good bit of Godowsky it would be hard for me to say you’re being self indulgent here. Actually, with Cziffra I don’t even think Godowsky is a showing off, lol. But both these guys are not so clean cut as you. They dirty things up with their own harmonic language or gypsy pride. You have a clean harmonic pallet not unlike Thalberg and a lot of the transcribers (paraphrasists?) you put your time into. Great fun.

[visitor]

Lot of cool ideas here. Greatly enjoyed this, thanks for sharing! 👏🎹😊

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Thanks to both of you. Yes, Godowsky has a denser harmonic language and a more contrapuntal one at that. No-one has Cziffra's reflexes! I find his Strauss paraphrases to be some of the greatest fun in the whole pianistic firmament. The comment re Thalberg makes a lot of sense as the variation just before the end (where I lose the line a little because I'm spontaneously juggling so many notes!) really is pure undiluted Thalberg. Glad you enjoyed it - I certainly enjoyed myself improvising here!