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Topic: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?  (Read 3538 times)

Offline cuberdrift

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Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
on: October 09, 2017, 12:16:41 PM
Astounded and amazed after hearing that Arrau supposedly played Liszt's Transcendental Etudes at 11, I compared him to many videos of very young (often Asian) piano prodigies playing difficult pieces.

Arrau said in an interview IIRC that his teacher Krause pressured him to learn some of the Etudes (including, if I recall correctly, Mazeppa) in a couple of weeks or something. He couldn't do it, and Krause got mad. Though Arrau said that he could play them properly not long after.

So I checked to see if there were any kids this age who could do the Trascendental Etudes.



She plays it and she is 12.

Has Arrau finally met a match?  :o

And I do a short search after...and find this one, too...11 years old!!!



 :o :o
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Offline visitor

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #1 on: October 09, 2017, 12:22:48 PM
Claudio passed away over 25 years ago. He hasn't met anyone lately.
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Offline mjames

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #2 on: October 09, 2017, 12:25:30 PM
Arrau is dead. Anyways Asian prodigies have a hard time partly because of the prejudice against them "haha, only technical robot no emotion!" and the fact that the market's overflowing with them. Doubt any of them will become superstars despite being miles ahead of what Arrau ever did...
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Offline _david_

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #3 on: October 09, 2017, 03:08:40 PM
Ultimately,  it's where you endup isn't it? We all know and love Claudio regardless of whether he could play some poxy Liszt piece. No idea about the kids.





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Offline klavieronin

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #4 on: October 09, 2017, 10:02:10 PM
I'm keeping an eye on Gavin George. That kid really has something.

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Offline lostinidlewonder

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #5 on: October 10, 2017, 03:31:06 PM
Nope they don't come close to Arrau's musicality but they are clever key pushers.
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Offline cuberdrift

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #6 on: October 12, 2017, 01:58:13 PM
Quote from: lostinidlewonder on October 10, 2017, 03:31:06 PM
Nope they don't come close to Arrau's musicality but they are clever key pushers.

Which Arrau...the old Arrau, or Arrau the 11-year old pupil of Martin Krause?

They may be only "clever key pushers" for now.
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Offline lostinidlewonder

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #7 on: October 12, 2017, 02:15:13 PM
I haven't heard the 11 year old Arrau and no doubt neither have you so logically we can only compare them with what we have heard before. Nevertheless I heard through Roger Woodward who heard through someone else who knew Arrau personally that the man could play the etudes wonderfully from early on, there was one story of Arrau observing the speed of a college piano student as they played the Feux follets at very rapid speed, it effected Arrau so much so that it that he reworked the etude again and came up with some circular movement technique to increase his speed.

Who knows what will happen to these clever key pushers chances are they will not come closer to the brilliance of Arrau who was one of the golden age pianists.
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Offline keypeg

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #8 on: October 12, 2017, 06:14:02 PM
The question itself is incomprehensible.  Music isn't a sports competition with some overt goal like meters per second, or highest height jumped yet. Music includes skill, which is used for interpretation in music which in turn comes from understanding.  I'm not sure that I have a developed enough ear to hear the nuances in the interpretation of the clips that were put up --- if indeed there is interpretation there --- so I haven't watched them.  But supposing there is: can one not hear various interpretations, hear that they are different, and that all of them are valid?  Where is the "match" thing, and in terms of what?
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Offline huaidongxi

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #9 on: October 12, 2017, 07:29:06 PM
Arrau was intensely spiritual and introspective.  some biographers attribute this to a life passage he had at the death of his mother.  perhaps he didn't have the same inner resources as a young child.  still, it's difficult for me to conceive that those qualities were not already part of him as a child. or, the qualities of character that were part of his artistry were present but latent when he was a child, and won't be replicated in children today taking on virtuosic repertory.  he also had very little formal schooling beyond piano instruction, and learned many subjects including several languages through self study.
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Offline ted

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #10 on: October 12, 2017, 09:53:32 PM
Quote from: keypeg on October 12, 2017, 06:14:02 PM
The question itself is incomprehensible.  Music isn't a sports competition with some overt goal like meters per second, or highest height jumped yet. Music includes skill, which is used for interpretation in music which in turn comes from understanding.  I'm not sure that I have a developed enough ear to hear the nuances in the interpretation of the clips that were put up --- if indeed there is interpretation there --- so I haven't watched them.  But supposing there is: can one not hear various interpretations, hear that they are different, and that all of them are valid?  Where is the "match" thing, and in terms of what?

I entirely agree with you, keypeg, as you might expect, but comparison and competition are natural propensities, very deep in the human psyche, and the arts are not exempted. I count myself very lucky in being able to function musically for internal gratification alone, with impervious disregard for both praise and criticism. It is how music should be for everybody but, like most aspects of life, not how it actually is. I hope all these talented children are as happy in their music as Arrau so obviously was in his.
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Offline keypeg

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #11 on: October 13, 2017, 03:06:39 PM
Quote from: ted on October 12, 2017, 09:53:32 PM
I entirely agree with you, keypeg, as you might expect, but comparison and competition are natural propensities, very deep in the human psyche, and the arts are not exempted.
I'm not so sure they are.  In the school system it is an unfortunate device used to "motivate" students to try harder, and perhaps a kind of administrative filtering system in order to shunt the masses of students into their various slots.  The person is then primed toward that mentality.  For some it can be destructive.
I have never been competitive.  I become interested in the subject or endeavour, and am perhaps excited to share my enthusiasm with others.  When I was an adult student attending recitals, I looked at what people did who were more advanced and played better than me, to see what it was they were doing to make it better - to learn.
It's hard to sort nature form nurture here.  If students are compared by their teachers, or parents, or stars are put up, or competitions are created, or there are grade levels and grades, which is cause and which is effect?  If a student responds to this, was it his nature, or early upbringing, or influence of peers perhaps.  I honestly don't know.
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Offline keypeg

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Re: Has Claudio Arrau met his match?
Reply #12 on: October 13, 2017, 03:14:18 PM
Quote from: huaidongxi on October 12, 2017, 07:29:06 PM
Arrau was intensely spiritual and introspective.  some biographers attribute this to a life passage he had at the death of his mother.  perhaps he didn't have the same inner resources as a young child.  still, it's difficult for me to conceive that those qualities were not already part of him as a child. or, the qualities of character that were part of his artistry were present but latent when he was a child, and won't be replicated in children today taking on virtuosic repertory.  he also had very little formal schooling beyond piano instruction, and learned many subjects including several languages through self study.
I became interested in Arrau a while back.  He came to Germany to study with his teacher, Krause, who unfortunately died when Arrau was only 15 years old.  But he got a lot of guidance at that time.  Good educational guidance does in a sense lead to a kind of "self-teaching", and so he was led to do this and that, study this and that.  He continued doing so even after his teacher's death.  In an interview I heard him lament his teacher's early death, which left him to transition from "child prodigy" to mature adult performer with nobody to show him the way.

Learning can have two components.  There is the inner drive, the intrinsic push and seeking; the guidance of a good teacher that nurtures and directs it.  It is like a plant, knowing its nature, knowing how much sunlight and watering it needs and how it should grow.  This is unlike the "empty vessel"  or "blank slate" theory that sees students as passive ignorant things that need filling.
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