In the past, I believed that the most important thing in performance is as much emotion, passion and expressiveness as possible.
Because only these three words are repeated again and again at any master class of any celebrity.
[discussion on intensity] ...Like many musicians around me, I have been doing this for many decades with excellent results.
Indeed, in all human languages (and our music is only one of human languages), stress can be on ANY syllable of the word: on the first, and on the last and on the middle one: E-ngland, , Am-E-rica, Argent-I - na, Urugy-A-y, etc.
Would you please provide references to the scientific studies you mention (e.g., Yale 2003) and articles/books which talk specifically about 'intensity' in the interpretation of music and how to choose where the intensity goes.Thank you.
How long ago was it that you believed this to be so?Are you telling us that you based your choices of musical interpretation solely on the words of celebrities giving masterclasses? Did you not have any teachers to guide you to other possibilities? Or did your teachers also tell you that performances must be full of passion and expression, so that you had to change your mind in recent times?How does this relate to what you told us in the beginning, that in the past you believed that passion and expressiveness were important?This is true for many languages, but not all. But I understand your point.
You look a very experienced interrogator.
- 50+ years ago. But I do not want be immediately rejected by all my readers because of my disbelief in their "Holy Faith" in untrue facts and theories.
"Are you telling us that you based your choices of musical interpretation solely on the words of celebrities giving masterclasses?" - Not at all. I hate this CHEATING instead of TEACHING. These "master classes" are usually just commercial event to make money out of nothing with a zero result for a student.
- Lessons with really good teachers were full of much more serious work on particular problems of the student (me) and musical work. Emotions come naturally from the music, when you understand it properly. Expression comes from your ability to pass your understanding of music on your audience.
- Bad teachers do not know: what to teach and how to teach? They substitute even the very basics in their "teaching" with a loud words about emotion and expressiveness. They can not afford anything else at their lessons except this junk (if we compare it to the serious work with a student).
"This is true for many languages, but not all. But I understand your point."
Vladimir, have you tried clicking on your own links in order to test that they work? When I try, they go to a kind of error or not found message. If those links were generated in 2013 they may no longer work.
In one of your recent threads, you suggested that teachers become familiar with working on the Internet. There are certain areas where you still need to get some familiarity, and some of us can help you in that task. When giving links to information, it is a good idea to check that these links work before posting them, or shortly after posting. This is a standard thing to do.I also use the Internet professionally, including sharing information with colleagues and finding information and answers to problems. Ensuring that your links are viable is one of the first steps. It can happen that the info will appear viable to you, but not other parties, because of the countries they live in, the servers they use, or other factors. But in the least, checking what you can yourself is a good thing to do.This is intended to be helpful.
I need: 1. Your disbelief or hatred towards my method. A severe skepticism is all right as well, all NEGATIVE emotions towards me are welcome!2. I need anyone's recording of ANY classical music: from "Happy Birthday" to Balakirev's Islamey. I showed example already with my own "revolutionary new interpretation" of this song. Unfortunately it would look ridiculous if I will correct publicly my own mistakes. It is really not as interesting as should be.3. I need an honesty from everyone in evaluation of the result. That's all.
In response to your request for anyone's recording of any classical music, I have attached a performance of Rachmaninov's Elegie Op 3 No 1. I do play this piece but I am not the pianist in this particular recording. Please use your methods and tell the group what, if anything, is good about the playing and what can be improved.
"And I want to play WRONG notes on WRONG time!"
I cannot imagine any student, especially an almost adult one, saying such a thing. Is this illustrative, to make a point about right note, right time - or was there really such an unusual student?
I have not yet received instructions from you regarding the extent of my "freedom of speech" at my lesson with this student. What can I talk about and what can I not talk about (otherwise the student will run away).
You are free to discuss anything and everything you want. I purposely chose a recording that would allow you that freedom because I want to learn about your methods. I also thought that choosing music that I was sure you would be familiar with because you were trained in Russia would be appropriate. You are correct that this is an experienced adult male with good potential. The person has enough self-confidence that nothing you write will bother him in the least. Please say everything you want to say.
Vladimir,As I said, I am not the pianist on this recording and I have no way of reaching him at this time. The pianist will not be able to respond to you on this forum or submit other "takes" of this piece.Just point out what is good and what you think needs to be fixed (mentioning your "rules", which ones were followed and which were not) and the rest of us on the forum can estimate how much help your approach will be to improving the performance of the piece.Thank you.
Vladimir,As I said above, the pianist will not be making any more recordings at this point. You can structure your "lesson" any way you want to make your points. However, you should assume that the "student" followed your instructions (did the assignment) and absorbed what you are trying to teach and then move on with your "lesson."I listened to your recording. What is the problem with the LH in the original recording? Why are you asking the student to play forte with strong accents on the weak beats? When the piece is redone at the end of your lessons, do you want accents on the weak beats because your rules state that those beats should have more INTENSITY? Please explain what you are trying to accomplish and then proceed logically with whatever you want to do to fully explain your methods.Thank you.
The pianist on the record does not pay attention to many important notes and events in music. He simply never noticed them and they do not exist for him. This is the real reason for his insanely fast tempo in this funeral music. This is the same acrobat (from my story that I told here) that did triple flips over the lid of the coffin instead of his serious speech at this sad ceremony.When I worked as a university lecturer in Western countries, I understood the main difference in educational systems in Russia and in the West. Noise from dozens of students at the Moscow Conservatory can be heard from a few blocks away from 7:00 AM to the 11:00 PM. In the universities of the West at ANY time, even inside of the building, there is dead silence.Russian students prefer to play a lot of music. In the West, students prefer to read and talk about music. The result is known.
Vladimir,I wish you the best of luck in advertising your revolutionary new teaching method to the world. As usual, you have simply managed to alienate everyone who is interested enough in your methods to try to give you a platform to actually discuss them. You did the same thing on Piano World.You claim many times that you have already documented at least 25 of the 50 rules known to you. However, more than 250 of your posts are still archived and available for anyone to see, many of which were from the 2005-2007 era. There is nothing like 25 rules listed in your posts. Similarly, the rules don't exist in the 34 chapters of one book and 5 chapters of another book on the Russian literature site which you pointed me to (which can be translated reasonably well with Google translate). There are a lot of great stories there, but very little that is actually concrete about music interpretation.I happen to agree that as a group, Russian pianists are wonderful. There are many examples. For example, Grigory Sokolov is one of my personal favorites. You have many wonderful stories from your days in Russia as a music student. However, the things you write on piano forums are subject to the same hyperbole that you criticize in the Russian acrobat at the funeral (look at your claim that students cannot be heard practicing at any time in a university outside of Russia).You claim that the pianist in the recording I posted "does not pay attention to many important notes and events in music. He simply never noticed them and they do not exist for him." Also, you claim that he is taking an "insanely fast tempo." I will discuss this below and reveal the name of the pianist.The English translation of the title of Rachmaninov's Op 3 No 1 is "Elegy." It is also interesting to note that the whole of Opus 3 was titled 'Morceaux de fantaisie.' You would know better than I the possible connotations of the word элегия in Russian. An elegy can certainly be funeral music. However, elegy can also refer to 'sadness, melancholy, or lamentation' without actually referring to a funeral. You are certainly free to use an image of a funeral when performing the piece yourself.With regard to tempo, Rachmaninov wrote 'Moderato'; he didn't indicate Largo, or Lento, or even Adagio. Italian tempo indications do not necessarily match perfectly with metronome marks, but the Wikipedia Tempo page seems to suggest that Moderato is approximately 108-120, about the range of a 19th century Allegretto (which is much faster than what Mozart and Beethoven meant when they wrote Allegretto; Charles Rosen points out that in the classical era, Allegretto was about 76.)Does the pianist in this recording understand how the composer intended this music to be played or does he not pay attention to important musical events because they simply do not exist for him? Well, the recording is from an Ampico piano roll recorded on April 4, 1928 and the pianist is Sergei Rachmaninov. Rachmaninov was well known to be particular about the recordings he allowed to be released so there is no reason to believe he was unhappy about his performance on this occasion. It is unclear to me if all player pianos with the mechanism for playing an Ampico roll are regulated in the same way (which might effect tempo). There is a recording on YouTube of this performance which is significantly faster than the one I used (played at approximately 120 and lasting 4 minutes 32 seconds). I found another recording from the same piano roll that was slower (about 110, lasting just over 5 minutes) and chose the slower one.I was not trying to 'trick' you or make you look foolish. Your initial reaction was that the pianist was quite musical (that was encouraging). I was truly interested in your claim that you have codified musical interpretation into a series of 'rules' and I wanted you to point out all of the things that the pianist did which conformed to your hierarchy of rules, but apparently, you are unable to do that, preferring that a LH passage that starts out pianissimo be practiced forte with 'unmusical' accents on weak beats.
Topic: A revolutionary new interpretation of the world's most famous musical work. 