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.
No 1.
I am glad to see that the people here are still inventive. I have already publicly criticized my own performance of "Fur Elise" when my opponent, "Marik", gave me to listen to my own performance after being processed by a compressor.
Now it looks so ridiculous that I am not satisfied with the performance of Rachmaninoff, as he plays his own work.
However, if you really read my stories in my "Laws of beauty in Music unknown to music schools", you remember that I played for the old man, who was a friend of Rachmaninoff and remembered his music in Russia. And this man told me that after leaving Russia, Rachmaninoff completely changed his way to play piano. He could not recognize Rachmaninoff on his records from abroad anymore.
Unfortunately, Rachmaninoff had "a very good reason" for a complete change in the manner of his playing on the piano. I quote an article on Rachmaninoff:
"in the early years of his life in America, Rachmaninoff was almost in complete critical isolation: he was praised mostly by non-music, newspaper journalists, while the critical establishment almost completely ignored him, and the composer’s environment was not very happy to accept him".
I quote Rachmaninoff himself:
"Having lost my homeland, I lost myself. An exile who has lost his musical roots, traditions and native soil has no desire to create, no other consolations remain, except for the inviolable silence of uneasy memories. ”
Rachmaninoff was forced to earn a living for himself and his family only with such recordings and performances that would sell well. Therefore, he had to play in accordance with the "specific taste" of a new public for him.
Spanish pianist and composer Granados completely failed his tour in America financially and had no money for the way back to Spain. He was saved only by someone's advice to play one short piece, sitting with his back to the piano. This circus trick immediately attracted the public and brought money.
Rachmaninoff, in the same way, was forced to turn his performances and recordings into a CIRCUS SHOW, "acrobatics at the piano", which, of course, not only I noticed while listening to his recording.
Many great musicians have said and said that Rachmaninoff played on his foreign records as if he HATED his own music.
I do not mention several wrong notes MOSTLY IN LEFT HAND. I answer your question: why I did my "correctional recording" for LH in this way? It is done with stressing exactly on wrong notes that should be fixed. I did it with metronome to correct not only rhythm but sometimes obviously wrong count.
And finally, to this line of our conversation, the words of Gould recall: “Not every composer and not always understands his own music.”
No 2.
You say you did not notice my 25 rules, arranged in order in my book. Yes, they are not listed one by one in row. But I devoted several times a WHOLE CHAPTER to EACH of the most important rules already and did not finish my book yet. I wrote only 34 chapters out of 50 planned.
Didn't I send you my 10 rules in a pack ALREADY a few weeks ago? Did you understand any of them in this form? I can send you another 20 with the same result. If I did not explain you with musical examples what is a Conflict-Resolution pair, what are Double Identical notes, what are Diving notes - you will have no idea: what I am talking about . And no one can have this idea without familiar to everyone musical examples on each of these rules.
However, no one will understand and even assume effectiveness of these rules without watching their practical application to particular student working on particular piece of music.
No 3.
Our problem is our opposite goals:
I want to show everyone a very good method of teaching music at a distance in action. I want everyone to see its practical application and immediate results. I say you - look: this method immediately and completely changes and improves ANY performance of ANY musician.
You and many others here do not want to give me the opportunity to show my method in action. Instead, they spend hundreds of words to prove that this method is no good and I am also a very bad person without any test.
What are you afraid of? I do not persuade anyone to lose their virginity, sell drugs or rob banks. I suggest to make a recording of ANY music and bring here. For example, "Mary had a little lamb", or the anthem of your country played by the ONE FINGER, as I showed it recently as an example in "Revolutionary New Interpretation". I played for you "Happy Birthday" with one finger for clarity - answer me with the same way to play.
I DON'T NEED your GOOD performance. In the case of a perfect performance, I simply cannot correct mistakes due to the fact that they simply do not exist in this performance. I NEED a BAD performance to demonstrate my method.
Let's agree on a deal:
You bring here your recording of the hymn of your country played with one finger. Play AS BAD AS YOU CAN (if you want to). Then I will give you instructions: how to fix "your performance" and you HAVE to follow them FIRST, and ask me "why?" (as you did with Elegy) only AFTER our test is completed.
If you say here that you understand my instructions, but you cannot fulfill them for purely physical reasons, I publicly apologize for everything written here and solemnly announce that I do not understand anything in music and in teaching.
Take a deal?
I invite EVERYONE to this deal.
Topic: A revolutionary new interpretation of the world's most famous musical work. (Read 6484 times)