How to differentiate recordings

[leekyglacies]

Hey all 👋,

For a while now I have been wondering how to really appreciate good recordings of pieces. If I ask for those I usually get referred to Richter, Pollini, Ashkenazy, Lugansky, ... But I find it very difficult to realise why their playing is so exceptional, this also applies to my own playing, making it difficult to pay attention to detail. What are some things to look for in a recording besides the obvious ones like hitting the right notes.

King regards,
Leeky

[anacrusis]

I'm pretty picky with recordings, here are some things I look for:
* Tone quality: do they have beautiful, resonant tone?
* Tone colors: are they able to produce a wide variety of colors and shadings at the piano, or is their sound kind of uniform and bland, lacking in variety?
* Orchestration: do they separate the different parts/voices of the music into clearly delineated layers, with their own tone colors and degrees of loudness, so you can clearly tell them apart? (One example of why I have not liked the recordings of Daniil Trifonov I have listened to - sometimes the melody gets lost in a bunch of fast notes that go DUDUDUDUDUDU but when you look in the score, it is clear that there is a melody in there, and the fast notes should really be played pp or ppp - in their own separate layer - to enable this to be heard clearly, even if the overall dynamic is forte)
* Phrasing: are the phrases of the music sculpted into elegant lines where you can clearly tell where the phrase begins, how it develops, and where its harmonic goalpoints are? Is the legato beautiful? A surprising number of recordings with modern pianists fail to do this to my satisfaction.
* Rubato: is the rubato tasteful and well proprtioned, or is it jerky with no internal logic? Another example of where a surprising number of recordins do not do this the way I like.
* Rhythm: is the music and the phrases played in such a way that you can always tell if you are on a strong or weak beat, and how it is divided (into two or three for example), without the music for that matter sounding "rigid" or "square" or phrases losing their roundness and elegance.

And most importantly, a very subjective quality
* Does the playing move me? Do I feel like the pianist captures the emotion behind the notes, or does it just sound like an empty show?

[getsiegs]

This is a great question! First of all, just know that you'll get much better at recognizing subtleties in music the more you listen. I find it to be kind of like sightreading in that sense - you just have to do it to get better at it.

For some more specific answers, some things that might impact which recordings appeal to you:
-tempo: of course different pianists take different tempos and this can drastically impact a recording and your perception of it (see the discussion about Prokofiev's 7th sonata movement 3 under the "favorite piece(s) of all time" thread)

-voicing: this is a big one, and definitely one that takes longer to recognize. If a particular piece or section has multiple melodies/voices, which one does the pianist choose to bring out?
example: listen to Lazar Berman play this section of Liszt's Dante Sonata:

at 8:48
now listen to the same section by Pletnev:

at 8:53
As you can probably hear, Pletnev makes his voicing the focal point of this section. Each time the theme repeats, he emphasizes a different line going from the top, then the middle, and lastly the bottom voice. Berman, on the other hand, doesn't make as much of a point of differentiating these voices and seems to focus more on the general texture of the whole section rather than just the melody. For me personally, I like Pletnev's delicacy and nuance more here, but you might feel completely differently.

-texture: texture is another more nuanced, but really important element of recordings to listen for. Maybe one pianist uses less pedal and has a clearer, crisper texture to their playing while another has a more blurred, atmospheric sound.
take the same piece for example: listen to Berman -

at 15:39
Now compare to Pletnev at the same spot.

at 16:12
Pletnev uses almost no pedal, and so this passage becomes light, playful, jaunty, and crystal clear. Berman uses much more pedal, which intensifies the music and provides a fuller, blurrier texture. I happen to like Pletnev here again; his unique texture at this spot is my favorite part of his recording.

-rubato: does the pianist use a lot or a little rubato? do they play the piece mostly in strict tempo or do they vary it up a bit?
example: Valentina Lisitsa -

at 0:32
versus Andre Laplante -

at 0:31
In this opening part of the mephisto waltz, Lisitsa takes lots of liberty with the tempo and there's lots of push and pull within each phrase. Laplante takes it more strictly in time, which I happen to like much more. The uninterrupted drive and building intensity that I feel is much more enjoyable for me than using rubato. I feel like excessive rubato makes my ears sorta seasick in a way, especially listening to someone like Lang Lang 

-other things include the sound of the piano, the sound of the recording (acoustics, reverb, audio quality), clarity of rhythms, phrasing, etc. that anacrusis also mentioned.

I hope this post and the specific examples were helpful despite the fact that it's super long 

[ranjit]

I've found one thing which worked for me was to actually arrange music on my own. Also, just listen to tell performances, side by side, without judging either. Just soak it in. Both performances should evoke slightly different feelings. Try and pin down the difference in feeling. After you do that, try and figure out how each recording gives you a different impression. Instead of an actual piece, you can also try to listen to various covers of a popular song (that way, the differences will be much more obvious to begin with) and try to implement the above process.

But I was always able to point out the differences between recordings and come up with ideas regarding what worked and what didn't, so take this advice with a grain of salt.

[leekyglacies]

This is a great question! First of all, just know that you'll get much better at recognizing subtleties in music the more you listen. I find it to be kind of like sightreading in that sense - you just have to do it to get better at it.

For some more specific answers, some things that might impact which recordings appeal to you:
-tempo: of course different pianists take different tempos and this can drastically impact a recording and your perception of it (see the discussion about Prokofiev's 7th sonata movement 3 under the "favorite piece(s) of all time" thread)

-voicing: this is a big one, and definitely one that takes longer to recognize. If a particular piece or section has multiple melodies/voices, which one does the pianist choose to bring out?
example: listen to Lazar Berman play this section of Liszt's Dante Sonata:

at 8:48
now listen to the same section by Pletnev:

at 8:53
As you can probably hear, Pletnev makes his voicing the focal point of this section. Each time the theme repeats, he emphasizes a different line going from the top, then the middle, and lastly the bottom voice. Berman, on the other hand, doesn't make as much of a point of differentiating these voices and seems to focus more on the general texture of the whole section rather than just the melody. For me personally, I like Pletnev's delicacy and nuance more here, but you might feel completely differently.

-texture: texture is another more nuanced, but really important element of recordings to listen for. Maybe one pianist uses less pedal and has a clearer, crisper texture to their playing while another has a more blurred, atmospheric sound.
take the same piece for example: listen to Berman -

at 15:39
Now compare to Pletnev at the same spot.

at 16:12
Pletnev uses almost no pedal, and so this passage becomes light, playful, jaunty, and crystal clear. Berman uses much more pedal, which intensifies the music and provides a fuller, blurrier texture. I happen to like Pletnev here again; his unique texture at this spot is my favorite part of his recording.

-rubato: does the pianist use a lot or a little rubato? do they play the piece mostly in strict tempo or do they vary it up a bit?
example: Valentina Lisitsa -

at 0:32
versus Andre Laplante -

at 0:31
In this opening part of the mephisto waltz, Lisitsa takes lots of liberty with the tempo and there's lots of push and pull within each phrase. Laplante takes it more strictly in time, which I happen to like much more. The uninterrupted drive and building intensity that I feel is much more enjoyable for me than using rubato. I feel like excessive rubato makes my ears sorta seasick in a way, especially listening to someone like Lang Lang 

-other things include the sound of the piano, the sound of the recording (acoustics, reverb, audio quality), clarity of rhythms, phrasing, etc. that anacrusis also mentioned.

I hope this post and the specific examples were helpful despite the fact that it's super long 

Thanks a lot getsiegs,

It's so incredibly interesting what Pletnev does with the voicing in the first video, something I would've never spotted if it weren't for someone to point me to it. I'm also wondering to what point something is wrong, these pianists are all insanely skillful and with their performences it comes down to personal preferance rather than an interpretation being 'wrong'. Once I had heard an interpretation of the Wrong Note etude by Chopin, in this interpretation the pianist player the main theme stacatto the first time, later when the theme repeats it's marked stacatto but the pianist just repeated the same style. Is this 'wrong' or just a rather uninteresting interpretation? And what composers are more strict with their notation than others? I've heard that in Rach you're allowed to make chords arrpegiated whenever you want and I've heard pianists making tone clusters even bigger in Ravel: La valse, or Liszt's Memphisto Waltz. Is there a rule for certain composers when you've gone "too far" like not playing a tenuto playing faster without it being marked.

Greetings,
Leeky

[getsiegs]

I think that it really depends from composer to composer when it comes to faithfulness to the score. I don't listen to much Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart, but I would imagine that their music is more highly scrutinized for adherence to the score and acceptable interpretation. That's why Mozart has been described as too easy for beginners but too hard for professionals - Mozart should sound so crisp and clean and "perfect", which makes it so difficult to play well.

As for the other examples, there are a couple answers:
-La Valse for piano, being a transcription, can't possibly contain all the textures and parts from the orchestra. As you've probably seen in the score for the solo version, there are additional staves all over the place, and the more you can include the better. La Valse specifically leaves so much room for interpretation that what each pianist includes isn't really "wrong"; it's a matter of taste and physical difficulty. Plus, knowing how much Ravel loved the bass end of the piano (see Scarbo, the piano concerto for the left hand, etc.) it makes perfect sense that a pianist would add more to those low clusters and create a bigger sound.

-For Rach, I imagine that rolling chords is perfectly fine because a) he did it himself and b) some of those chords are too damn big for us mere mortals Valentina Lisitsa has some interesting commentary on Rachmaninoff, with her main point that she's going to be faithful to HIM and his recordings, not a slave to the official scores. See this video:

at 2:18 for her input on this subject.

-The Chopin etudes are more in the middle from my perspective. If a pianist isn't following the score about articulation or phrasing or something purely because they don't have the technique to do it the way it was intended, I would consider that "wrong". However, if a pianist COULD follow the score exactly but CHOOSES to do something else, I'd say that falls a bit closer to "personal interpretation" than "wrong". See Valentina Lisitsa again:

This time she's playing Chopin Op. 25 No. 8 (sixths etude), and as someone points out in the comments, the score says molto legato while Valentina plays quite lightly and detached. Could she play it exactly as the score indicates? Most certainly. Knowing that, I'd let this fall under interpretation as opposed to "cheating" or defying the score.

-another example you didn't mention that I thought I'd bring up is Isaac Albeniz. He happens to be a serial over-notater (try reading the Iberia suite; then try not to gouge out your eyes afterwards). See Triana:

especially at 1:53. Last May I tried learning this piece for myself (and did not finish lol ) and found that at this section, there were so many spots where notes could easily be redistributed between hands. See the screenshot attached below. I also have fairly small hands, so I sometimes have to do some rolling or redistributing in general, and that's perfectly fine if you do. There will be times where you'll just have to trust yourself more than the score, which is ok.

In general, there probably isn't any kind of "rule" for what's acceptable or not in interpretation, and I'm sure you could find someone who feels completely differently from everything I just typed out The best way you can find out what a "good" or "correct" interpretation sounds like is to keep listening to music and find the best pianists out there to show your ear what it's supposed to hear and listen for.