The piano

[jayne lee wilson]

Trying to find some Walter Zimmermann works on QOBUZ, using the deplorably inefficient QOBUZ search 'facility', I was presented, among other false returns, with Aki Takahashi's recording of Feldman's For Bunita Markus. Following that up, I was alerted to her recordings of late Schubert piano sonatas. I was intrigued enough to set that with D960 to import. Is anyone here familiar with her Schubert recordings?

I guess you found these in the end?

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/search?i=boutique&q=walter%20zimmermann&qref=dac_1

[Bryn]

I guess you found these in the end?
https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/search?i...ann&qref=dac_1

No, I got distracted by the Feldman, a recording I had somehow missed previously. Thanks for the link. What a lot of totally irrelevant items there are in it but at least it has some that hit the spot.

[Mandryka]

I just think the piano didn't do what Sibelius wanted it to do - it can't sustain in the way a low brass choir can, or crescendo on a single chord. One of the most ungrateful piano reductions of any concerto is the Sibelius Violin Concerto - it's almost impossible to make it sound effective, where other concertos can at least sound adequate with piano, even the Tchaikovsky, or the two Prokofievs. A lot of his song accompaniments feel as though they would be better with orchestra. There are some short pieces for violin and piano which are a bit more ...grateful... to play; but they aren't Sibelius at his best (and I'm writing as a great admirer of his music).

And yet Sibelius wrote quite a lot of piano music, I remember a seriously gorgeous cd by Olli Mustonen. I’ve just started to play it again and some of the music has quite a distinctive voice.

[gradus]

... the first definition for 'grateful' in the OED -

"Pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome"

( the second definition is "Of persons, their actions and attributes : Feeling gratitude; actuated by or manifesting gratitude; thankful" )

.

Yes but the second definition carries an earlier contextual use 1552 against 1553. Presumably dates don't count.

[Sir Velo]

Yes but the second definition carries an earlier contextual use 1552 against 1553. Presumably dates don't count.

I doubt he ever used the word "ungrateful"; no doubt it is a translation of Finnish, Russian or French. I entirely agree with Vinteuil in his description of the sentiments that were intended to be conveyed, as the only sensible explanation in this context.

[vinteuil]

.

"Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear... "

Tennyson, In Memoriam

.

[gradus]

Apparently Sibelius wrote over 150 pieces for the ungrateful piano, odd really.

[Roslynmuse]

Apparently Sibelius wrote over 150 pieces for the ungrateful piano, odd really.

£££££s? (Or the Finnish equivalent)

[Mandryka]

Today someone sent me a new recording, Pierre Boulez playing his third sonata, a recording made on 19 July 1958 for RTF. It is amazing, Boulez could play piano and could play his own music with passion! I don't know if anyone here is in a position to make it happen, but if there ever was a piano recording that deserved to be commercially released, this is it.

[Richard Barrett]

Some other piano music I've been listening to recently:

Scarlatti on early 18th century pianos (something that deserves to be heard more often), two CDs performed by Linda Nicholson (on Capriccio) and Aline Zylberajch (on Ambronay)
Shostakovich's 24 Preludes & Fugues op.87, by Vladimir Ashkenazy... my thought was that this music must have been enjoyable to write but I'm not sure about listening to it, particularly all in one go.

[Mandryka]

A friend of mine said that, as far as she can see, all the recordings really deviate from the metronome markings in the score - except for Shostakovich himself and Roger Woodward.

This is an unusual way to play Scarlatti

[Mandryka]

I'm really enjoying this solo piano piece by Wieland Hoban. Has anyone explored other music by this composer? I'd like to hear more.

The comment he makes on that performance seems to me to give food for thought too, e.g.

During the last few years, I have reached the conclusion that for me, a solo performance is implicitly an act of theatre. While a greater number of performers on stage can more readily allow the music to be the sole focus of attention (though their interaction can also be seen as a form of theatre), the situation of a soloist on stage strikes me as that of a protagonist involved in a monologue. This monologue can conform to the expectations of the context by adopting the meta-personal style of the genre, where the artificiality of the circumstances is passed over. Or it can thematicise this. The latter option has been explored in depth by such composers as Schnebel, Kagel, Holliger or Globokar; my interest, however, is in a purely musical formulation of this ideal. How can the work develop and convey a consciousness of its own artificiality and erode this to acquire an autonomous expression? How can the tension between acceptance and rejection of expressive norms become productive in an aesthetic and semantic sense? These questions are at the heart of when the panting STARTS, and their urgency for me was heightened through the context of solo piano, that most established of genres with its roots – albeit not its earliest – firmly in the conventions of 19th century bourgeois society. If the piece can be said to have one overriding aesthetic aim, it is to transcend the negation of language – including its own – to reach a form of meta-language reconstructing the individual's search for meaning.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm really enjoying this solo piano piece by Wieland Hoban. Has anyone explored other music by this composer? I'd like to hear more.

The comment he makes on that performance seems to me to give food for thought too, e.g.

I think I know what he's talking about - or that he does. How for instance does anyone thematiicise circumstances - or does he mean their artificiality, whatever that means? Isn't it time for terminological inexactitudes of this kind, long the stuff of intellectual exclusiveness, to be questioned? As to the piece, I am hearing homage of sorts to the Barraqué Sonata.

[Mandryka]

As to the piece, I am hearing homage of sorts to the Barraqué Sonata.

That’s an interesting thought!

I think I know what he's talking about - or that he does. How for instance does anyone thematiicise circumstances - or does he mean their artificiality, whatever that means? Isn't it time for terminological inexactitudes of this kind, long the stuff of intellectual exclusiveness, to be questioned?

I think he means the artificiality of the circumstances. Here’s my first shot at an exegesis

The meta-personal style of the genre would be something like what Beethoven does in a slow movement - he basically uses musical tricks to mesmerise the listener, lull the listener into believing a sort of expressive effusion, and make the listener forget for the movement that he’s in fact listening go a technician press keys on a piano. A Beethoven sonata is, in some sense, a lie - the performer is not in fact feeling what’s being expressed (thank God) and for all we know the composer wasn’t either. These ideas have been around since Brecht.

Some composers underline the artificiality of expression of performance by directing the musicians to do absurd and unexpected things. I’ve never actually seen a performance of, for example, Kagel’s Der Schall or Acoustica, but my guess is that that’s what he does. On the other hand I have seen Jennifer Walsh’s music in performance, and that’s what she does

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=129&v=ZgZfD3JogT8&feature=emb_logo

And, to stick to the piano, I’d suggest that that’s what Stockhausen does in the wonderful Klavierstück 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMpiXLN8XZ8

(I’m listening to Kagel’s Der Schall as I type this - it’s just what the doctor ordered! There’s a wonderful moment when this crazy cuckoo starts to do its stuff. The guys at DG must have been on the acid when they decided to release this as an LP!)

[Richard Barrett]

I'm really enjoying this solo piano piece by Wieland Hoban. Has anyone explored other music by this composer? I'd like to hear more.

Wieland is a good friend of mine (as is Pavlos). His father was the novelist Russell Hoban. While music like Kagel's "instrumental theatre" (Acustica is a prime example of course) creates part of its effect by using sound-producing objects not usually seen or heard on the concert stage except maybe at the back of the orchestra as "sound-effects", Wieland's piano piece takes a familiar sound-producing object, played by the two hands of a pianist on the keyboard, and composes more or less each movement of each finger individually, so that the music you hear (and see) is the product of this composed and notated physicality. I don't think it has anything to to with Barraqué.