Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Pianist Corner First Concert Etude Recital

Inspired by the ABF's Chopin E-citals, we now have our first Etude Recital. Please grab a seat, sit back, and enjoy.

www.etuderecital.org

LisztAddict. What a wonderful performance of TE#10. Your left hand articulation is superb. You played the entire etude powerfully yet delicately especially 2:30 through 3:19. I enjoyed it immensely.

Do you draw any inspiration from any particular interpretations?

I've added it to my collection of excellent LisztAddict renditions.
Cheers.

I just listened to most of the entries and want to congratulate all the participants on their skill as pianists and sound engineers. It takes a lot of courage to give a piece your best shot and post the recording for the world to hear. Maybe next time around I can find the practice time to take that risk myself.

All of the performances were interesting and thoughtful. I especially liked the three Liszt Transcendental Etudes and Rachmaninoff's Op. 30 No. 6. Whippen Boy's rendition of Paysage was exceptionally musical-- beautifully phrased, wonderfully controlled dynamics, first rate interpretation. Chopin952 wins the award for living dangerously simply by having selected Feux Follets. He did something very smart: recognizing the superhuman technical demands this piece makes, he slowed it down enough to maintain control and keep the notes pretty much in line, and it worked very nicely.

LisztAddict did a marvelous job with No. 10. The division of labor between right and left hands can lead to awkward accenting, and the thicket of notes makes it very hard to keep the tempo right and the momentum going. This piece is often hammered to death in performance, but nothing like that happened here. Superb work.

Finally, doowlehc's Rach 39/6 is a stellar performance of a really tricky piece. The attack was crisp and precise, the dynamic range and use of accelerando to build to the climax were very well executed. Just the way I like my Rachmaninoff.
Once more, well done to all and thanks for brightening up a sticky summer afternoon.

Thanks for the nice comments Phil. I think everyone did a very nice job and I've been enjoying those recordings a lot. It means a lot to me to hear performances from people on this Forum. I hope the latecomers are still planning to post their recordings too.

I'm surprised the e-recital came and went... and seems to have dropped off the radar without very many comments. When folks take time to comment it makes it all the more worthwhile.

I think I'll post a link over on the Piano Forum (if it hasn't already been done) in case someone there might be interested to hear it.

I'm enjoying your recording right now. Good Job!

Thank you to all for listening and also the comments.

chopin952 - I listened to so many people, I like certain things from some and certain other things from some others. But I can say that I don't like any performance of this piece being played faster than 4:15.

whippen boy. I really enjoyed your interpretation of TE#3. The piano and acoustics were great for that piece. I love the dreamy reverberations of the first melody and its left hand echo. Like water droplets dripping from the roof of a beautiful house out in the country after a hard rain.

I want to make a recording of this as well and post it for your criticism one day. Thank you for sharing.

I hear ya LA. No matter how crisp and clear I don't enjoy it much faster than that. Great job.

Do you play Mazeppa or Wild Jagd? Much like TE#10, I also love those for their power and delicate moments.

whippen boy (Liszt Transcendental Etude No 3) - are you really an organist? You never fail to amaze your listeners. Your performance is exactly as I expected to hear from you.

chopin952 (Liszt Transcendental Etude No 5) - Very clear, clean, excellent use of pedal, and well defined phrases. Now you are one of a very few people with the right to say "I've played Feux Follets". Good work!!!

Timmyab (Chopin Etude Op 10 No 6) - a well executed study with excellent range of dynamics.

Phlebas (Chopin Etude Op 10 No 10) - you made this tough etude sounds as there is nothing to it; all those jumps in the left hands.

madrigal (Rachmaninov Etude Op 33 No 8) - this is actually the first time I hear this piece. I like how you play so much, one day I am going to learn this piece myself.

wr (Rachmaninov Etude Op 39 No 4) - I am so glad to receive your recordings in the last minutes. A very respectable performance of this particular piece.

doowlehc (Rachmaninov Etude Op 39 No 6) - this is one of the best renditions of this Etude I've heard. But it's no surprise as I've seen/heard you a few times before. HA HA HA.

YD (Scriabin Etude Op 8 No 12) - Wow! Beautifully done! You must have put a lot of work into this piece.

For some reason, I felt sort of shy about posting any comments, since I participated. That's silly, I know.

It has definitely been fun and enjoyable to listen to some of the playing of people who post here. And yes, I am hoping more show up (and that someone here mentions it if they do). Are a lot of people on vacation right now, by the way?

At any rate, whippen boy, I sure am glad your submission got in - very very beautiful playing.

I think it would be fun to have regular quarterly recitals here in Pianist Corner like they do over in ABF, but don't know quite how to make it happen. I wonder if we could just upload to the Member Recordings forum, and then simply add links to our recordings to a page in a thread here? Would something like that work? It wouldn't be as slick as the page for the Concert Etude recital, but on the other hand, it would not place too much of a burden on anybody to host it, do the web authoring work, etc.

Also, it would be nice, if that kind of quarterly recital took place, to be free of thematic restrictions, so people could play whatever they are working on or have ready or think others would enjoy, rather than something in some specific category. Although the concert etude idea was cool, I think it may have limited the participation a bit.

I agree about the regular recitals, wr.

I plan on posting comments on all of these later - just haven't had time.

Thank heavens for LisztAddict because he gave us three pieces for this recital, and it would have been a much smaller set otherwise.

LA, thanks for the comment. The lh skips are not the hardest part for me, and I have sort of a trick for them.

More comments to come later.

Phlebas - I forgot to mention of the nice clear distinction when you moved from legatissimo to staccato and then back to legatissimo.

I really enjoyed your recital. Thanks to all for the time, effort and talent ... very well done :applause:

I usually hang out over at the ABF so thanks to Phlebas for posting the recital over there!

I loved all these performances! The playing was superb in each and every one and the recordings are excellent.

Special commendation to whippen boy, chopin952, and LisztAddict for their performances, however. WOW!! Chopin952, I particularly loved you Feux Follets. Your tempo actually makes it seem humanly possible!

Madrigal's Rach Op. 33 # 8 was another standout, IMHO.

Fantastic work, everyone! And thanks for sharing.

I don't know much about classical, but have listened to a couple - I really liked YD's Scriabin, and I just heard Whippen Boy's TE #4 - and I liked that, too. Not much, I know, but some of us do occasionally get around to other forums -

Cathy

Thanks again for the nice comments - it has been heartwarming to read the posts here, especially since I've been feeling a bit glum now that my vacation is coming to an end.

I like the idea of regular Pianist Corner recitals - performing is what many of us aspire to do, isn't it? Periodic e-citals would be fun to do, and a simple (easy to make) webpage would make it easy for people to access.

I think themed recitals are a great idea - I'm always more motivated when I have something specific to work towards; sometimes a tricky or quirky theme can be very inspirational. I did a theme of "War & Peace" recently... the program came together pretty quickly when I finally hit upon that idea.



At least I hope so. In spite of being a 'pianist pretending to be an organist' (and vice-versa) they did let me play here last month.

Ack! I re-read that today and realized it came out sounding wrong. I wanted to say I enjoyed listening to all of the playing, and that it was particularly nice to get to hear playing from some of the people who post here who I haven't heard play before.

So was that some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time...?

I have not listened to all the pieces yet but I am already quite impressed by the quality of the playing. Now we need to know more about you, who is professional and who is a dilettante (enviably so, I must add) and what piano you played etc..

wb, what did you play at Westminster?

I played a suitably grand piece: "Flourish for an Occasion" by William H. Harris. Not an entire recital, but one can always hope.

An organist colleague refers to himself as a professional dilettante - that term suits me just as well.