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.....Horowitz, IIRC, drew the ire of purists for even daring to touch the pedal while playing Scarlatti. I don't think anyone can argue with the end result.
I sure wouldn't, but would you believe......On another site, there's a very knowledgeable (but somewhat provocative) music buff who said (and I quote): "Horowitz sucks at Scarlatti." Fortunately I've never come across any view like that before, and I hope I never will again. [...]
Whoever said that is nuts. Perhaps a patient of yours?
I agree that Scarlatti is at least one of H's greatest achievements.
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.
mark, horo, lover... thank you for your comments, truly.
for me the piano is somewhat of a battlefield i must say... my difficulty with technical passages, lack of experience with the various styles; also my piano (which i love) presents some challenges due to its size, action, etc. etc.
i find when recording that i must make compromises to achieve, within the time available, something satisfactory to present to such a learned audience as exists on this forum. your criticisms are well founded and are well appreciated. any praise is more than kind.
re: scarlatti -- some have said that time is better spent on bach, but i think scarlatti holds a world of joy and challenge that is - almost - approachable with limited skills. scarlatti's music is perhaps some of the most under-appreciated or, at least, under-exposed music which contains an omnipresent joie de vivre not found with any other composer i can think of.
in the right hands i'm a sucker for scarlatti, and agree that horowitz, gilels and tipo top my list of scarlatti interpreters.
The tempo should be considerably faster (allegro assai), but for now it's the tempo with which I have some control over the movement. This first section should repeat (which I've not done here) and there's another section (Part 2) to follow -- once I get it under better control!
ps - our own Vica/Truecrypt has the 1st and 2nd movements on YouTube, and they're beautiful. Thank God he hasn't put the 3rd up there; I would NOT want to invite the comparison
I would like to hear a little more smoothness and sustaining.
Consider how you are separating phrases. In bar 8, one phrase ends and another begins in the melody. I'm not really hearing the separation. A lift between the phrases will help you out.
While this is a matter of personal taste, I recommend letting the tempo "breathe" a little. Don't be sloppy, of course; just be a little less rigid.
Bar 40. Where's the fortissimo? You built up the dynamics wonderfully up to this point, and then someone let the air out of you tires! Be sure to keep the flow going! Otherwise, good job at bringing out the poco più animato.
Bar 79. The fioratura carries the smorzando indication; I really didn't hear it "die" as it should.
Bar 81. Nice slentando!
Bar 87. There is a pianissimo indication; the dynamic level sounds the same as the preceding measures. You need to quiet that down a bit.
Overall, a very well-done performance! Thanks for sharing.
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.
Very nice, Entheo! I enjoyed listening to that immensely. You obviously have good command of the notes, and are confident in performing the piece. Now for the nitpicky stuff.
thank you horowitzian -- fire away!
btw, i'm thinking of offering myself up as an experiment in, for lack of a better term, 'pianoworld group gestalt lesson experimentation', whereby learned pianoworld members such as yourself comment on my attempts and i will try to incorporate feedback into subsequent versions, for 'all the world' to see. sound like fun?
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
You lost the first note of the melody! Gotta be careful not to do that.
yes you're right it got lost. it 'sounded' when i played it, but for reasons i'll explain momentarily it did indeed get lost, and i will have to compensate for that in the future.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Remember that the piece is marked Sostenuto. This term is defined as such by Dolmetsch Online: "soustenu (m.), soustenue (f.) (French) or soutenu, soutenue, held, sustained, sostenuto (Italian), dignified." I would like to hear a little more smoothness and sustaining.
yes i agree; although i have the notes the piece really needs more time to become 'wine'. problem is, limited opportunities to get a take i can live with, and the bobbles in this piece bother me, so another take is coming, hopefully incorporating your feedback & elimination of errors.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Consider how you are separating phrases. In bar 8, one phrase ends and another begins in the melody. I'm not really hearing the separation. A lift between the phrases will help you out.
yes, i played that turn ham-fisted.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
[*]While this is a matter of personal taste, I recommend letting the tempo "breathe" a little. Don't be sloppy, of course; just be a little less rigid.
i'm reading schonberg's "the great pianists" right now and what he has to say about chopin and rubato is very interesting. this is something that i daresay will take a few more years to get a proper feel of.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Bar 40. Where's the fortissimo? You built up the dynamics wonderfully up to this point, and then someone let the air out of you tires! Be sure to keep the flow going! Otherwise, good job at bringing out the poco più animato.
so here's my dilemma -- i'm recording on a Zoom Q3, and it only has 3 levels of gain: high, low, and auto. the first two don't work (high distorts and low is too soft), and auto gain is constantly adjusting the volume so as to take the dynamics out of the mix! and the reason the first note was lost is that i have to 'set the gain' by playing a loud chord at the beginning of the recording, which results in the first notes being especially soft. a fixed mid-gain should have worked perfectly, but they didn't include one. frustrating, really; but i have to live with it for now.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Bar 79. The fioratura carries the smorzando indication; I really didn't hear it "die" as it should.
i'll work on that.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Bar 81. Nice slentando!
thank you!
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Bar 87. There is a pianissimo indication; the dynamic level sounds the same as the preceding measures. You need to quiet that down a bit.
partly me, partly the auto gain. i'll work on that.
Originally Posted by Horowitzian
Overall, a very well-done performance! Thanks for sharing.
thanks again for your feedback, horowitzian! stay tuned for V2...
Is there any way you could use the Zoom as an external mic, and plug it into your computer? You might not get video, but it would allow better input gain control via Audacity or whatever DAW you use.
I've always had absolutely rotten luck with any sort of 'automatic' gain control. It's better to manually set it just high enough to prevent the loudest part of the piece from clipping.
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.
some while back during an exchange regarding the music of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann someone asked why i hadn't recorded any, so here's an example, with commentary below...
The following is an extract taken from a book by from P. D. Ouspensky entitled "In Search of the Miraculous". The speaker is Gurdjieff:
You must first of all remember that there are two kinds of art, one quite different from the other -- objective art and subjective art. All that you know, all that you call art, is subjective art, that is, something that I do not call art at all because it is only objective art that I call art.
To define what I call objective art is difficult first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of objective art, and secondly because when you happen upon objective works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art.
I will try to make my idea clear. You say -- an artist creates. I say this only in connection with objective art. In relation to subjective art: that with him 'it is created.' You do not differentiate between these, but this is where the whole difference lies. Further you ascribe to subjective art an invariable action, that is you expect works of subjective art to have the same reaction on everybody. You think, for instance, that a funeral march should provoke in everyone sad and solemn thoughts and that any dance music, a komarinsky for instance, will provoke happy thoughts. But in actual fact this is not so at all. Everything depends upon association. If on a day that a great misfortune happens to me I hear some lively tune for the first time this tune will evoke in me sad and oppressive thoughts for my whole life afterwards. And if on a day when I am particularly happy I hear a sad tune, this tune will always evoke happy thoughts. And so with everything else.
The difference between objective art and subjective art is that in objective art the artist really does 'create,' that is he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art.
In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him 'it creates itself.' This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite. ... I measure the merit of art by its consciousness and you measure it by its unconsciousness . We cannot understand one another. A work of objective art ought to be a book as you call it; the only difference is that the artist transmits his ideas not directly through words or signs or hieroglyphs, but through certain feelings which he excites consciously and in an orderly way, knowing what he is doing and why he does it. ... principles must be understood. If you grasp the principles you will be able to answer these questions yourselves. But if you do not grasp them nothing that I may say will explain anything to you. It was exactly about this that it was said -- they will see with their eyes and will not perceive, they will hear with their ears and will not understand.
I will cite you one example only -- music. Objective music is all based on inner octaves. And it can obtain not only definite psychological results but definite physical results. There can be such music as would freeze water. There can be such music as would kill a man instantaneously. The Biblical legend of the destruction of the walls of Jericho by music is precisely a legend of objective music. Plain music, no matter of what kind, will not destroy walls, but objective music indeed can do so. And not only can it destroy but it can also build up. In the legend of Orpheus there are hints of objective music, for Orpheus used to impart knowledge by music. Snake charmers' music in the East is an approach to objective music, of course very primitive. Very often it is simply one note which is long drawn out, rising and falling only very little; but in this single note 'inner octaves' are going on all the time and melodies of 'inner octaves' which are inaudible to the ears but felt by the emotional center. And the snake hears this music or, more strictly speaking, he feels it, and he obeys it. The same music, only a little more complicated, and men would obey it.
So you see that art is not merely a language but something much bigger. And if you connect what I have just said with what I said earlier about the different levels of man's being, you will understand what is said about art. Mechanical humanity consists of men number one, number two, and number three and they, of course, can have subjective art only. Objective art requires at least flashes of objective consciousness; in order to understand these flashes properly and to make proper use of them a great inner unity is necessary and a great control of oneself.
I think your Youtube site is a perfect example to show that there is an almost unlimited number of great works to play even if one does not have conservatory level technique(which includes me). I looked through the entire list and there's not one piece there that isn't a terrific piece of music.
Here is a particularly great recording of Clair de lune(which you posted earlier)played by the second prize winner at the most recent Chopin Competition(right after the Bumblebee performance on the automatically playing music at his website): http://www.ingolfwunder.at/
I would work at speeding up your performance of that piece a little.
thanks pianoloverus. it's been a lot of fun to work up these pieces and record them for youtube. i call it 'the diary of an amateur pianist'... far from perfect, but satisfying to build this little repertoire for my pianoworld & facebook friends.
lovely rendition of clair de lune by wunder. wish i'd have been influenced by it prior to recording it.
Perhaps a patient of yours? 
