Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Has virtuosity overshadowed musicality?

The problem here is that nobody listened to all of the crappy pianists from back in the day because they've been wiped out of History and only the finest remain. I'm sure that in 40 years or something, we'll be able to distinguish the real musical talents from those who are not...why keep criticizing the young generation either? I mean, even Horowitz's landmark recording of the Liszt sonata was done when he was almost 30 years old anyways, why expect an 18 year old virtuoso straight out of a piano competition to play just as well?

not saying I haven't committed such crimes but there is a time and place for everything. But when it is insincere and well distracting, it just makes me hate the performance. I don't understand why their teachers didn't just say , ya you know that body stuff you do, i mean its cool and all but you might want to tone that down because quite frankly, can I be frank, you just look silly. Practice with a mirror at least.

in terms of virtuosos, I think every instrument has their period where that particular instrument shines in regards to advancements and actual things that are different and novel but really, for piano , that time has come and gone. No matter how good you are , being a virtuoso in 2011 just has little historic value. Please do note i said historic. Every instrument has these periods.

After a point , everyone just sounds the same.

Does anyone else find this interesting: Hess criticises Horowitz and his contemporaries of mechanical performance; and now, to criticise the current generation of virtuosi of mechanical performance, we use Horowitz as an example of what is not mechanical.

That's Horowitz!

He could be easily typecast (miscast, IMO) as a pure technician, and/or as a showoff -- by people who not only don't appreciate great piano technique as much as some of us do, but also don't recognize his creative and unique musicianship....or else regard it as unmusical, which some do.

Actually, what I was trying to get at was the idea that each generation of pianists seems to think the next generation to be mechanical or musically inferior. You can think of this as analogous to how the elderly frequently bemoan the current young generation.

I know!

And what I was saying was that with Horowitz, it's also that other thing. It's not just a different view of him according to which generation or era is talking; he has always been viewed in such a split way, and he still is.

I believe that there has to be a separation between using virtuosity to generate beautiful and touching music, that really says something to the listener, and music that was purposely written to showcase the finger sportsmanship and showmanship of the performer. I find in this class two prime examples:

Mendelssohn and Liszt.

Both possessed a rare formidable and unique virtuosity, but only one of them used restrained when composing music and naturally performing it. Mendelssohn was famous with his astonishing piano technique and was able to play the most difficult and demanding piano works , his own pieces and other composers' music. But he never let himself get carried away into banality. All of his piano music is restrained, even his most difficult pieces always put the music on top and the primary force behind the piece and not the virtuosity. Liszt on the other hand let his virtuosity overshadow his music, and his showmanship took central stage, and I believe that it has some kind of a flow in composition. And then comes Horowitz, which is a different case all together, a true rarity and a genius beyond words. His ability to play the most difficult pieces with such ease and finesse, brings out to the listener the 'musicality' of the piece, and never the 'showmanship', with his subtle handling and approach to piano playing, he brings music and listener together. I have watched his performance of the Rach third, not a single drop of sweat, what ease, and what finesse, I couldn’t care less about his technique, because I was listening to the music he was making.

Liszt was not like that. His prime 'weapon' was his technique, and regrettably , he let that 'weapon' take the better of him.

You wonder whether Liszt just wrote hard flashy stuff for the heck of it, or whether that was his genuine musical tongue. I mean, the Dante Sonata carries some genuine imagery and non-banal musical material, but it's so damned difficult and full of virtuosic passages.

The Dante sonata is the most fine example for what I said. Pointless up and down scales, mean very little to be.
Even Chopin was able to insert real drama and meaning in his first C major Etude.

But there is some real musical ideas in his music, and a lot of innovations and methods of self expression. Did he write like a virtuoso because he could, or was that just the way he "spoke"...?

He tried very hard to become the Paganini of the piano, so you tell me...

Yeah, but he got better about the showmanship thing as he got older.

You're correct there, but he became something much more, especially as he aged. He was a real virtuoso, but also a real genius, something that can't really be said about Paganini..IMO completely though.

YOU HAVE 666 POSTS!!! AND IT INCLUDED PAGANINI WHO SUPPOSEDLY SOLD HIS SOUL TO THE DEVIL!



EDIT: Well, that was post 666 for you.

LOL

Things are definitely different - change does happen. And, depending on one's values, pianistic and musical things at some point in the past might well be "better".

I don't have so much of a problem with virtuosity - though I know what you mean and can think of an example or two (not crazy about Goode's Beethoven Sonatas - the pace of the Waldstein strikes me a unnecessary and unmusical). But I think there's a tendency to excessively orthodox interpretation. THere was a thread here some time a go concerning a recording of Gould, with his commentary, playing the K331 Sonata in which he by his own deliberately altered the proscribed tempi. He basically started slow and got steadily faster with successive variations. The idea was a little simplistic - sort of building excitement with pace - but some people saw the entire exercise as a sort of war crime. Seems to me like it should be okay to do this kind of thing.....

One of the biggest general criticsms of Gould's playing even in Bach is his choice of tempi which tend to be extreme in either direction.

That's true - but is it such a big deal? He was the first to admit that a lot of what he recorded and played was based on his own ideas, his own taste.... I don't want to go too far out on a limb here - I'm must less of a Gould groupie than I used to be - but it just seems to me that some people take these things *personally*, as it's an affront to mess with tempo or whatever. For that matter, I would say the same thing about the original instruments orthodoxy...I get it that we learn a lot by playing and hearing performances that attempt to capture the original sound. But it's not the only way to do things.

Hmm. I don't think it's as much about "virtuosic" music vs. "slow and lyrical" music, or even fast playing vs. slow playing. Because, I don't believe faster = less musical and slower = more musical.

I think it's more about the performer playing only for themselves instead of caring about the composer and the (overwhelming?) desire to be true to music and the proper style/taste for whatever music is being played. And I feel this care should be more (MUCH more) than the desire to win competitions, get lots of performance opportunities, gain a big reputation, make money, etc... It's MUSIC people, not some way to promote yourself! A very fine art that you enjoy because of how amazing it is (and because I personally believe it is a gift from God, one of the very best things he blessed mankind with).

But whatever you believe, you should NOT believe music is just a way to glorify yourself.