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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
This is a performance of an Ervin Nyiregyhazi composition from a year 2003 recital. I want to share it here for those not aware of his gorgeous and intense music.
Do you really like what you're doing there? To me it sounds like a caricatured exaggeration of the bad things that are said about Nyiregyhazi's playing. Do you really want to be pounding the left hand like that, and pounding the accompaniment figures in the right hand like that? The whole piece is basically "Crash.....Crash.....crash crash crash....." -- isn't it?
I've been a bit of a fan of Nyiregyhazi ever since he came back to notice in the '70's and I still have the LP from then. I wanted to like this, but I can't say that I do. BTW I didn't know he composed. It's possible I might like this if it were done differently but I can't tell.
Michael, have to agree with MarkC on this one -- it almost comes off as a parody of Nyireghazi's playing on some of the Liszt pieces. Ponderously slow, banging, totally charmless -- sorry, I was not in any way moved by his vision.
Sustained maximum fortissimo I think is okay when the music is contoured for it. Much of Nyiregyhazi's music has extended passages marked ff and with deep bass chords that seem designed with that in mind.
I'll post one that is mostly pp-mf - though I think one of you will find the slowness of tempo a bit taxing!
Sustained maximum fortissimo I think is okay when the music is contoured for it....
Don't know what that means -- honestly.
What it comes down to is how it sounds -- and what we're saying is, this doesn't sound good. Maybe it's more the fault of the piece itself, rather than of your playing -- as I said, I can't tell. But if this piece is to have a chance, really it needs to be approached differently.
Nyiregyhazi's music, judging from this piece, seems to be reincarnated Liszt, adjusted to reflect Nyiregyhazi's love of deep bass chords. I can't really fault Mr. Sayer's playing, because I suspect the only person who can play Nyiregyhazi's music convincingly was Nyiregyhazi himself, unless by chance some equally neurotic, possessed, and other-worldly genius like Nyiregyhazi comes to the fore.
I found Nyiregyhazi's rediscovery disk, taped in a church in San Francisco, to be the most magnificent and understandable Liszt ever recorded. I agree that his style did not work as well for other composers, but in Liszt, it was the first time I could imagine what Liszt himself must have sounded like when playing all those tremolos, booming bass chords, arpeggios and scales up and down the keyboard, trills, and so on. In mere mortal hands, it sounds bombastic, loud, and trite, but Liszt must have gotten some type of sound out of the piano that no one else could achieve (not even Anton Rubinstein). Then along came Nyiregyhazi who managed to recreate that sound, and suddenly some of Liszt's strangest music made sense.
It is no fault of Michael Sayers that like the rest of us he can't produce that sound. I do give him credit for bringing Nyiregyhazi's compositions to our notice and I'd like to hear more.
I cannot say that I like this Nyiregyhazi composition(or other compositions by him that I have heard). But I don't blame that at all Michael Sayer's performance, and I applaud him for making these little heard pieces available.
There are flaws and impedances in the quality and effect of the playing not only of that Nyiregyhazi piece but with every recording I've ever put out because I have been a very lazy pianist who loathed practicing.
Things will be different going forward.
There is a recital in April at the nearby Handen's kyrka which will have Nyiregyhazi's The Realization Thus Gained - a 1936 composition of about 250 measures written when his music was quite different from the numerous, concentrated short pieces in the 1970s-80s.
And there will be a recital this summer that will begin with Nyiregyhazi's youthful Grande Sonate Heroique and end with the two Liszt legendes - everything will be recorded and made available.
This is that second recital's programme:
Ervin Nyiregyhazi - Grande Sonate Heroique
Claude Debussy - Images Book One Reflets dans l'eau Hommage a Rameau Mouvement
Edvard Grieg - In de Halle des Bergkönigs
Moritz Moszkowski -Etude Op. 72 No. 6
Bill Evans - Waltz for Debby
Franz Liszt - Funerailles Ballade in B Minor St. Francois d'Assise: La predication aux oiseaux St. Francois de Paule marchant sur les flots
The reason for this new level of dedication to music is that I had a tremendous religious transformation experience in late October during which I became open to the Divine which has resulted in me being an entirely new person. This has been followed by intermittent time in the company of Liszt who wants me as a pianist to raise money to help persons in need. He dictates all recital programmes, structures and organizes the practice - and can provide any technical or other insight that is wanted. And I am going to work as hard as humanly possible to do this adequately.
I assure you this is not fantasy because all musical knowledge from him no matter how obscure or foreign to my personal knowledge of music invariably proves to be correct.
In addition there is a new inner force or energy not present or active before that has very noticeable physiological effects - an electric-like tingling sensation especially in the hands, and a very high pitch, and quite loud when the force is strong, non-stop ringing in the ears.
He doesn't seem to be adverse to private disclosures of what is happening, and I suspect he prefers all disclosure as it happens but I don't know if this is so because all communication with him is 100% focused on music or psychological effects (his presence though commanding is very fatherly and comforting).
During an October experience with Liszt I was told about a Handel-Liszt Queen of Sheba March ("not Solomon" or "not Samson").
To my knowledge there isn't anything in the catalogue of Liszt works that can be said to match this description, and if a later experience with Liszt from December is accurate then this is an autograph score and needs to, and in fact will be, recovered.
Maybe someone here knows of a Liszt composition that could be said to match this transcription. Otherwise I'll continue to be inclined that the experience in December was accurate and the music only is in autograph state.
I think I better let somebody else handle this....
Why Mark?
Is it because you don't want to take place in this joke (or didn't like the joke) or is it because you consider the situation a serious one rather than a joke ?
It is a serious situation and I am baffled by it as there are pianists and composers as far as the eye can see who are better equipped for these tasks than me.
Liszt says that the all-Liszt recitals in Stockholm are supposed to "get the attention of the entire city" and "wake everybody up". He says also that eventually I am supposed to compose a type of music no one has heard before.
I'll post recordings of the April 21 recital which seems to be a warm-up recital and is not overly demanding -
J.S. Bach - Prelude in E-flat Major, BWV 852 Debussy - Clair de Lune Mozart - Fantasy and Fugue in C Major, K. 394 Schubert - Impromptu in G-flat Major, Op. 90 No. 3 Chopin - Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48 No. 1 Sayers - Etude: Homage to Liszt Nyiregyhazi - The Realization Thus Gained Grieg - In de Halle des Bergkönigs Liszt - Sancta Dorothea Liszt - R.W. Venezia Liszt - Sonetto 104 di Petrarca (first edition version)
There was a prior supernatural experience involving music in 1998 while sight-reading the Bach E-flat Major Prelude in W.T.C. Book One. An external force took possession of my arms, hands and body with me as passive observer to witness this personal adaptation of the music - I don't know who or what it was, but it set me on the path of not adhering to the composers' scores and only using them as guides.
This is a recording of it a week later. I realize the playing could be improved (as with all my past recordings) - but for a recording by a natural pianist who simply walked in to do it, and who was not willing practice the piano except perhaps for a week before any performing, which could result in months or even a year and beyond without practice, I feel it is okay.
Liszt wants it played in the same adaptation as the opening work of the April 21 recital - this hopefully will result on that occasion in a much better rendition and recording.
Ummm... I think I better let somebody else handle this....
-J
(No, I'll handle it, at least this much: I actually don't doubt that this kind of performance is a profound experience for the OP. This is a great example of something I've been talking about with my teacher: how different the pianist's and the audience's experiences are.)
You should check the Editio Musica Budapest, which is publishing all knowm Liszt compositions, to see if they have anything on your Queen of Sheba march.
I'm curious how long you believe these programs will be. I don't know all the pieces you will be playing, but will the programs tire you out, or perhaps your audience as well?
Fatigue on my side shouldn't be an issue - on the audience side I'm not so sure (maybe others can weigh in on this) but I trust Liszt's judgement.
About the duration I haven't worked out any estimates . . . venues like set time frames though so these need to be worked out. The April 21 programme is supposed to happen in a one hour slot.
This could be the longest one in duration out of the programmes received so far:
LISZT Les Cloches de Geneve Il Pensieroso Bagatelle Sans Tonalite Mephisto Waltz No. 1 Mephisto Waltz No. 4