Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner October 19th - Valentina Lisitsa at 92Y

Tonight I attended Valentina's opening night concert at 92Y in New York City, which is just a few blocks from my apartment.

Did anyone else attend the concert? She posted the whole thing in a Youtube video about 15 (!) minutes after it ended, but made the video private shortly afterwards.

I will probably be posting a review later on this thread, so look out for that if you're interested.

I attended as well. Pretty good showing and interesting Shostakovich commentary. Until she was rudely interrupted, that is. Only thing- seven Chopin nocturnes in succession was a bit much. Nevertheless, very happy I went.

Ah yes - that woman in the back. "Why is she talking? She's supposed to be playing!" Valentina took it into stride, though.


Eight. And not played quite to my taste. Still, an interesting program.

She got quite a reaction with the second encore, didn't she?

Yes, eight, my mistake ... and I agree with you on the interpretation. Her Chopin has never much moved me, though. Stiff might not be the right word, but something ... anemic about it. With her style of playing, I venture she might do better with a scherzo, though even those have their hyper-Romantic moments, e.g., the "B" section of op. 20.

La Campanella did arouse quite the response! An always-smart encore, IMHO. I was happy to hear it.

Her persistent asychronization is one of the main problems for me - yes, it's okay to do it sometimes, but is it ALWAYS necessary to have the RH drag behind the LH? On every single note? Also, her Chopin playing lacks in color and shape because she tends to disregard inner voices. This is also a problem when she plays Rachmaninoff - for example, in the E flat major prelude, which I think she just misunderstands. More on this later.

The Campanella was played quite well, especially considering that I think she decided to play it on the spot, with no pre-concert preparation. Her Liszt is her strongpoint. I wish she had played the B minor Ballade though. Speaking of which, what did you think of the rather strange procedure of having fans vote on the program, and then even on the encore (incidentally, did you see that the voting was open all the way through intermission? It was one of the program inserts).

I was there!

I didn't like all of her interpretations, but there's just something exciting about watching someone who is so excited about playing!

Are thumbnails clacking on keys a necessary part of descending glissandos?

Not that this should diminish it in any way, but she has said in the past that since Campanella was one of her competition pieces and because of when and how she learned this and certain other competition pieces, she can simply produce one at any moment.

As for me, I can only vaguely envision a world in which pieces like that are in my list of "auto-pilot" pieces.

In a way, auto-pilot is the only way La Camp. can be played. It's certainly not one of Liszt's best pieces, and not terribly interesting as music. It is both telling and somewhat sad that it has attained the status it has among pianists, IMO. To me, being present when a pianist plays it is quite a lot like watching certain circus acts - they may be surprising, but one quickly realizes it is all about endless training and little else.

Music should thrill and entertain, as well as move people .

Otherwise, classical music would be mainly slow, serious stuff, shorn of all the extra notes and figurations that spice it up. Even old JSB wrote a lengthy and brilliant cadenza (which can seem somewhat out of place in context...) for himself to play in his Brandenburg Concerto No.5, and every great composer ever since have composed brilliant (even unnecessarily brilliant) pieces for keyboard/piano whose main purpose is to entertain by showing off the soloist's pyrotechnics.

La Campanella is one of the more superior pieces in this genre, and in the right hands - like Lisitsa's - it has the power to entertain. And thrill.

Just like great acrobatic feats in circus acts, and in gymnastics and diving in the Olympics........

Sorry, no sale.

I thoroughly enjoy virtuosic entertainment in classical music, when it is of decent musical quality. But this piece is, IMO, far from being "one of the more superior [sic] pieces in the genre". The tune is utterly banal, and the virtuosic figuration is of little musical interest in itself. It's rather like one of the gazillion sets of virtuoso "Carnival of Venice" variations that exist for various wind instruments - basically, there is not much music involved, and I find exhibition of rote learning of little interest.

I just thought it was interesting that even though Liszt wrote a piece called Dance of the Dead, when you put it on a program with the Shostakovich sonata, it's pretty apparent which composer liked exploring macabre themes, and which composer lived it. Todenanz may sound funereal, but that sonata is funereal. *shudder*

OK then, maybe you might like the original a little better :

http://youtu.be/cTMZASKc9dc

I think La Campanella is an incredibly brilliantly written etude on a level with most of the other Paganini Etudes or Transcendental Etudes.

My Lisitsa concert thread has turned into a squabble about the musical quality of La Campanella. Oh well.

I am no enemy of asynch, but must admit it can become excessive. Like many things, if used ad infinitum, it can be tiresome. Reminds me of the discussion on another thread about arpeggiating virtually all chords ... IMO this is even more tiring to listen to, authenticity notwithstanding.

I enjoyed the voting process. It adds a bit of democracy to the classical music experience, lest anyone find it to be elitist (I don't). Plus, media consumption is all about participation these days, no? If it is kept to voting between a selection of balanced programs, vs. voting piece by piece, I think it can be effective and am all for it.

I did notice the program insert about the encore, but also saw earlier in the afternoon her Facebook post that Ave Maria would be played as it had 40% of the vote. Her FB post also implored us to vote for the second encore via Twitter during her performance of the first encore. This I'm not a fan of.

Overall, a wonderful experience to be able to see her perform live. It does make a difference as TS mentioned.

I wish she had played the 2nd Ballade. But I guess more people went for the popular pieces - Ave Maria and the Rondo El Contrabandista.

+1

(A shallow tribute, but it agrees with you 100% all the same!)

That may be so, but I think the popularity of the work is virtually down to Ms Lisitsa alone, so perhaps it is fitting that such a work is discussed regarding her.

I saw a Paul Barton post on You Tube where he said that he would produce a tutorial on it because it was very popular because of, "You Tube performances" and I thought straight away that it was a (slightly begrudging) reference to VL and her internet power.

She played in Poole, Dorset a couple of weeks ago, I live in Weymouth 20 miles away and I MISSED HER!!!

Jealous as heck of everybody who goes to her concerts.

I am not a Lisitsa fan, so I skipped this recital. But the Y has an excellent line-up of pianists and programs coming up: Olga Kern who will play Rachmaninoff and Alkan, Yefim Bronfman who will play chamber music and a new work for solo piano by E-P Salonen titled Sisar, and Peter Serkin whose program is quite literally new:

SWEELINCK: Capriccio
WUORINEN: Intrada (New York premiere, 92Y co-commission)
WUORINEN: Scherzo (92Y commission)
WUORINEN: Adagio (92Y co-commission)
BEETHOVEN: Six Bagatelles, Op. 126
BEETHOVEN: Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 81a, “Les Adieux”

Most exciting and an upcoming performance that I cannot recommend enough is the Isserlis-Denk duo, who will treat us to the Chopin, Martinu and Franck sonatas. A true treat to the ear and mind.

By the way, Tommasini has a rather negative review of Lisitsa's performance. In addition to comments pertaining to the music, he thought that she was ungracious about the program notes presented in the concert booklet when reciting her own version.

Here is an excerpt of his review (just posted online, I believe):

n a group of eight Chopin nocturnes, she was frustratingly uneven, sometimes playing with poetic lyricism, sometimes turning assertive and unruly. Ending with Liszt’s demonic and stunningly difficult “Totentanz” (“Dance of Death”), she pummeled the piece into submission with little feeling for the mystical realms the composer explores in this wildly experimental work.

Ms. Lisitsa left it to her online audience to select her encore from among nine options. Some 5,000 voted. The winner was Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” But at the end of this long evening, she played another Liszt favorite: “La Campanella,” a riff on Paganini, dispatched with wondrous lightness but at a breathless tempo that robbed the piece of its playfulness.

Ms. Lisitsa’s fans waited in a winding line to have her autograph recordings afterward. But she had better start preparing her own program notes. After this recital, no writer is going to want that thankless job.

I don't think this is the case.

Pianists like Yundi Li, Lang Lang, and even Evgeny Kissin have been playing this as an encore for years, and with many many youtube videos being posted, long before VL started becoming popular.

I once had an acquaintance, who didn't play piano at all, ask me to play this piece once I mentioned that I played the piano....and that was in 2008!