Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Godowsky - Prelude and Fugue for left hand alone

I find myself continually astonished by Godowsky's pianistic ingenuity. The fugue, especially, is extraordinarily innovative - no composer before or since has been able to create works like this for only half a pianist. Godowsky is famously quoted as saying that if one hand can be made to sound like two, two hands can be made to sound like four. And if anyone was capable of that, it was Godowsky. Here is the work, performed by Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose control of the keyboard and immaculate technique makes his interpretation sparkle like none other.



Opinions?

Pretty amazing - both the writing and the performance.

Kudos to Hamelin - whose masterful interpretation truly sparkles !!

In terms of the compositions themselves - on first hearing I felt the Fugue was more effective than the Prelude - only because the Prelude seemed to run a bit too long.

Thanks for sharing these !!

I hear the performer taking too many liberties with rubato which slows forward momentum. A straight performance would most likely sound much better. Also, the performer fails to accentuate the melody so it gets lost in both pieces. This could be a recording issue, though, but it can't be discerned from the recording so lets blame it on the performer. (However, knowing who the performer is, it's most likely a performer error.) It could be a bit faster overall because momentum and energy is slightly lost.

About the compositions, they are really nice, especially the Prelude. I don't know how effective a one-handed, 3-part Fugue can be since the range is severely limited.

Yes, Hamelin seems to use rubato where the score indicates rall and a tempo - such liberties!

A lovely recording! Amazing what can be done with one hand.

Aside from Godowsky's technical achievement in the composition of this work, there is also the musical element, and there are some very beautiful passages in both the prelude and the fugue.

This is the difference between a musician and a typist: a musician can hear on his own, a typist must be given instructions.

That is a false comparison. A better one would be a musician vs a player piano. But a musician still needs instructions otherwise you get into improvisational style music or they are the composer.

So who is at fault here - Godowsky for writing in the markings, or Hamelin for following them?

Neither of them are at fault. Markings are simply what the composer hears. Whether to actively try to emulate that or not is another discussion.

Is there a recording of this you prefer? Unfortunately with Godowsky, there seems to be so little with which to compare various interpretations of the music.

Obviously; I'm trying to see if Mr. Faulty is up to having a logical discussion or not.

I don't know of any other recordings of this particular piece except for a couple by unknowns on Youtube, which I am fairly certain are not better than Hamelin's.

Godowsky's music needs more attention.

I second that notion. Pianists need to focus on his real music, not the Chopin etude transcriptions. Those should be shunned from musical society.

I really cannot tell when you are being sarcastic.

His Chopin transcriptions are in poor taste, and it's a shame that they're what Godowsky is known for.

In your opinion.


Agreed.

This is still the typist analogy you're hinting to. A musician wouldn't need the expressive markings on the score. He can hear it on his own. Here's a real life example: you read a book aloud. There are no expressive markings anywhere on the page. More direct comparison, you read J.S. Bach's works. There are almost no expressive markings on the score. A more stylistically similar analogy: Alkan's Trois Etudes dan le genre Pathetique - no expressive markings anywhere, neither tempo nor dynamics, etc.

I must respectfully disagree. But it is a shame that Godowsky is most famous for that set or transcriptions.

I still prefer the original Chopin Etudes though.

I agree with you, faulty.