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Hi, jaybee12! It's the very end of the Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 31, No. 2 -- generally referred to as "The Tempest" sonata.
Those excerpts from the Op. 31, No. 2 were not Perahia playing, I believe, as those are not Perahia's hands; my guess is that it is stock film used for whatever series this video might be part of. Nor, do I think that the Fazioli used for the Beethoven was the piano that Perahia was playing. I could not see any logo on the piano; I'm wondering if it was a Hamburg Steinway.
I thought I saw a glimpse of characters on the side of the piano; they seemed to be Hebrew characters.
Hi, jaybee12! It's the very end of the Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 31, No. 2 -- generally referred to as "The Tempest" sonata.
Those excerpts from the Op. 31, No. 2 were not Perahia playing, I believe, as those are not Perahia's hands; my guess is that it is stock film used for whatever series this video might be part of. Nor, do I think that the Fazioli used for the Beethoven was the piano that Perahia was playing. I could not see any logo on the piano; I'm wondering if it was a Hamburg Steinway.
I thought I saw a glimpse of characters on the side of the piano; they seemed to be Hebrew characters.
Any thoughts?
Regards,
The hands playing the last movement of the Tempest sonata belong to the show’s host, Arie Vardi, a classical pianist and well-known pedagogue. This show, “Intermezzo with Arik” has been around for a while. There are two more interviews with Perahia, including one focused on discussing the Hammerklavier sonata.
There are also two interviews with András Schiff: one show discussing Bach, which gets quite heated over Schiff’s dislike of (over)pedaling in Bach. Other notable interviews include: Yuja Wang, Trifonov, Kissin, Alma Deutscher, Goode, Bronfman, Kovacevich, Robert Levin, Menahem Pressler, Yeol Eum Son and Haochen Zhang.
Angela Hewitt makes her Fazioli sing. She’ll be finishing up her Bach series at the 92nd St Y in New York in April and May. I’ve managed to see most of the concerts and they’ve been wonderful.
Great interview and demonstration. I subscribe to Mr. Perahia’s view that judicious use of pedal and dynamics are appropriate when playing Bach’s music on the piano.
The comment from the host about Claudio Arrau suggesting that Bach’s music should not be played on the piano was interesting and surprising to me in that one of Arrau’s protege’s, Alfonso Montecino had an international reputation for the interpretation of Bach’s music on piano.
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Arrau had an incredibly vast repertoire. He played all of Bach’s keyboard works in recital by the 1930’s. He even recorded the Goldberg variations on the piano before Gould (c.1945? but it was not released until much later). He was a huge fan of Landowska’s, and the idea of Bach on the harpsichord being more appropriate than the piano was evolving in his mind around that time. However, he was in the midst of recording all of Bach’s keyboard works at the ripe age of 88, up until the time of his death - so obviously, he changed his mind!
I went through a phase where I thought Bach "clavier" music sounded best on the "original" intended instruments, but I've come back to preferring hearing piano performances. I think a piano is better at demonstrating polyphonic textures with clarity. I love the recordings of Perahia and Schiff. By the way I also usually prefer the Richter and Rilling recordings of the choral music to most HIP performances (though not always).
I went through a phase where I thought Bach "clavier" music sounded best on the "original" intended instruments, but I've come back to preferring hearing piano performances. I think a piano is better at demonstrating polyphonic textures with clarity. I love the recordings of Perahia and Schiff. By the way I also usually prefer the Richter and Rilling recordings of the choral music to most HIP performances (though not always).
Schiff talks about the playing of the 48 preludes and fugues of the two books of the Well Tempered Clavier and says it is not possible to say which instrument they were written for. Clavier is a word meaning all keyboard instruments existing at the time of Bach. All of the 48 can’t be played well on the clavichord, harpsichord, or organ, and Schiff says that the piano, the elephant, as he calls it, is the only instrument that can somehow do justice to all of those pieces:
