Baroque and early music on piano excluding Bach

Started by milk, October 27, 2019, 03:25:22 PM

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milk

Quote from: Mandryka on May 10, 2022, 12:38:43 AM
I think you may be being hasty about the Batagov actually, which seems at least rather beautiful, introspective and refined.

But the Schlieme is quite another matter. Everything seems less subtle in terms of colour and weight than it was in his Frescobaldi CD. I just don't like it at all!
His Frescobaldi was fantastic. But he wasn't going off-script. Here, he seems to think his spin on things will make the music stand out. But it drags it down.

milk


Mandryka

#102
Hats off for him for doing it, and from the point of view of interpretation it's OK - light, dancing. Most of all it confirms my belief that the music doesn't suit me when it's played with the purer tones and the homogeneous registers of the modern instrument. There may be pianos which suit me better, and possibly playing styles which use the pianos overtones to greater effect. The recording may not help either.

In a conversation DB-P once said that he's not primarily interested in sound. It would be really good to let him compare some of my harpsichord recordings of this music with his, and see if it doesn't change his mind. I just listened to his and Colin Booth's Passamezzo Pavan, for example, and it seems to me no question that the Booth is more sympathetic to the music.  Daniel Ben Pienaar, where are you? I conjure you out of the ether.

By the way the Passamezzo Pavan and Galliard is often attributed to Peter Philips.

I think it's a great shame that he hasn't made the booklet available on streaming services, for an important release like this - important because the music is so little known outside of PI circles.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

#103

I haven't thought to compare this with Armstrong. I may do it. This morning I was listening to Giulia Nuti. I go back and forth between piano and period. Sometimes piano seems opposite of what it's supposed to be: it's actually more "samey," less sonically diverse sounding in this music. That doesn't seem to make sense though. 
ETA: I'm surprised that I find Armstrong so much more interesting. The recording is much better too. Ok, it's more pianistic. But it's a modern piano, so why not. Armstrong just seems more inside the music and more thoughtful. Maybe I need to give D-BP more time. Maybe D-BP is IS going for a virginal piano.

Mandryka

If you speak French and like Kim, he's on YouTube playing and talking about his transcription of some Bach, BWV 721. He comes across as sweet and serious, worth a listen if you like his stuff.
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milk

Quote from: Mandryka on December 16, 2022, 01:14:42 AMIf you speak French and like Kim, he's on YouTube playing and talking about his transcription of some Bach, BWV 721. He comes across as sweet and serious, worth a listen if you like his stuff.
But I agree with your earlier post. I was listening to Nuti this morning. I AM interested in sound. The modern piano strips the music of something important. Where I can see piano is supposed bring all kinds of effects to some kinds of music, in this kinds of music it somehow deadens it or hollows it. Armstrong is more convincing though and when I'm in the mood, I can certainly enjoy it. I don't speak French unfortunately. D-BP, I don't know what he doing here or why.

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on December 16, 2022, 02:56:53 AMI meant Armstrong not Kim. Kit.
Yes, me too. Mine was a typo. Kit Armstrong on his Byrd recording. I'm looking forward to more from him.

Mandryka

One thing Armstrong says on the youtube is that sound is really important to him. Daniel Ben Pienaar himself doesn't really prioritise this aspect of the music. I kind of feel that Armstrong is right - he may have a bigger budget, and so can get better instruments and engineers.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on December 16, 2022, 06:01:33 AMOne thing Armstrong says on the youtube is that sound is really important to him. Daniel Ben Pienaar himself doesn't really prioritise this aspect of the music. I kind of feel that Armstrong is right - he may have a bigger budget, and so can get better instruments and engineers.
he's on a big label. As little as I still know about piano technique, to me it seems like Kit has a lot more color, sometimes using dynamics too but also distinguishing between notes when he's playing fast which is harder on the piano than the plucked instruments. D-BP blurs things. D-BP may be making a choice about technique and Kit maybe more influenced as some kind of prodigy, if that's a bad thing. But I don't think it's bad. I mean he sounds really gifted. D-BP makes me think of the challenge in this music and I think for any competent artist it just sounds like a challenge to take this keyboard music out of the instrument it was written on, much more so than Bach whom I intuit was more abstractly writing for any instrument. Virginal music in the dances is full of notes and many pianists just sound unprepared or something - not able to translate it. Who's that really famous pianist who doesn't believe in recording much but who sometimes played a lot of baroque? Usually did typical romantic repertoire? Kit Armstrong sounds like he's got that level of genius if he can age well.

milk

Listening to K. Armstrong's Fantasia (Fitzwillian 108). Wonderful counterpoint in this. Did Bach know this music? This is a piece that Armstrong brings to life and makes work on piano.

milk


I haven't listened to this yet but I'm just looking at this and wording what it is. What is it? I don't know her but I WILL listen to this today.

Mandryka

#112
Quote from: milk on January 25, 2023, 02:09:12 PMWhat is it?


https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/84/000154848.pdf

To transform many different rocks into a single organic alloy, to combine what seemed incompatible — and now it suddenly seems to you that it cannot be done any other way.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on January 25, 2023, 07:47:21 PMhttps://static.qobuz.com/goodies/84/000154848.pdf

To transform many different rocks into a single organic alloy, to combine what seemed incompatible — and now it suddenly seems to you that it cannot be done any other way.
Maybe I'm just tired and impatient but I couldn't understand from it. Did it explain? I'm really tired from the kids (my two boys, 5 and 3) tonight (feeding them, brushing their teeth, getting them to bed). So, these are pieces used in those films but she didn't actually play on the soundtracks, right? I tried to reread the PDF but somehow it's not getting through my brain.
Thanks for the link!

Todd

Quote from: Mandryka on December 16, 2022, 06:01:33 AMOne thing Armstrong says on the youtube is that sound is really important to him. Daniel Ben Pienaar himself doesn't really prioritise this aspect of the music.

Pienaar stated in an interview that sound is important to him, but not in the conventional sense.  Conventional tonal beauty is not really what he is going for.  He said something along the lines that it makes everything sound the same.  I searched a bit, but couldn't find the interview online, but it's out there.


Quote from: milk on December 16, 2022, 06:17:24 PMKit Armstrong sounds like he's got that level of genius if he can age well.

Armstrong is a flat out genius.  Alfred Brendel spotted it and took Armstrong on as one of his few pupils.  It's evident in his two Sony recordings, one an all Liszt disc, the other some Bach and Ligeti with his own works peppered in.  His take on some Liszt and Ligeti pieces stand apart from everyone else.  I've not yet gone for his DVD only Goldbergs, where he also includes some Bull and Byrd, and throws in some Sweelinck. 
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Mandryka

Quote from: Todd on January 31, 2023, 07:05:59 AMPienaar stated in an interview that sound is important to him, but not in the conventional sense.  Conventional tonal beauty is not really what he is going for.  He said something along the lines that it makes everything sound the same.  I searched a bit, but couldn't find the interview online, but it's out there.


 

This was what he said to me


. . . it would be a mistake to assume that musicians have, by default, access to their ideal instruments, halls etc. for recordings. Almost no recordings nowadays are made under ideal conditions (if such a thing existed) unless the artist has real choice and access to corporate funding streams or private wealth (which, as you can imagine, I do not). Even then, we are still talking about the real world, and on the day of a recording any number of things may be short of just right. Of course, artists with 'corporate' level support might labour under different constraints (eg. big labels might limit repertoire choices, might have a 'house sound' or there might be weird power plays going on between grand old-school producers and engineers and aspiring musicians - something that often affects artistic decisions). But, that granted, it may simply be that certain artists' personalities and work do indeed fit naturally with how the more visible 'mainstream' things are generally funded and marketed now, and they may well have access to SOTA conditions.

Using decent-ish modern Steinways is a more-or-less neutral choice - it is not that I particularly like them, it is just that they respond reasonably accurately to the manipulations that I am interested in: like I said, details of relative differences in voicing, pedalling, different kinds of vertical dislocation between hands or notes in chords or contrapuntal textures, varieties of articulation, emphases, which notes are stretched or compressed, where stress falls in a phrase, tempo and dynamic fluctuations etc. etc. - and of course in the ideas that can be expressed using those tools.

(As I pointed out, some people find my obsessions with these things too 'interventionist', whereas others don't even notice them at all (perhaps because all they can hear is the 'de-prioritising' of blanket warmth and 'evenness' of the kind that a standard-issue, authoritarian, Rosina Lhevine-style technique would produce) and thus find my playing lacking in 'depth' (perhaps equating fleetness or speed with superficiality, to boot) - or boring, or outright incompetent. Others, still, find the detailing colourful and interesting, or (as you do, Mandryka) 'tense and turbulent'. That sort of spread is in the nature of aesthetic experience, as anyone who has eavesdropped on audience comments at any concert will know (unless an overwhelming consensus has previously been forged around the work of an artist - in which case many in the audience will predictably seek to perceive what they believe they are there to perceive)).

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Florestan

Quote from: Mandryka on January 31, 2023, 07:14:27 AMThis was what he said to me


. . . it would be a mistake to assume that musicians have, by default, access to their ideal instruments, halls etc. for recordings. Almost no recordings nowadays are made under ideal conditions (if such a thing existed) unless the artist has real choice and access to corporate funding streams or private wealth (which, as you can imagine, I do not). Even then, we are still talking about the real world, and on the day of a recording any number of things may be short of just right. Of course, artists with 'corporate' level support might labour under different constraints (eg. big labels might limit repertoire choices, might have a 'house sound' or there might be weird power plays going on between grand old-school producers and engineers and aspiring musicians - something that often affects artistic decisions). But, that granted, it may simply be that certain artists' personalities and work do indeed fit naturally with how the more visible 'mainstream' things are generally funded and marketed now, and they may well have access to SOTA conditions.

Using decent-ish modern Steinways is a more-or-less neutral choice - it is not that I particularly like them, it is just that they respond reasonably accurately to the manipulations that I am interested in: like I said, details of relative differences in voicing, pedalling, different kinds of vertical dislocation between hands or notes in chords or contrapuntal textures, varieties of articulation, emphases, which notes are stretched or compressed, where stress falls in a phrase, tempo and dynamic fluctuations etc. etc. - and of course in the ideas that can be expressed using those tools.

(As I pointed out, some people find my obsessions with these things too 'interventionist', whereas others don't even notice them at all (perhaps because all they can hear is the 'de-prioritising' of blanket warmth and 'evenness' of the kind that a standard-issue, authoritarian, Rosina Lhevine-style technique would produce) and thus find my playing lacking in 'depth' (perhaps equating fleetness or speed with superficiality, to boot) - or boring, or outright incompetent. Others, still, find the detailing colourful and interesting, or (as you do, Mandryka) 'tense and turbulent'. That sort of spread is in the nature of aesthetic experience, as anyone who has eavesdropped on audience comments at any concert will know (unless an overwhelming consensus has previously been forged around the work of an artist - in which case many in the audience will predictably seek to perceive what they believe they are there to perceive)).



Interesting, thanks for posting. He's certainly a thoughtful and sensitive person.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Mandryka

#117
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJu_bEy6Yjg&ab_channel=NicolasBagnoli

Soklolov playing Purcell last month.

The Purcell sounds serious and expressive, and I quite like it -- I like his restraint -- not much by way of modern piano effects as far as I can tell from the recording. But above all I like the ornamentation and the counterpoint. I knew a harpsichord player who admired Sokolov in contrapuntal music, and listening to this, I think he may have been right.

In fact, I may like him more than any harpsichordist I've heard.
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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on March 31, 2023, 07:15:26 AMIn fact, I may like him more than any harpsichordist I've heard.

In general, or only concerning Purcell?

Do you know if Purcell's keyboard suites have been recorded by anyone on a clavichord - the instrument I (maybe it's just me) feel would be most appropriate for this music?
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Mandryka

Quote from: premont on March 31, 2023, 10:11:07 AMIn general, or only concerning Purcell?

Do you know if Purcell's keyboard suites have been recorded by anyone on a clavichord - the instrument I (maybe it's just me) feel would be most appropriate for this music?

You could be right about clavichord -- this seems nice.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9e8Brkz3hc&ab_channel=NorbertoBroggini
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