Clavichord recordings you like.

Started by Mandryka, October 25, 2010, 09:54:45 AM

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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on January 21, 2023, 03:23:37 AMMore Kanji Daito -- this kid's the biz until you start to think about it. When you do you realise that he's playing clavichord like a harpsichord -- no real use of dynamics for example, or vibrato, and the liaisons between the notes is harpsichord like. But still, nice harpsichord performances using a clavichord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1tsCOUBu2I&list=PLhcJddblbx4G2c4RDkWO_enPD-30JQoAs&index=16&ab_channel=KanjiDaito%E5%A4%A7%E8%97%A4%E8%8E%9E%E7%88%BE

Louis Couperin prelude -- nice to get a glimpse of that score!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24oo5A4-Fd0&list=PLhcJddblbx4G2c4RDkWO_enPD-30JQoAs&index=7&ab_channel=KanjiDaito%E5%A4%A7%E8%97%A4%E8%8E%9E%E7%88%BE

Froberger Toccata


In my ears he offers very expressive and idiomatic clavichord playing except for the use of vibrato. There are on youtube also some more of his recordings, Bach inventions among them. I shall listen to these soon.

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Mandryka

#141
Quote from: premont on January 21, 2023, 04:48:01 AMIn my ears he offers very expressive and idiomatic clavichord playing except for the use of vibrato. There are on youtube also some more of his recordings, Bach inventions among them. I shall listen to these soon.



I was being a hard taskmaster. It is amazing, the quality of musicians coming out of Japanese conservatories today. His website shows a lively person.


https://www.patreon.com/kanjidaito
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Mandryka

Quote from: premont on January 21, 2023, 04:48:01 AMIn my ears he offers very expressive and idiomatic clavichord playing except for the use of vibrato. There are on youtube also some more of his recordings, Bach inventions among them. I shall listen to these soon.



Nice Bach Symphonia 1 by Daito here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bOrdg_nJ48&ab_channel=KanjiDaito%E5%A4%A7%E8%97%A4%E8%8E%9E%E7%88%BE

I think it's a great bit of music, quintessential Bach.

I wish he'd have used a clavichord though, I was led to it after hearing Tuma's (outstanding) performance.
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premont

Illuminating that he plays all of the sinfonias both on harpsichord and piano. I might suspect (haven't heard them yet) that his piano touch is a bit harpsichord idiomatic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CNzWuYr0IQ&list=PLhcJddblbx4G7js4XbyGA_lG_wQa2vvax
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Mandryka

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milk

Quote from: Mandryka on January 21, 2023, 06:01:31 AMI was being a hard taskmaster. It is amazing, the quality of musicians coming out of Japanese conservatories today. His website shows a lively person.


https://www.patreon.com/kanjidaito
I doubt that. They go abroad to study. The system in Japan is not going to produce expressiveness. I know musicians here and a little bit from them about what it's like. The ones we hear from have likely studied abroad. 

premont

Quote from: Mandryka on September 13, 2019, 12:35:44 PM

If justification were needed, Mozart owned clavichords, but in fact it's unnecessary. This is a great CD, a real encounter between instrument and musician giving rise to some unmatched performances of standard music - K 310/311/545/ ah vous dirai-je maman.

A hard CD to buy, I had to contact Peter Waldner who then put me on to someone else and then there was a whole kerfuffle . . . but it worked in the end I'm pleased to say.

This one had escaped my attention, probably because I'm not a real Mozartian. Fortunately I have found a copy at an AMP seller.
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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on September 13, 2019, 12:35:44 PM

If justification were needed, Mozart owned clavichords, but in fact it's unnecessary. This is a great CD, a real encounter between instrument and musician giving rise to some unmatched performances of standard music - K 310/311/545/ ah vous dirai-je maman.

Having heard this indeed congenial interpretation now I think that the modern grand sadly does Mozart's keyboard music a disservice in that it tends to iron out the delicate details and the dramatic contrasts.
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Mandryka

#148
Quote from: premont on December 07, 2023, 03:57:28 AMHaving heard this indeed congenial interpretation now I think that the modern grand sadly does Mozart's keyboard music a disservice in that it tends to iron out the delicate details and the dramatic contrasts.

Have you heard Giovanni De Cecco's Mozart?






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premont

Quote from: Mandryka on December 07, 2023, 07:25:18 AMHave you heard Giovanni De Cecco's Mozart?

No, I only know him from sampling his recording of some of JS Bach's keyboard adaptations of Vivaldi concertos, and I have this CD in my periscope. But if you recommend him I shall investigate his Mozart too.
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Mandryka

Quote from: premont on December 07, 2023, 08:41:18 AMBut if you recommend him I shall investigate his Mozart too.

It's iconoclastic because it brings Mozart's music closer to  CPE Bach's.
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Mandryka

Some comments by Giovanni de Cecco on Mozrt, from here

https://heinrichvontrotta.blogspot.com/2019/04/giovanni-de-cecco-il-profeta-del.html

QuoteLet's talk about his complete Mozart sonatas: what do you lose and what do you gain by performing his clavichord sonatas?

There is no disadvantage, because Mozart's are Sonatas for keyboard, not for the piano alone, and the only keyboard he played, from birth to death, was the clavichord: two are preserved down to us, and on one His wife had a plaque affixed to them in which we read that he wrote his last works there, including part of the Requiem . It seems strange to us Italians, but the choice of the clavichord is completely legitimate: its mechanics allows very rich effects because, beyond the Bebung , when I press a key I can change the intonation of the note, because the tangent does not simply strike the rope, but remains in contact with it. I can make a rising note, a vibrato, a portamento of sound: a mastery of intonation evidently impossible with harpsichord and piano. I can even sound "out of tune"!

As Piero Rattalino pointed out, in his Mozart recordings the choice of very slow tempos is striking; Why?

This applies to most clavichord recordings, because each instrument has its own natural tactus . We think that only the performer decides the rhythm, but in reality it is set by the performer with the instrument in the room: the clavichord has a long reverberation, so excessive speed would generate an ugly, confused sound. The performer cannot impose his own idea of music on an instrument that already has its own "heartbeat". This is why it is essential to choose an instrument that is contemporary with the music being tackled, because, for example, since the clavichord lacks the damper present in the fortepiano, which dries out the reverberation, the sound perspective is completely different: often it is the same instruments of the time that also reveal the plausible "metronomes" of the scores, while sometimes modern instruments can make us go "off course" without knowledge of precedents.

Modern pianos also have a timbral homogeneity unknown to those of the 19th century: does the same happen for the clavichord?

Without a doubt: Leopold Mozart speaks, in a letter to his son, of a clavichord that had "basses like trombones and trebles like violins". And this must be exploited in the performance, because music evolves starting from the instruments, getting its hands dirty with woods and paints.

Even the voices, in the 19th century, had a marked timbral difference between the registers: and this brings us to his project of tackling Mozart's Lieder with the clavichord as well. What kind of voice are you thinking of?

Here too I don't imagine a large theater with a great lyrical voice, but a small room in a period building and a singer sitting almost whispering: in a more madrigal than operatic sense.
You mentioned the famous Bebung , i.e. the vibrato applied to a single note by pressing the key: how does it apply to Mozart's music?

We always start from the score: common sense dictates that the most important or dissonant sounds should be played loudly, and vice versa. And just as, for example, a flute played loudly is slightly crescendo, the same goes for the clavichord: the Bebung 's vibrato (or portamento) applies to the most painful, most intense notes. An effect that has an immense range of declinations and nuances, which comes closer to the possibilities of the voice than of the modern piano: after all, CPE Bach suggested that keyboard players listen to good singers.

It must be said that, for example, a strange page like the Andante of K 311 takes on truly different perspectives in its recording...

You know, we think we are modern or free because we play a modern instrument for ancient music: but first of all it is not modern, because for around 130 years the piano has not substantially evolved, and then you think that in the 18th century clavichords, spinets were used , fortepianos, tangent fortepianos, harpsichords, Lautenwerk , organs, piano-organs... The research was enormous, with a variety that we only dream of today: our sound world has become impoverished.

And how does it deal with variations and embellishments?

In Mozart we find an evident separation between the more bare sonatas such as K 545 - the so-called "easy" sonata - which therefore require an intervention from the performer, and which are therefore paradoxically more difficult, and those such as K 457 which have a high writing detail. We must therefore start from these, to understand Mozart's language of ornamentation, and then apply it to the more bare ones. In some cases I even go by subtraction, removing bars because Mozart's writing itself suggests it. By 2020 I will complete the recordings, which I believe will be published within the following year, and will include all the Sonatas and the Fantasia in C.
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Mandryka

And more from here

http://www.nonsoloaudiofili.com/IntervistaalmaestroGiovanniDeCecco/tabid/769/Default.aspx

QuoteFor the past 10 years I have intentionally avoided listening to keyboard players play Mozart or Emanuel Bach when I could. I believe that Mozart's music is as far from our world as Indian music; in the case of the latter, to approach it as much as possible without our Western categories and stratifications, we would have to lock ourselves up for years with Indian musicians and listen to them for hours... Instead in the case of composers who have been dead and buried for more than two centuries, not having been able to listen, we are obliged to at least read their testimonies, through letters and treatises. And then let's remember that an instrument similar to the ones they had in their hands is a sort of "medium" which, as in a séance, makes us evoke those dead. The most malicious will say that we are summoning zombies or vampires, who would like to be left to rest in peace, and certainly the risk is around the corner.

ADP : Piero Rattalino, precisely regarding your Mozart complete, said : "Giovanni De Cecco sings outside the choir, and it is a blessing that he does so". I interpret this reflection of his, with which I fully agree, as the appreciation of the desire to offer the listener a reading different from the usual ones, a gateway to an expressive cosmos where a march emerges from the staid, I dare say Celibidachian, times . In his opinion, have we currently arrived at an exhaustive vision of the poetics expressed by Mozart in his many facets?

GDC : It's impossible. Not even Mozart would be able to give an exhaustive vision with one performance, because he would have to re-play the same piece again, with a thousand other different nuances. What we can try to do within our limits is not to give it an "estranged" vision. Let me explain: the same treatises of the time provide us with many ways to realize an affection. None are definitive, but many can be literally misunderstood and evoke the "zombies" I mentioned before. And I'm the first to fear this when I play, even if I may be convinced and satisfied with the result.

As for the fact that I saw a resemblance to Celibidache, I believe it is pure chance. Nothing is further from my approach than that of Celibidache. I have the firm conviction that music does not exist as a universal language with its own phenomenology, but only "music" and that, when we believe we understand a piece by Mozart or Bach, we delude ourselves, we interpreters first, just as much as those who believe to grasp a message from a poem read in an ancient language that perhaps he does not know, or interprets with enormous blunders.
 
ADP : Do you want to tell us about your affection for the exotic, the transport you feel for the music of Transylvania, also expressed in the elaboration of Romanian folklore music for the piano and chamber groups?

GDC : I approach Mozart or the folklore repertoire as an anthropologist, or even an entomologist, as some friends have jokingly called me. For me this applies to music, languages, morals. Nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing how the concepts of "good" and "evil" vary depending on places and times.
To quote Nietzsche, I like to "be at home in many places of the spirit". In the footsteps of Béla Bartók I spent entire months with Romanian and gypsy musicians, studying and playing their music together.
The only difference with my activity as a classical musician is that, while in the folklore repertoire I dialogue with living friends, in the classical one my friends are dead.

I like staying in another country for a long time, speaking the language and finding myself thinking differently: then, when I even start dreaming in the local language, the satisfaction is maximum. I try not to cultivate the soul, but various souls. With Romanian friends I love drinking ţuică and shouting, with Iranian friends sipping tea sitting on a carpet and discussing mysticism or women, with Thais talking about soap operas while taking selfies; but I don't even disdain a dialogue with a Catholic priest regarding the Theodicy; for me it's "exotic" even going to a festival 10 minutes from my house. Human beings fascinate me; if I hadn't been a musician I would have wanted to be an anthropologist or study many Asian languages.
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Mandryka

#153


Excellent instrument (the oldest clavichord in Austria); one of the most imaginative performances of a Froberger suite I've ever heard. Alexander Gergelyfi teaches clavichord in Graz and was a pupil of Alina Zylberjach and Menno von Delft.


https://alexandergergelyfi.bandcamp.com/album/sapperlot

https://www.alexandergergelyfi.com/
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