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oh, geiginni: what do you think of boulez's "structures pour deux pianos"?

Eksvplot wrote:

tmidgett wrote:

i have one of those Gould recordings of the Golberg Variations (i forget which one) and it doesn't do much for me at all.

yeah, i just looked and it's the newer one i own.

Well that's your problem right there. Kind of unfortunately staid and "plunky," whereas the older one is just exploding with life. It's someone in their prime, totally confident (I initially wrote "arrogant," which while probably true seems unfair) and on top of their skills, playing at the edge of what they can do, or just inside it.

Also the newer one was notorious for having been recorded on the first generation of digital machines, and sounds comparatively asstacular. The two-CD + weird interview disc reissue (A Sense of Wonder) went back to the analog safety copy of the 80s version, and so sounds better, but the performance is still not the revelation the earlier one was.

Charles Alkan

If you can play his stuff well, you are Not Crap.

piano's like of the best instruments for that! also, piano is one of the best sounding instruments for playing really fast...guitar tends to sound cheesy more often than not when the dude's shreddin' away...but piano has a better ratio of fast playing sounding good...i like the piano a lot, it would be totally awesome if i could play it right...but as my musical background is in percussion, my piano technique more closely resembles that of a xylophone...

for lovers of the piano: a great band with a lot of piano is The Potomac Accord...

used to hate or dismiss the shit, but when i saw campion's "the piano" i got my interest piqued and did some research on nyman. later he did the soundtrack to "ravenous" with that chump from blur: albarn, but i liked the soundtrack anyway. lucky for me, google turned me to sites that listed la monte young and terry riley. a friend of mine had a copy of "the well tuned piano" and after that i was hooked on it in a hobbiest kind of way. then i heard the song "the new albion chorale/the discovery" by riley while reading a book i had read many times before and always lost myself in and i had to put the book down.

and fuck you if you think there are not movements in philip glass's album "solo piano" that are not stellar, he has god damn roly-poly-tumbley steamroller moments all over the place in that.

The Cage & Nancarrow.

Also, Scelsi's solo piano work. The opposite of "a note producing device with less consideration for its actual tonal possibilites "

Palestine also. And Feldman.

I am to write some solo piano stuff soon.

So it's easy to find examples of not crap piano music. Its also easy to find examples of crap piano music.

geiginni wrote:

steve wrote:Conlon Nancarrow, but I'm not sure that counts. He completely changed my perception of the instrument. He's not really "playing" it, but it is being played because of him. What a tornado.

Thirded. I agree with the "not sure it counts" statement. What really does it for me in listening to Nancarrow isn't necessarily how he used the timbre and tonal characteristics of the piano so much as how revolutionary his compositional ideas concerning rhythm, tempi, polyphony, and the interlocking of these aspects in his work.

When thinking about solo piano music, part of the criteria for me is the exploitation of the timbral capabilities of the instrument, which can be quite impressive. It seems that often the piano is treated simply a note producing device with less consideration for its actual tonal possibilites and more focus on the straightforward range and dynamic abilities of the instrument.

not too long ago, i got the five disc boxset on Wergo. it's quite a lot to get one's head around, but definitely worth the bother. (in the end, i found my favorite stuff was on the third disc.)

i think Nancarrow's more manic pieces are great for waking up to. at times they sound like player piano music for space aliens! in this case "the piano as mere note producing device" seems perfectly acceptable, and to be honest, i only really notice the timbral/tonal limitations of his stuff during the slow pieces, and it's ultimately negligible.

Agreed re: Debussy, Monk, Satie, even Nancarrow.

Although it seems to me that Nancarrow's work is, at its base, graphic design and not music. But whatever.

Would like to add: Terre Thamelitz, whose Replicas Rubato solo piano reworkings of a certain right-wing douchebag named Gary Numan is great stuff.

-r

I love solo piano and I think only violin can rival it for evoking pathos and bittersweetness.


But I'd gladly dump every piano in the world into a volcano if it meant Tori Amos went mute.

I've been listening to Radio 3 a lot recently (my kids aren't big on Radio 4) and I'm slowly managing to lose my huge prejudice against piano music.

Slowly.