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Welcome to the artissimo.gr pages of News ! |
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English Language : Classical Music : News : Summer 2002 
Thursday 1 August 2002 : You are really good, but, please, a little bit more slowly ! |
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Experiences Yesterday, Wednesday morning, I listened on the radio the inspired "Carnival" for the piano by Schumann played by an Austrian (rather contemporary) artist. Well, the execution was perfect but ... I didn't like something. In fact, most of the small autonomous pieces that are making up the "Carnival" were played in such an extremely rapid tempo that you were ... getting lost. I instantly remembered the dictum by "teacher" Arnold Schoenberg (I think is included in his essay "Theory of Harmony") saying that : "either you play a Beethoven's symphony two octaves higher, or in twice the faster tempo, the result will be the same form of caricature" ! In our case, there was certainly not such an exaggerated result, but, however, all the beauties of the piece, the inspired melody, the matching harmony, the "broken" harmonic constructions of the pianistic style, the end of the phrases, all of them were "fading" - even if executed perfectly - because the ear - no matter how much trained - could not make out and "digest" whatever was listening to. Let me also notice that the margins for one to vary the tempos in terms of the performance are rather narrow for the specific work - in contrast to eg. Chopin's Polonaises and a lot of other works. That is to say, eventually, by listening the "Carnival" pieces you could very well think that the reproduction was done by a ... well-tuned computer (yes! there are special algorithms in specific applications for a more ... human performance ("human quantize")) ! Fortunately, the marvellous piece with the name "Chopin" and also some other pieces in the end were played in a slower tempo and, so, we enjoyed them perfectly ! However, the one that really needs a rapid execution is the piece "Paganini", which - as its name implies! - requires a maximum of virtuosity. Anyway, think of the case where poor Chopin had not placed the various desired tempos at the beginning of all pieces, at which level of speed "Carnival" would then be performed ! An Important Notice : In all books of music technique, you can read that the quickest the execution tempo of a part, the simplest its harmonies should be, on the contrary, in a slow tempo, the music text should definitely be more complex. In any case, the ear should neither be "pressed" under a "flood" of music material, nor be given (naturally, except for cases of expressional tricks) a rather tiny quantity to "deal with". Certainly, under the competition that is common place in all professions nowadays, the only way for a pianist to be distinguished is ... his speed. So, let me not ... fire the pianist, but, rather ... threaten him a little so his tempo is lowered as necessary ! [it should be stressed that I have nothing with the Austrians, is this clear !? ] |
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