Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

The first one got a few hundred thousand views so some people might argue that it does not belong in a post like this. On the other hand I’ve heard quite a bit of Rachmaninoff over the years – I’ve even played a bit of his stuff – without ever having come across this piece before, so I’m sure some of you haven’t heard it before either:

I’ve put the rest below the fold…

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

i.

ii.

(1686 and 2538 views? Seriously???)

iii.

iv.

v.

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

I decided to do a post with mostly just chamber stuff, I don’t think I’ve done that before (and I figured if I included ‘a Hamelin’ as well, people who don’t like chamber music should still be able to appreciate some of the stuff in the post – because, you know, Hamelin is awesome..).

The rest is below the fold…

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

Despite the not particularly Danish-sounding last name, Winding was actually a Danish composer.

As few people ‘read’ these posts, I decided to put the rest below the fold.

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

I recently ‘discovered’ John Field:

The latest project

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

I recently discovered Ferdinand Ries and all the pieces below are by him:

Most people do not understand music?

Well, it depends on how you define ‘music’ (see also my comments below), but either way… From lesswrong:

Comment by Will_Newsome: “‘Aren’t there people who can hear sounds but not music?’

FWIW I’ve read a study that says about 50% of people can’t tell the difference between a major and a minor chord even when you label them happy/sad. [ETA: Happy/sad isn't the relevant dimension, see the replies to this comment.] I have no idea how probable that is, but if true it would imply that half of the American population basically can’t hear music.”

[...]

Comment by army1987:

“http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2074

It shocked the hell out of me, too.”

…

The stuff in army1987′s link I found frankly incredible and I’ll probably do a bit of googling later on to see what pops up. It seems that whereas commenters to the article do not generally seem to have problems with distinguishing the isolated chords, quite a few of them do have significant problems with the sequence in the post. I’m flabbergasted that anyone would have any problems with either of the examples.

Knowing this will probably radically change how I think about e.g. giving concerts to ‘normal people’. Before I’ve basically assumed that people heard what I heard, more or less, when I played something. But if people have problems with stuff as simple as the sequence in the link, I should really take people at their word when they tell me that they ‘do not understand this kind of music’. I’ve always thought such a statement was best translated: ‘I couldn’t tell Beethoven from Mozart (‘I mentioned those two names because they are the only ones I know…’) and I do not feel comfortable judging types of music I don’t know very well.’ (or something along those lines) But maybe a better way to translate it would be: ‘I can’t hear what’s going on.’ People have quite a few times in the past told me that I shouldn’t worry about anything when playing for them because they wouldn’t be able to tell if I made a mistake or not anyway. I’ve always assumed they were just being nice and that of course they would be able to tell if I made a mistake; I’ve never seriously considered the possibility that some of them might actually have told me the truth.

They – including perhaps some of the readers of this blog (go have a look at the link if you’re curious) – really don’t know what they are missing out on. I framed the post title the way I did because it in my mind requires a lot more than just being able to distinguish notes to actually understand in any meaningful way at least most of the music I prefer to listen to. Learning to play (badly) has given me a much greater understanding of just how complex some music really is, how nuanced and detailed it is when you take that closer look you need to take to get to the bottom of it; and I’m well aware that ‘even someone like me’ will miss some details along the way. People much better than me do that as well.

Also, this makes it a little easier for me to understand how stuff like pop music ever got, well, popular. It has always been somewhat hard for me to explain the musical preferences of ‘the majority’ in a satisfactory way, and I’ve usually just used some implicit explanation involving ‘preferences…’ (which did not really explain much). Of course there are still a huge number of variables at play here, but it never really occured to me that part of the explanation for the diverging preferences might be that what I hear with my ears might not be what a lot of other people hear.

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

(as to the last one, I know I’ve said it before: Alkan isn’t for everyone. But if your reaction is something along the lines of: ‘Yeah, well, I mean, it’s a nice piece and all – but nothing special’ – then you should probably think about the fact that Hamelin plays this piece with only one hand. Here’s another one of those performances with image as well as sound. Here’s yet another (the second piece played))

Liszt 200 years

Technically yesterday was the day to post this, but I must admit I simply forgot. Given my background I’m bound to focus on the piano stuff but of course he did other stuff as well.

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

1.

2.

3. This is so (cute? Is that the right word to use? I guess..):

…based of course on La Campanella (which I’ve posted before here on this blog. If the above piece doesn’t sound familiar, you should really follow that link, that’s one of the pieces you ‘need to know’.).

4.

5. Here’s a bit from Czerny’s second symphony:

If you look up Czerny on youtube, there’s only a handful of videos with more than 10.000 views. I just don’t get that.

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

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Some music

It’s as if the more time I spend looking for/listening to stuff like this, the more puzzled I get and the more I want to ask the question: ‘Why didn’t anybody ever tell me about this guy (/girl)?’ Classical music is so, so, so much more than Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart (three composers I think most people know about).

Leo Ornstein‘s 4th Piano Sonata, 2. movement:

…

Here’s Emil Gilels playing the first movement of Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2:

…

Perlemuter playing Fauré’s Op. 33, No.1:

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Fauré’s Op. 37:

…

I have no idea if this one is ‘the real deal’; it might be and if so it’s beyond awesome. She died 115 years ago:

…

I have a deep admiration for Hamelin, he’s in my opinion one of the best guys out there and he’s not afraid to go outside the mainstream and play composers and pieces few others of his caliber have given the attention they deserve. This is one of those pieces, not ‘traditional classical music’ in any way:

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series

The latest project

I know I’ll likely regret it, but now I’ve bitten the bullet and we’ll see what happens:

I expect to break my neck on it, because as you’ll learn if you watch the video – or as you’ll know already, if you are familiar with the piece – some of this is very difficult stuff and I doubt I’ll be able to/want to put in the hours it’ll take to master this. Anyway, the first couple of minutes are nice and to start with I’ll just have to see how far I can go and take it from there. When I started the 1st Movement of Pathétique, I didn’t expect to finish that either, but I did, sort of, even if I never perfected it enough to ever dream of playing it at a (purely hypothetical) recital. As to this piece, finishing is secondary to improving – as it is, Pathétique did wonders for my left hand (and so did Chopin’s op.27, no.1, which I recently completed).

Current projects

1) Reading Conan Doyle:

and have started reading John Stuart Mill:

The Conan Doyle book above is the first of three volumes of The Complete Sherlock Holmes published by Wordsworth Classics, which contains all Sherlock Holmes stories ever written by Doyle arranged chronologically in order of publication. So far I’ve read A study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips and The Man With The Twisted Lip, which only amounts to 200 pages (the text size is very small and there’s a lot on each page, especially the first 120 pages which do not have any illustrations – the rest of the book do – the two first stories mentioned are actually novels, not short-stories). I read The Hound of the Baskervilles years ago (in Danish), but have otherwise never read anything by Doyle. After having read some of those short-stories, I’ve started thinking that stories like these when published were kind of the tv-series of that time, maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’d much rather be reading this stuff than be watching a randomly selected tv-show of today (keywords: randomly selected).

Haven’t read much of Mill yet, not enough to comment on it.

2)

As mentioned on the twitter, I’ve started playing this piece:

I’ve also started playing this:

I think Arrau plays it just a little too fast, but maybe that’s just me, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time finding a ‘better’ version online.

Still working on this (but I haven’t gotten far, which was why I started playing the above stuff from the Chopin prelude):

Promoting the unknown, a continuing series