Re: Chopin Etude op. 10 #2 - Comparison Listening



Perceptive, intelligent mini-essay from John. Agree with many
comments, for the little the said agreement's worth.

A couple of extra thoughts. As much as I appreciate comparative
listening, and the extraordinarily increased ease with which this can
be accomplished in the youtube era, this Chopin Etude is one of the
least musically relevant works to compare pianists in. (Not there that
would be anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.) Of course,
with Chopin even the minor trifle is interesting (the odd modulation
here and there, the somewhat cheapishly eerie chromatic waves, a
Bumble Bee without the bumble), but this really is more advanced
Clementi or avant la lettre Moszkowski than Chopin, perhaps part of
Chopin's bottom 5% music, together with the pieces written when he was
12 or 14. The value of the comparative exercise thus consists mostly
in appreciating to which extent different pianists developed
relatively rudimentary (as musical relevance is concerned) parts of
their mechanism, of the acrobatic sort, into making a purposefully
awkward writing (it almost competes with Brahms' exercises in sadism,
and in sounding less difficult than it is) sound easy.

It's the type of derivative, non-essential technical values which are
almost anti-musical, or at least extra-musical. It's more about little
muscles of the hand, about acrobatic flashes of contained nervous
energy, and finding the easy (easier) physical "angles," than about
music. The type of derivative, faux-sophisticated-for-little-reason
direction of development only occasionally suggested by Chopin, Liszt,
and Brahms, made explicit by Godowsky, and taken to almost absurdly
deconstructivist - if occasionally redeemed by an enchanting sense of
humor - dimensions, by Hamelin.

This is not to bash John's initiative, which, high-and-mighty
"Principles" apart, was fun to read/listen to. Just a thought.

To prove I'm not taking my own caveats too seriously, I'll throw in my
2c: I liked best

Margulis - unlike John, I believe what he's doing is actually harder
than playing faster and steadier - splendidly projects the extra inner
voice in the right hand [harder to do than what Cortot is admirably
doing in the LH, towards the end of the etude], and with Margulis,
Cortot, and Backhaus this music sounds at least a little more like
Music

the Cziffra - if John thinks this is not an astounding mechanism, my
standards for the concept are much lower than his -, and Cziffra is
the only one who makes me realize the "capricious" connections between
this etude and the second one in Liszt's Transcendentals, also in A
Minor, and also a "#2", coincidentally? I don't think so.

Backhaus - he pays special attention to the bass, and I like how the
touch used for the bass, almost organ-like, is completely autonomous
from the touch of the RH... Also, the fin de siècle ending "flourish,"
which could have been easily used by Friedman or Hofmann, shows how
very RELATIVE the idea of a "serious, Germanic, Objective" pianist
still was in the 1920's - 1930's.

Huangci, Berman, and Pollini have fantastic finger independence and
"ear" control, but I can hear little of interest musically there.

John, what's next? If it's 10 no. 6, I'm game.

regards,
SG
.

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