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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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At this late hour all I can contribute is my thanks. My younger daughter is a violinist, and we were lucky enough to get front-row seats for a concert with Sarah Chang playing the Bruch violin concerto. Needless to say, it was a real treat.
I'm still holding out hope for my daughter and I playing either the Brahms Third Sonata or Beethovern's Kruetzer Sonata together, but she's concentrating on composition in grad school, so that hope is fading. I'm practicing the piano parts nonetheless.
Thanks again.
John
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Nice stuff. I appreciate Classical Music.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Brahms, Ein deutches Requiem Op. 45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAnUk6MxXQ0
UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and University and Alumni Chorus.
My younger daughter is playing violin, but is right behind the conductor, so she's hard to see. My older daughter is in the front row of the alto section. Needless to say, we were there.
I'd sung this a few years earlier in Fresno. It's wonderful to sing, but according to my younger daughter, somewhat boring to play.
John
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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You're a lucky man, John. I hope you get to perform with your daughter, that would be too cool.
My gf and I saw Sarah Chang a couple of years ago perform the Mendelssohn concerto. Paramedics were called into the hall to work on some poor guy. We're not sure if it was the concerto or her gown that did him in. Could have been either. She is not popular with the classical music set. They don't seem to like success for some reason.
I've watched this video a few times lately of Yuja Wang playing Scarlatti. I wasn't a Yuja fan until I saw this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9tdcr0SbwA
Nice legs, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHO4Ucw9zL4
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GnomicMaster
Mountain climber
Ventana Wilderness
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Rach's #3, finest piano composition ever put to paper. Separates the gifted from the average.
But Chopin, Brahms, Mozart, Scriabin, and even Satie are good piano stuff.
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GnomicMaster
Mountain climber
Ventana Wilderness
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Vladimir Horowitz, greatest ivory tickler to ever breathe air on Terra Firma.
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GnomicMaster
Mountain climber
Ventana Wilderness
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Got to meet Vladimir Ashkenazy and Andre Watts many years ago when they participated in a piano recital series in Carmel. Vlato is a diminutive man, shorter by inches than me and I'm 5'7", but his hands were bigger than mine, and as a pianist and piano music composer myself, I salivated in envy when I shook that little man's massive hands.
Andre Watts had long fingers and powerful hands, too, but his handshake was amazingly gentle.
Both pianists played Chopin-only programs, and their individual interpretive styles were quite distinct. Vlato came through in that typical Russian flavor, whereas Watts imbued his Chopin interpretation with a modern flavor, almost a Gershwinesque coloring.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I shoulda brought my vinyl of Shostakovich playing some of his own preludes to the Josh get-down.
Pretty sure that woulda brought the house down.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Andre Watts had long fingers and powerful hands, too, but his handshake was amazingly gentle.
I, too, got to shake the hand of Andre Watts, and I agree -- although I think both of us were being restrained because he didn't want to hurt me, and I didn't want to be the guy who ruined the career of Andre Watts!
Because I'm a keyboardist and a vocalist, my recorded music tends to gravitate toward those media. I love baroque, but the real treasures in my collection (all vinyl) cover a broader period: the Schnabel recordings of the 32 Beethoven sonatas, Wanda Landowska and Albert Schweitzer playing Bach, and Rachmaninov playing his own preludes.
John
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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I've been lucky enough to see Yefim Bronfman perform Tchaichovsky and Bartok. He's the best I've ever heard live. His encores are even better. He's good with Rachmaninoff, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_09qSKNBs
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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I shoulda brought my vinyl of Shostakovich playing some of his own preludes to the Josh get-down.
Pretty sure that woulda brought the house down.
That's one I need to hear.
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GnomicMaster
Mountain climber
Ventana Wilderness
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Yeah, Watts' hands were to be envied. I was allowed to attend the post-recital backstage gatherings because the couple who sponsored the series were friends of mine. When I walked up to Andre all I could say as I took his hands in mine -- we grabbed one another's left and right hands -- was "Thank you for keeping THE MUSIC alive."
That was quite a series. Besides Watts and Ashkenazy there was George Bolet (RIP), Nelson Friere, and John O'Conor. Doesn't get much better than that for a piano series.
It was O'Conor who informed me that it was his ancestral countryman John Field who invented the nocturne, not Chopin as a lot of people believe. Of course Chopin took that form to perfection with quantity, but it was an Irishman who invented it.
Ever have the pleasure to see/hear Rudolph Serkin (RIP) perform? I saw him mid-1980s at Davies in SF. My seats were up close so my new bride at the time and I were able to see him mouthing his fingering. His mouth moved in silence the whole time he played.
I've managed to see most of my musical icons perform live -- irrespective of genre -- but the one of all others I never got to see was Vlato Horowitz. He was generally regarded to have been the greatest pianist to have ever lived, and I don't doubt that. His infallible perfection and interpretive genius simply has no peer.
If you want to hear the finest performance of Rach's #3 try to find the recording of Horowitz with Eugene Ormandy conducting the NY Phil. You think the gods have come to earth! Genius stacked upon genius upon genius.
I own several different recordings of Rach #3 by various pianists and orchestras, and if you are in touch with the nuances of interpretation and the precision of rendering, the difference between all the other recordings and that by Vlato screams at you.
Yeah, I'm biased, just a bit.
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GnomicMaster
Mountain climber
Ventana Wilderness
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That's ironically hilarious given that Vlato was a Russian homosexual Jew!
There is a huge amount of deliberate humor in that statement you quoted. Vlato was a genius of immense magnitude so he would not have been oblivious to the implications of that statement. And in his youth he was known to be quite the flashy party animal. He was the toast of upper society and he played it well.
I believe it was Steinbeck who wrote that the more profound the intellect the more pronounced the paradoxes.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I think of the many delightful evenings I've spent in a hall the single
greatest was a recital by Ashkenazy of a program wholly devoted to Scriabin.
It was like Brubeck arranged by Bach or vice versa. OK, maybe
a little over the top, but that's kinda my take on Scriabin and I'm
stickin' to it. :-)
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