Thank you for sharing my video. I am so glad that it sparked so much passion and discussion and continues to be shared. A lot of things have been clear to us for a long while, even in the way that recordings have progressed over the years and are being made now, with the pressure of note perfection being a number one must. I am also glad that many of you are now speaking up, as such things are certainly detrimental and only perpetuated by such views and comments as expressed in the recent Rubinstein competition. However, on a hopeful note, there are those that do not conform to such things, and do their best to live out their heart’s purpose in love for the wonder of music created and share that with others - I do think life shows us (through its horrors and hurdles) that ultimately what is unreal eventually falls away, and that nothing real can be threatened. Music, art…. has always lived through, and will continue to live through the bullshit and the worlds created around it. Veronika
Thank you for your bold new approach to how things might be in the future. You will do great things for lots of young people as they strive to play the best they can but at the same time being humble and real to the musical literature left to us to guard, protect, and share with the world. Thank you, indubitably! 💯🌎🌍👍💕
Thank you both. As more of a jazz aficionado, I’d venture to say that if someone tried to cover this Nina Simone interpretation of the American Standard “Love Me or Leave Me” at twice the speed, it would not be well received. The music and the artistry would be lost. Thank you again. ua-cam.com/video/5cnZjClf6zM/v-deo.html Also, as a physiotherapist, I’m appalled by the approach to the problem of chronic overuse injuries that so much harm do to players, but specially the young. May the sanity of a more faithful approach to what composers really wanted improve both music and health.
When asked in an interview, the great Vladimir Horowitz said he was absolutely against piano competitions. The reason: they are driven by elimination rather than by excellence.
One mess up detected it's over. Even the famous Richter is known for reckless playing. It's about musical passion. Take easier pieces rather than going to competition and the retarded industry standards.
There is a fundamental problem with any sort of artistic competition and that is the lack of any sort of objective criteria for the artistic aspect. This is true not only for music competitions but also for sports events like figure skating, artistic gymnastics and dancing which have an artistic component. One only has to look at something like the Ballroom and Latin dance competitions where the dances are so far removed from the original social dances (Jive, cha cha, samba, fox trot, waltz etc. ) as to be demonstrably almost unrecognizable. To their credit they have renamed these competitions and the related styles as "DanceSport" in recognition that it is a departure from the original social dances. This enables the judges to judge somewhat more objectively in that practically every step has some predefined criteria (in a syllabus) for which the judges look (posture, connection, which part of the foot the weight is on etc). Impressive, and the top level competitors deserve to be called athletes, but nonetheless as an "art form" it is radically different from the social dances on which it is ostensibly based. Judgement by purely stylistic or artistic basis is a highly subjective thing, not conducive to what is usually considered "fair and impartial" judging. I suspect the music competitions are the same. Usually no completely reliable objective means exist of determining the composer's intent such as a recording made by the composer by which to judge a performance (if that is the actual objective rather than the competitor's individual take on the music). A presumably "note perfect" performance based on the written score, which by its very nature is imperfect, demonstrates pure technical prowess and becomes the baseline for evaluation, rather like most of the sports at the Olympics (to which DanceSport is angling for admission by the way) . The artistic aspect in these types of sport, dance and music competitions then becomes a matter of individual taste and, sadly, political and commercial considerations. Rather like suggestions made by Veronika in the video and by Mr. Winters, in terms of dance there are alternative streams for swing, Latin dance and ballroom dances which seek to preserve the dances in close to their original form as found on film from those dances' heydays. Unfortunately this stream is only really possible for music composed and recorded from the early 20th century on so there exists a huge gulf between musicians as to what earlier music should really sound like in terms of expression, tone and tempo, all theories being based exclusively on information in the written scores and associated sundry texts from the period and perhaps recordings made by musicians close to, or trained by, the composer. Reconstructions of pre-20th century dance also face the same constraints. Sort of like reconstructing an ancient language. One may be able to work out some vocabulary, grammar and syntax if there is a reference point (like the Rosetta stone) but pronunciation and speech are largely conjecture. Interesting activity though :-)
I totally agree with you. Its mainly this standard of note-perfection is put upon pianists more than other instruments. I have been a pianist my whole life. About 15 years ago I started playing the harp. It is amazing to me how people connect with the sound of the harp - no matter how simple - but are completely jaded to the sound of the piano. People expect circus tricks on the piano - they don’t care about beautiful playing. I played both instruments at an event about a couple of years after taking up the harp. On the piano I played a set of difficult pieces, but on the harp I played a couple simple tunes. The review the client gave me was she was very taken with my playing and said I was better on the harp than the piano (even though I had just started -playing the harp a couple of years earlier and played super simple tunes on the harp). She had nothing to say about the piano. The piano has gained a bad reputation because of these competitions and the common style of super percussive playing. The piano is a beautiful singing instrument - but if that is all you present, people don’t seem to hear anything impressive in that these days.
Always I got a bad vibe from these competitions and the people who run them. It in no way inspires art and it's just this very unwelcoming elitist club in general.
How about a committee whos rules are such that participates cannot win nor place if they do not produce a musical performance? Has any committee ever through of that? How long before teachers realize that they are producing note readers and keyboard players and not pianists and musicians?
You are right. People in the future will look back at our time and ask who was the best pianist. They will see the videos of them playing at light speed, but when they ask about our century music, they will find very few. Composition became a lost art among today pianists.
In a recent video Yoyo Ma said he used to think about playing a "perfect" concert. In the middle of a performance he realized everything was going "perfectly." BUT . . . he was bored out of his mind. That was when he shifted his focus on "human expression" rather than "perfection." A computer can play every note perfectly and at any speed. But who would be moved or inspired by something like this?
the irony is that even the judges themselves have never experienced hearing or playing prokofiev 3rd sonata with 100% of the notes, and definetly the lady from rubinstein competition has no idea
In Wales, we have the wonderful tradition of Eisteddfod - cultural competition of all levels, usually on St Davids Day. Throughout all my schooling, I never won it once. Always 2nd. I played with actual character lol.
There is some young musician out there who don’t follow this trend, I have some friends who are in conservatory who think similar to me. I just started playing, but my pianistic inspiration comes from: Cortot, Pogorelich, Horowitz, Rachmaninoff, Anton Rubinstein, Dinorah, Feinberg, and Scriabin. HM; Sofronitsky and Neuhaus I will hopefully try to play in a style that is a synthesis of my own ideas and their style, once I get skilled enough and start interpreting the classic pieces (Beethoven sonata, bach WTC, Chopin, scriabin, etc), I will hopefully not follow status quo in music. Because, I do not think it is real music… But, just know besides me there are others out there that are young and still appreciate the freedom in music, and not blindly following the score, but trying to follow the music. There is three aspects of piano playin: common sense/intellect, technique, and spirit. The best musicians all have common sense and technique, but the very best all have great spirit, and I think I have that, and know many others who do.
Quick side note, if I ever get good enough to do this in a tasteful way. I plan to improvise at piano competition. E.g. playing Ending to something just improvising on melody a bit into finish. I don’t know if I’d get ridiculed for it, but wouldn’t care.
The idea of perfection reminds me of jazz competitions / concerts I performed in and spectated with a full audience just staring blankly into the stage. Not how the art is supposed to be enjoyed - what's the point? If normal people in a steakhouse are more equipped to enjoy music than those supposedly devoted to it, I think the plot has been lost
We're now open in Mexico, and I have my foot in the door of several primary schools in my city. So I'll dress like Beethoven, share how pendulums and Metronomes work, and teach them WBMP! That way they can play great music and not get bamboozled by the fakers. Great work, Wim! 💯🎶👍
We have been warned about these things: Baron de Coubertin created the motto of the modern Olympics: Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Appropriate for runners and swimmers and javelin throwers, not so much for artistic endeavors. The horrible collapse of the figure skating competition at the winter olympics last month was the culmination of several decades of competition driving what was once a beautiful sport into a slug-fest. Ever-younger people driven to attempt ever-more-technical routines in front of cameras that can peer into your eyeball at 1000 frames per second. Entire routines of beauty and artistic excellence are reduced to the execution of three quadruple axles. Gladiators in the the new Colosseum! One of the top performers - just a teenager - cried in front of the camera, "I hate this sport!". What nine-year old was inspired to pursue figure-skating after witnessing that disaster? The use of Chopin and Scriabin Etudes and Prokofiev sonatas in piano competitions are like the quadruple axles in figure skating. (Un)fortunately, piano competitions don't garner such attention, but they are no different in the elevation of moments of technical wizardry over expression, beauty, insight, taste and communication. How many artist have been neutered by them? I was a concert promoter for nine years of primarily classical programs and avoided booking tours of competition winners. Such things never sat well with me. When promoters would send brochures my heart would get sad for the young investing so much time in them, and the art that was lost.
Pre-watch comment, this is maybe the main reason why I support you, the exceptionalist bull. I wouldn't be practicing daily today, and enjoying it, if I thought that the "Academia" had any authoriry over the art, over MY art.
Very recently, youtuber Rick Beato released a Sting interview. At one moment, Sting was talking about knowing a lot of amazing musicians, well versed in every style of modern western music. Yet, unlike himself, they don't write music... Sting believes that the difference is, he studies Bach every day, like Chopin did. He sees himself as a Classical Musician.
Wim you need to talk about the whole hype and industry surrounding competitions....there's huge industry investment, hype and money involved .....it's really not about the musicianship or craft ...more about technicality and perfection and marketability ......sad but true
Also, I have noticed how beautiful all female classical artists have become on the CD covers in the last 20 years? Sell sell sell! Corporate profit above art.
Isn't music meant to be fun? If your interpretation is half the speed of the convention, who cares?? If you miss couple of notes does it matter in the grand scheme?? I think it's this sort of elitist attitude that prevents more people from enjoying this beautiful form of art
3:00 I think it's possible to exaggerate what this lady means. In my opinion she's just stating the obvious that it's expected that aspiring pro pianists will get most of the notes right - surely not something anyone would argue with?! And jury members will make their own individual decisions as to how accurate a pianist was and whether the inaccuracies are significant or not.
Fast playing is often compared to race horses, but it is in the horse dressage competitions that we see a similar problem as in music. Dressage has become a soulless performance cruel to horses, because perfection in the required lessons is best reached by tight reins and spurs. But in the last years a new way of riding including competitions - called Liberty - has become a bit more popular. Here horse and rider train to perform without bridle or sattle. Will that change the mainstream? Will knowledge about tempi in music change the mainstream?
Perhaps a controversial idea (no offense): what if compositions exist independently from their composers, just as a message exists regardless of its messenger? Perhaps the works of great composers were approximations of ideas that were recognised as divine, but could only be represented through the available tools (instruments) and a notated language... An old master may hear someone today play their work, and recognise it as closer to their initial inspiration than anything they were able to execute in their lifetime.
Wim, thank to your discoveries and this channel, I finally started to learn the complete Beethoven Moonlight sonata, with 3rd movement which seemed scary before I learned about WBMP. All of a sudden I felt I could handle so many pieces I never dreamed of playing. Thank you again.
You obviously feel very strongly about this and I respect that, but I think you miss the point. The 'problem' with modern pianoplaying is not speed, it's the demands for perfection. We don't play faster than Rachmaninoff and the Beethoven sonatas are not faster today than Schnabels recordings, actually the opposite sometimes. But what you hear in old recordings are also wrong notes. So, no it has nothing to do with speed or metronome marks, it's about 'perfection' and fear of making a 'mistake' That's what she is talking about in the clip you show.
@@petertyrrell3391 Schnabel 'believed' he played the Beethoven sonatas at the right tempo. You don't think he could just have asked his teacher - who was Czernys pupil? Sorry, but that's not very convincing.
@@olofstroander7745 Perhaps you should read Czerny's descriptions of the different types of allegro? You will find that Schnabel's and others' performances do not conform to these, and to do so is certainly not possible at such fast speeds. There was an increase in speed in the early 19th C, which is well-documented. It is quite likely that any piano teacher around would have been part of this movement and influenced by it. In addition there were technical developments of instruments, which made higher speeds possible.
This is the first time I have noticed you mentioning others (from the 20th and 19th century) who have raised the issue of Whole Beat versus Double Beat (or Single Beat) metronomic interpretation. A summary or bibliography of those writings and discussions would be of interest….perhaps to others, as well as myself. Unfortunately, my time to read up on these discussions is very limited
The young female pianist ar 3:50 who was suprised to hear that EVERY note must be perfect at performance must live a very insular, naive life!! OF COURSE, every NOTE must be PERFECT! It's been that way for the last 60 years. Also, any pianist with the hope of making into the final round MUST play to the judges' expectations. Very few pianists who win first or second prize are RARELY the best pianists, musically speaking. They just follow the "rules" and give very "expected" generic performances. Pianists should KNOW this when they enter, so winning should not be the ultimate reason for competing, as the challenge, itself, is the main motivator. Look at the the list of ALL first place winners of all the world competitions and you will see that very few have a career after several years. Most sink into the background and end up giving lessons for the rest of their lives. Very sad!!
These competitions are nothing but a crap shoot . Entering is like buying a lottery ticket . Your chances of winning are extremely slim no matter how well you play .
Thank you for sharing my video.
I am so glad that it sparked so much passion and discussion and continues to be shared. A lot of things have been clear to us for a long while, even in the way that recordings have progressed over the years and are being made now, with the pressure of note perfection being a number one must.
I am also glad that many of you are now speaking up, as such things are certainly detrimental and only perpetuated by such views and comments as expressed in the recent Rubinstein competition.
However, on a hopeful note, there are those that do not conform to such things, and do their best to live out their heart’s purpose in love for the wonder of music created and share that with others - I do think life shows us (through its horrors and hurdles) that ultimately what is unreal eventually falls away, and that nothing real can be threatened. Music, art…. has always lived through, and will continue to live through the bullshit and the worlds created around it.
Veronika
Thank you for your bold new approach to how things might be in the future. You will do great things for lots of young people as they strive to play the best they can but at the same time being humble and real to the musical literature left to us to guard, protect, and share with the world. Thank you, indubitably! 💯🌎🌍👍💕
Thank you both. As more of a jazz aficionado, I’d venture to say that if someone tried to cover this Nina Simone interpretation of the American Standard “Love Me or Leave Me” at twice the speed, it would not be well received. The music and the artistry would be lost. Thank you again. ua-cam.com/video/5cnZjClf6zM/v-deo.html Also, as a physiotherapist, I’m appalled by the approach to the problem of chronic overuse injuries that so much harm do to players, but specially the young. May the sanity of a more faithful approach to what composers really wanted improve both music and health.
Thank you, Wim! We all need this!
the issue isn't just technical perfection, but on the whole the constant clambering for others' approval on the "correct" way to play music.
When asked in an interview, the great Vladimir Horowitz said he was absolutely against piano competitions. The reason: they are driven by elimination rather than by excellence.
One mess up detected it's over. Even the famous Richter is known for reckless playing. It's about musical passion. Take easier pieces rather than going to competition and the retarded industry standards.
100% agree! We, artists, need to use open channels like UA-cam to tell the truth and to discuss such an important issues.
There is a fundamental problem with any sort of artistic competition and that is the lack of any sort of objective criteria for the artistic aspect. This is true not only for music competitions but also for sports events like figure skating, artistic gymnastics and dancing which have an artistic component. One only has to look at something like the Ballroom and Latin dance competitions where the dances are so far removed from the original social dances (Jive, cha cha, samba, fox trot, waltz etc. ) as to be demonstrably almost unrecognizable. To their credit they have renamed these competitions and the related styles as "DanceSport" in recognition that it is a departure from the original social dances. This enables the judges to judge somewhat more objectively in that practically every step has some predefined criteria (in a syllabus) for which the judges look (posture, connection, which part of the foot the weight is on etc). Impressive, and the top level competitors deserve to be called athletes, but nonetheless as an "art form" it is radically different from the social dances on which it is ostensibly based. Judgement by purely stylistic or artistic basis is a highly subjective thing, not conducive to what is usually considered "fair and impartial" judging. I suspect the music competitions are the same. Usually no completely reliable objective means exist of determining the composer's intent such as a recording made by the composer by which to judge a performance (if that is the actual objective rather than the competitor's individual take on the music). A presumably "note perfect" performance based on the written score, which by its very nature is imperfect, demonstrates pure technical prowess and becomes the baseline for evaluation, rather like most of the sports at the Olympics (to which DanceSport is angling for admission by the way) . The artistic aspect in these types of sport, dance and music competitions then becomes a matter of individual taste and, sadly, political and commercial considerations. Rather like suggestions made by Veronika in the video and by Mr. Winters, in terms of dance there are alternative streams for swing, Latin dance and ballroom dances which seek to preserve the dances in close to their original form as found on film from those dances' heydays. Unfortunately this stream is only really possible for music composed and recorded from the early 20th century on so there exists a huge gulf between musicians as to what earlier music should really sound like in terms of expression, tone and tempo, all theories being based exclusively on information in the written scores and associated sundry texts from the period and perhaps recordings made by musicians close to, or trained by, the composer. Reconstructions of pre-20th century dance also face the same constraints. Sort of like reconstructing an ancient language. One may be able to work out some vocabulary, grammar and syntax if there is a reference point (like the Rosetta stone) but pronunciation and speech are largely conjecture. Interesting activity though :-)
I totally agree with you. Its mainly this standard of note-perfection is put upon pianists more than other instruments. I have been a pianist my whole life. About 15 years ago I started playing the harp. It is amazing to me how people connect with the sound of the harp - no matter how simple - but are completely jaded to the sound of the piano. People expect circus tricks on the piano - they don’t care about beautiful playing. I played both instruments at an event about a couple of years after taking up the harp. On the piano I played a set of difficult pieces, but on the harp I played a couple simple tunes. The review the client gave me was she was very taken with my playing and said I was better on the harp than the piano (even though I had just started -playing the harp a couple of years earlier and played super simple tunes on the harp). She had nothing to say about the piano. The piano has gained a bad reputation because of these competitions and the common style of super percussive playing. The piano is a beautiful singing instrument - but if that is all you present, people don’t seem to hear anything impressive in that these days.
Wow
Great vídeos and truhts…..perfectly agree with you….!!
Always I got a bad vibe from these competitions and the people who run them. It in no way inspires art and it's just this very unwelcoming elitist club in general.
How about a committee whos rules are such that participates cannot win nor place if they do not produce a musical performance? Has any committee ever through of that? How long before teachers realize that they are producing note readers and keyboard players and not pianists and musicians?
You are right. People in the future will look back at our time and ask who was the best pianist. They will see the videos of them playing at light speed, but when they ask about our century music, they will find very few. Composition became a lost art among today pianists.
I have a friend who's son came to London to study piano . The lack of musicality in his playing is unbelievable .
100%. And thanks for using the word 'whistleblower' - absolutely right.
Your channel is priceless !!!! Everyone should listen to you. The golden age pianists knew how to make music
In a recent video Yoyo Ma said he used to think about playing a "perfect" concert. In the middle of a performance he realized everything was going "perfectly." BUT . . . he was bored out of his mind. That was when he shifted his focus on "human expression" rather than "perfection." A computer can play every note perfectly and at any speed. But who would be moved or inspired by something like this?
But he plays all notes...
He's still boring.
the irony is that even the judges themselves have never experienced hearing or playing prokofiev 3rd sonata with 100% of the notes, and definetly the lady from rubinstein competition has no idea
I grew up with the great musicians of the last century. I'll stick to them and their ways of expressing music.
In Wales, we have the wonderful tradition of Eisteddfod - cultural competition of all levels, usually on St Davids Day. Throughout all my schooling, I never won it once. Always 2nd. I played with actual character lol.
There is some young musician out there who don’t follow this trend, I have some friends who are in conservatory who think similar to me.
I just started playing, but my pianistic inspiration comes from: Cortot, Pogorelich, Horowitz, Rachmaninoff, Anton Rubinstein, Dinorah, Feinberg, and Scriabin. HM; Sofronitsky and Neuhaus
I will hopefully try to play in a style that is a synthesis of my own ideas and their style, once I get skilled enough and start interpreting the classic pieces (Beethoven sonata, bach WTC, Chopin, scriabin, etc), I will hopefully not follow status quo in music. Because, I do not think it is real music…
But, just know besides me there are others out there that are young and still appreciate the freedom in music, and not blindly following the score, but trying to follow the music. There is three aspects of piano playin: common sense/intellect, technique, and spirit. The best musicians all have common sense and technique, but the very best all have great spirit, and I think I have that, and know many others who do.
Quick side note, if I ever get good enough to do this in a tasteful way. I plan to improvise at piano competition. E.g. playing Ending to something just improvising on melody a bit into finish. I don’t know if I’d get ridiculed for it, but wouldn’t care.
@@pablobear4241 Composers back then like Chopin and Liszt were great improvisers.
Ming Dong Wang
The idea of perfection reminds me of jazz competitions / concerts I performed in and spectated with a full audience just staring blankly into the stage. Not how the art is supposed to be enjoyed - what's the point? If normal people in a steakhouse are more equipped to enjoy music than those supposedly devoted to it, I think the plot has been lost
We're now open in Mexico, and I have my foot in the door of several primary schools in my city. So I'll dress like Beethoven, share how pendulums and Metronomes work, and teach them WBMP! That way they can play great music and not get bamboozled by the fakers. Great work, Wim! 💯🎶👍
Well said and proved, Wim! Thank you for uploading this, and Brava for Veronica Shoot! I'm sharing this.
We have been warned about these things: Baron de Coubertin created the motto of the modern Olympics: Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Appropriate for runners and swimmers and javelin throwers, not so much for artistic endeavors. The horrible collapse of the figure skating competition at the winter olympics last month was the culmination of several decades of competition driving what was once a beautiful sport into a slug-fest. Ever-younger people driven to attempt ever-more-technical routines in front of cameras that can peer into your eyeball at 1000 frames per second. Entire routines of beauty and artistic excellence are reduced to the execution of three quadruple axles. Gladiators in the the new Colosseum! One of the top performers - just a teenager - cried in front of the camera, "I hate this sport!". What nine-year old was inspired to pursue figure-skating after witnessing that disaster?
The use of Chopin and Scriabin Etudes and Prokofiev sonatas in piano competitions are like the quadruple axles in figure skating. (Un)fortunately, piano competitions don't garner such attention, but they are no different in the elevation of moments of technical wizardry over expression, beauty, insight, taste and communication. How many artist have been neutered by them?
I was a concert promoter for nine years of primarily classical programs and avoided booking tours of competition winners. Such things never sat well with me. When promoters would send brochures my heart would get sad for the young investing so much time in them, and the art that was lost.
It’s weird to see so many musicians being perceived as more angry than the fighters in an MMA fight 😂
I wonder how much of this elitism has anything to do with the moneyed class fucking up art and creating their own insular communities.
Correct ✅
Pre-watch comment, this is maybe the main reason why I support you, the exceptionalist bull. I wouldn't be practicing daily today, and enjoying it, if I thought that the "Academia" had any authoriry over the art, over MY art.
Keith Jarrett, the greatest pianist of the last century is a big lesson, how many metronome marks he left? None. And how many scores he left? None.
Truth! Something to ponder.
Very recently, youtuber Rick Beato released a Sting interview. At one moment, Sting was talking about knowing a lot of amazing musicians, well versed in every style of modern western music. Yet, unlike himself, they don't write music... Sting believes that the difference is, he studies Bach every day, like Chopin did. He sees himself as a Classical Musician.
@@surgeeo1406 Sting?? He's just a pop star...
@@myuncle2 Mozart?? He's just a pop star...
One of your greatest videos, thank you Wim!! 👍👍👍
Wim you need to talk about the whole hype and industry surrounding competitions....there's huge industry investment, hype and money involved .....it's really not about the musicianship or craft ...more about technicality and perfection and marketability ......sad but true
Also, I have noticed how beautiful all female classical artists have become on the CD covers in the last 20 years? Sell sell sell! Corporate profit above art.
It is the same with the Olympics. For example, girls' gymnastics.
Lol is that the Fink voice reappearing at 14:05? XD
La musica è un linguaggio universale ,ma molti sono indifferenti a comprenderla .
AuthenticSound, Veronika's name is apparently written with a 'k'. in the video title you wrote it with a 'c'.
Which piece he was playing at the beginning??
You can certainly play J S Bach at at tempo you like and it will always sound great. In fact Bach never gave instructions on tempi.
Isn't music meant to be fun? If your interpretation is half the speed of the convention, who cares?? If you miss couple of notes does it matter in the grand scheme?? I think it's this sort of elitist attitude that prevents more people from enjoying this beautiful form of art
practising 55 hours a day is impressive indeed. 6:28
😂
3:00 I think it's possible to exaggerate what this lady means. In my opinion she's just stating the obvious that it's expected that aspiring pro pianists will get most of the notes right - surely not something anyone would argue with?! And jury members will make their own individual decisions as to how accurate a pianist was and whether the inaccuracies are significant or not.
Fast playing is often compared to race horses, but it is in the horse dressage competitions that we see a similar problem as in music. Dressage has become a soulless performance cruel to horses, because perfection in the required lessons is best reached by tight reins and spurs. But in the last years a new way of riding including competitions - called Liberty - has become a bit more popular. Here horse and rider train to perform without bridle or sattle. Will that change the mainstream? Will knowledge about tempi in music change the mainstream?
Perhaps a controversial idea (no offense): what if compositions exist independently from their composers, just as a message exists regardless of its messenger? Perhaps the works of great composers were approximations of ideas that were recognised as divine, but could only be represented through the available tools (instruments) and a notated language... An old master may hear someone today play their work, and recognise it as closer to their initial inspiration than anything they were able to execute in their lifetime.
Wim, thank to your discoveries and this channel, I finally started to learn the complete Beethoven Moonlight sonata, with 3rd movement which seemed scary before I learned about WBMP. All of a sudden I felt I could handle so many pieces I never dreamed of playing. Thank you again.
You obviously feel very strongly about this and I respect that, but I think you miss the point.
The 'problem' with modern pianoplaying is not speed, it's the demands for perfection.
We don't play faster than Rachmaninoff and the Beethoven sonatas are not faster today than Schnabels recordings, actually the opposite sometimes.
But what you hear in old recordings are also wrong notes.
So, no it has nothing to do with speed or metronome marks, it's about 'perfection' and fear of making a 'mistake'
That's what she is talking about in the clip you show.
Schnabel like others at his time believed that the 18th and early 19th C music was meant to go very fast.
@@petertyrrell3391 Schnabel 'believed' he played the Beethoven sonatas at the right tempo.
You don't think he could just have asked his teacher - who was Czernys pupil?
Sorry, but that's not very convincing.
@@olofstroander7745 Perhaps you should read Czerny's descriptions of the different types of allegro? You will find that Schnabel's and others' performances do not conform to these, and to do so is certainly not possible at such fast speeds. There was an increase in speed in the early 19th C, which is well-documented. It is quite likely that any piano teacher around would have been part of this movement and influenced by it. In addition there were technical developments of instruments, which made higher speeds possible.
Thank you for that video - this is very important think to discuss and I think so many talented young people are struggling with that problem…
Very interesting!
This is the first time I have noticed you mentioning others (from the 20th and 19th century) who have raised the issue of Whole Beat versus Double Beat (or Single Beat) metronomic interpretation. A summary or bibliography of those writings and discussions would be of interest….perhaps to others, as well as myself. Unfortunately, my time to read up on these discussions is very limited
Totally agree
Truth....
great video - just shared this with a young piano student in musical conservatory in France who now hates studying music and hates her school
The young female pianist ar 3:50 who was suprised to hear that EVERY note must be perfect at performance must live a very insular, naive life!! OF COURSE, every NOTE must be PERFECT! It's been that way for the last 60 years. Also, any pianist with the hope of making into the final round MUST play to the judges' expectations. Very few pianists who win first or second prize are RARELY the best pianists, musically speaking. They just follow the "rules" and give very "expected" generic performances. Pianists should KNOW this when they enter, so winning should not be the ultimate reason for competing, as the challenge, itself, is the main motivator. Look at the the list of ALL first place winners of all the world competitions and you will see that very few have a career after several years. Most sink into the background and end up giving lessons for the rest of their lives. Very sad!!
16:49
Well said! You are inspiring
These competitions are nothing but a crap shoot . Entering is like buying a lottery ticket . Your chances of winning are extremely slim no matter how well you play .
Not being whatever, but her accent sounds most likely German. Do they have any controversial record regarding perfectionism?