Liszt: Polonaise no.2, S.223 [De Greef (Liszt pupil)]
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
- A wonderful 1927 recording by Arthur De Greef - a pupil of Franz Liszt for two years.
I very much enjoy this interpretation, I find it has a certain freeness to it - evident by the little deviations from the score - which was quite common in the time this was recorded. Allegedly, Liszt was quite picky with how this piece was to be performed and refused to hear it at his masterclasses (though he did teach it 4 times between 1884 and 1886), as it was "frequently badly played and overplayed". Though, it is frankly quite overplayed, compared to the first polonaise at least. I find it quite unfortunate no.1 didn't become the "popular one". I do wonder if Liszt would have appreciated this interpretation though, but it's near impossible to know. It was recorded 40 years after De Greef met Liszt, so his playing surely changed by then - not to say he played like his teacher to begin with... I do still think it's closer to how the composer might have played his pieces to modern recordings - even when following "The composer's intentions”. In fact, I don't think it was the composer's intention for pianists to follow "The composer's intentions" as we do now. When teaching, Liszt wanted to avoid creating copies of himself; he believed in preserving artistic individuality. He may have thought that following the score (or now even manuscript) with such precision as we do now to be un-artistic. I still do think good urtext editions are a good thing; it allows you to make your own interpretation instead of following the one of the editor. Anyway, we all wish to play like the legendary composers or even just to hear them. But do we? Well one of the reasons I uploaded this is to share this historic recording - something close to how Liszt played. But I never hear serious pianists try to replicate these. Even for composers such as Rachmaninoff with recordings of himself playing, no-one tries to replicate him. Most teachers would recommend to not try to play Rachmaninoff like Rachmaninoff; "They did things we're not allowed to do nowadays". I'm starting to think we'd be disappointed listening to the legends play, compared to what we are used to. Basically, if you dream of listening to Liszt himself; listen to this, if you don't like it, you likely won't like how Liszt played. If you do like it, we can only further imagine...
I'm immediately reminded of Cziffra playing the same piece
Full of marvelous rhythm, extra notes and especially lots of musical imagination!
Thank you for sharing and for your explanatory notes. Indeed, the question is what being faithful to the text means. What I always find when listening to old school pianists (no matter what notes they play, and irrespective of how many wrong notes they play), is that they very convincingly are able to convey the music in terms of articulation, structure and content. Wonderful, and a true source of inspiration.
a gem!❣️
thanks!
Love this Channel
It seems that he is playing with a metronome... Very "unexpected".
I don't believe that Liszt played like that at all...
Indeed this interpretation lacks the "overly-romantic" playing we usually associate with Liszt, but as I said, it is near impossible to know how Liszt himself played. I also think this piece needs to be quite rhythmically steady in places.
Why be surprised that Liszt played with a solid pulse?? He practised with a metronome constantly as a young child, and in all of his early compositions he writes metronome markings in. I doubt Liszt really had meant “just play any old shoved-about tempo”, especially when too much rubato basically destoys a Liszt work and his students play like this.
@@M.ArsenaultI think it's plenty romantic.
Regardless of how Liszt played (which is irretrievable), it's clear from the recollections of his pupils that in no way did he expect or encourage them to become mimics or copycats of his way of interpreting his own works or those of other composers. I have a feeling if we could get in a time machine and hear a wide range of mid- to late-19th century pianists, we would find greater diversity in the approach to tempo, rubato, fidelity to written text, etc. than we imagine.
3:15-5:28
what is this audio
1927 recording by Arthur De Greef - it's in the description.