This is by far your best video, side-splitting. I can’t believe the hairsplitting editing you did …kudos, but do me a favor throw away that horrid green stained T-shirt that color comes with a jail sentence. it is against the law to wear that color in public Ew. Now, if you would only spend as much time at the keyboard, as you do, doodling with your videos …aw, good luck at your concert break a leg!
Professional pianists hit wrong notes. It's okay to hit wrong notes. What matters is how you respond to that. Thank you for talking openly about that. I feel a sense of relief.
I LOVE your channel. For an aging physician who formerly studied piano at the DMA level at a distinguished US conservatory, who has so little opportunity to even maintain my playing ability and repertoire, let alone advance either, your posts are such a lifeline to me both musically and pianistically. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and may success follow you wherever you go! Your ANALYSIS was excellent and is the key to correct performance in my opinion.
@@ysf-d9i well those that can do have the skill. In my journey I noticed my anxiety comes from a lack of skill/too little exposure to success. For every failure you need about 3 wins.
I had a chance to watch Mikhail Pletnev rehearse this concerto last year in Jūrmala. He would repeat this passage again and again and again during the breaks, and I remember thinking "wow this is so weird, why would he be so obsessed with these few notes". Makes so much more sense now 😂
This video was a lot of fun--more of this kind of content, please. Experienced pianists thoroughly enjoy comparative analysis of the "greats" and learn much from it.
I have played this concerto several times and never messed up this passage - but I am impressed by your ability to play the trill so fast with the 3th and 5th fingers haha
The last movement of Schumann's piano concerto would also be a suitable case for treatment, lots of memory lapses have occurred there, including Adelina de Lara, who fled from the stage in tears in a performance with Landon Ronald, when she messed up the repeat of the third subject. It probably didn't help that the day before in rehearsal the conductor told her that the last three times he had conducted the Schumann concerto, the pianist's memory has failed during the performance. Also the film "Madam Sousatzka" (where Shirley Maclaine plays an eccentric piano teacher) features a scene where her pupil has a memory lapse in the third movement.
Great subject. Yes, I have heard pianists screw this section. It’s so easy to switch train tracks between the 2 occurrences. I got it right when I played the concerto a couple of weeks ago, but I fluffed the 5th chord of the opening, which was a bit of a surprise. I went into a short holding pattern and nobody noticed! My head was still in the previous piece where I was faking harp on keyboard.
Most people are completely oblivious to mistakes because the level of complexity in a piece like this is outside the scope of their comprehension. I am an amateur pianist and when I play Brahms' Hungarian Dance no.1 on a public piano I occasionally hit the wrong octaved bass or make mistakes in chords in all those large leaps over the keyboard which sound dissonant even to an untrained ear but people genuinely think I am a concert pianist. Because I play the piece in roughly the right tempo and with roughly the right phrasing and dynamics while playing through any mistakes. The bar is really that low and I am not at all surprised that even pros benefit from it.
Also, it is a very contemplative moment in which it is easy to get lost in the beauty of the sound. Keeping a warm heart and a cold mind is not so easy sometimes. Loved the video, BTW.
I can relate. I'm trying to get through Czerny Opus 599, No 2. I hesitated between describing the feeling of failure and getting the passage wrong as either vertigo, constipation or diaper rash. I usually just belch and carry on. The only one that noticed a mistake is my teacher, and the neighbour's dog.
Dude, spot on as usual 👏 I also think that when the passage returns in Gb the fact it's not an exact transposition can confuse an already-overtaxed memory at this point in the piece...good luck with it!!
very entertaining and very valuable: what tonebase is pointing to at the end is the usefulness of a knowledge of functional harmony in the secure memorization of tonal music--and functional harmony is the easiest part of music theory for a pianist to master: we can see it on the keys, we get to hear it in chords modulating, and we get to make it part of the train of thought as we play and tend to finger technique
I think it's a little different. I don't hear pianists botch that theme, probably because it's not sequencing - it more or less stays put. And the chromatic moments are very distinct and harder to forget.
I would doubt it, because it's a pretty distinctive (and famous) melody that's easy to sing back. It's also the opening, and people definitely practice openings.
Great video and logical explanations. Regarding memorizing fingering, Georg Solti commented on this problem on his autobiography. I read it years ago, but I think he relates that when he was in exile in Switzerland during World War II, before becoming a conductor he aspired to a career as concert pianist. And during a performance he made some mistakes which he put down to muscular memory rather than actually memorizing the score and the harmonic development.
So awesome!😎 This channel is awesome!😎 Rach is awesome! (However I wish there were more vids on the 4th concerto, my favorite of his concertos.)😎 Ben is awesome!😎 Ohlsson Is awesome!😎 And all the people on here are awesome! 😎 Thank you!
I’d love to see an analysis of the eight repetitions of the main theme of the slow movement from Mozart C minor Concerto, K 491. Each time has a different rhythmic/melodic variation and drove me to insanity. Mozart played with the score and improvised in any case. Brendel does his own thing each time, and I think that’s totally in the spirit of the style. Make it up as you go along. To play exactly as the score says each time is enough to put you in an asylum. The same goes for the various repetitions of the Promenade in Pictures at an Exhibition. I had to write out the differences in words to be able to retain it. Anyone else relate to that? This video uses exactly the correct way to solve this issue- analytic approach is the only dependable way to approach it. My ears aren’t good enough to depend on for this. I have to know each note and how it fits in the chord. Visual memory also helps me.
The way I recognized my school’s hall in your first example 😅. The first pianist is my classmate and I was able to be at this performance, she’s an amazing pianist!
I played Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no 2 a couple weeks ago on cello during our community orchestra concert! The cello part is very difficult as well, but I love listening to the piano part in this piece, and it was my first concert I’ve ever played on cello! Definitely will never forget playing this piece, it is so magical and difficult!
The cello warms my skin and bumps my heart on this piece .... this concerto for me is not just the piano ... is a dialogue between the strings .... the piano ... the cello .. the bass its pure love :)
I never forgot it or had a problem remembering it because every time I play it or practice it, I would sing it in my head using solfege (fixed do) like I do with all melodies: do si do, si la si, la sol la etc. I was not taught music using the ABCDEFG system and I think that only benefited me. I think every pianist at one point should try memorizing the melodic line by singing it in their head every time they practice it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to play that melody without singing every note in your head. Works like a charm! ❤
Things like this happen as one gets older (I speak here from personal experience). Its one reason why many pianists of a certain age will use sheet music in public performance.
Playing note-perfect is overrated. The greatest recording artist of all time, Alfred Cortot, made mistakes in every recording but they're musically brilliant. Spontaneity = more important than note-perfection. Same for his contemporary, Mark Hambourg. And virtually every pianist from their generation. Striving for note-perfection has robbed the world of many brilliant performances: almost no one dares to take on the Henselt piano concerto, which is purely because almost no one is capable of playing it without making mistakes, hence only super virtuosos like Michael Ponti, Raymond Lewenthal and Marc-André Hamelin have or had it in their repertoire. It was part and parcel of the standard repertoire until the dawn of recording technology ensured that any performer would be unmasked making mistakes or simplifying passages. A wonderful piece of music was lost to obscurity in the process and all we have are a few recordings. If pianists all had the mindset of Cortot they'd just play such a work, knowing that a few wrong notes here and there are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The standard repertoire would be a lot bigger and the music world would greatly benefit from this. I don't want to hear 25 recordings of the Rach 3 for example. I'd much rather hear 25 recordings from a dozen piano concertos from not only Rachmaninoff but also Henselt, Scharwenka, Litolff and the Rubinstein brothers to choose from and only occasionally hear several renditions of the same piece. Even if some of them have mistakes in them. It's interesting to see that people care at all. I have heard several of these performances and it never even occurred to me to go and look for imperfect rendition of specific parts of the score because I just don't care. What matters is the grand scheme of things, not details. Doesn't make this video any less interesting though because we can still take valuable information from analysing something trivial.
I agree. The record companies who splice together perfect Frankenstein performances make audiences expect it in live performances. But other than the rare 'live' recordings, recordings are all most people have. 😢
Spontaneity is not _always_ better than playing what they guy wrote, dear. It depends on the taste and ability of the performer. And a mistake is just a mistake, even if it is an improvement.
@@RaineStudioI think the main point they were trying to make was that if your only concern is with perfection then you run into issues of performers not even trying pieces because they are afraid of failure. That it is better to be spontaneous and roll with the "mistakes" then to just refuse to play a piece because somebody might come along and say you missed the Xth note in the Yth measure of the Zth movement We are human, we make mistakes. Beethoven didn't write the moonlight sonata with the expectation that every performer would play the exact same way every time. Every composer has always understood that there will be variability in performance (either intentional or otherwise). So think of the mistakes as adding to the long narrative of the music to its listeners, rather than as something that needs to be pointed to and shamed over.
I love the hypnotic interpretation discussed. My understanding is that Rachmaninoff composed this piece after receiving treatment from Dr. Dull, who used hypnosis. Tonebase is a fantastic resource.😄
When it comes down to triples, it might help to accentuate always the first note of the triplet, so you know always exactly where you are - and the listener also does.
My only strategy for passages like that is playing it always with the exact same fingering and getting it into the finger memory until I don't have to think about it anymore.
I'll never forget a recital I heard in the 1970's performed on a new 3-manual German-built pipe organ in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The guest organist was performing the entire recital from memory. During one piece, he suddenly stopped due to a complete memory block. He tried to backtrack a little but couldn't get past that point. The church's resident organist took him out of the balcony and talked him out of just ending the recital by encouraging him to finish the recital using the sheet music. He knew that if the recitalist didn't do this, he might never be able to bring himself to play another recital. Thankfully, the recital continued, including that particular piece.
Organists don't typically perform recitals from memory unless they are virtuosos or participating in a competition or exam for which it is required. This is because a pipe organ is unlike all other instruments. Each pipe organ is a unique instrument because of differences in the number of keyboards (anywhere from 1 to 6 keyboards, plus - usually - the pedalboard). The organ may have anywhere from 61 pipes to thousands of pipes, which may be situated directly in close proximity to the organ console or scattered throughout the entire church or concert hall at great distances from the organ console, so much so that there's a delay between the time the organist presses a key until that pipe or set of pipes is heard. To control those pipes, the organ console may have anywhere from a few control mechanisms to hundreds of them. Since no two pipe organs are identical, the recitalist must learn where everything is located plus what pipes are most suitable for each piece of music to be performed everytime they perform in a different location, usually within the span of a few days if they're on a tour. There's also the reverberation of the room that must be comsidered. So, in short, the pipe organ can be an extremely complex instrument, and therefore most organists simply don't perform recitals from memory. And to make an already complex situation even more complex, the organist plays with both feet as well as both hands.
Amazingly fun video! Yet another approach to "solve" memorization issues is to use tools such as grouping, in and out, alignment, and more using the Taubman Approach that I'm studying. It's more about the movement of the body (and some neuroscience) than music theory. I'd like to try this section. I'm impressed how the college student did!
Confession: I sometimes just REWRITE those irregularities into more regular and memorizable versions. For example in his Sonata no.2, 1st mvt when the 2nd theme comes back in Gb maj near the end of the piece, it is not a literal transposition of its previous instance in Db maj, for no apparent musical benefit. So I just say screw this, I'm playing it as a literal transposition. The composer is not the one who's gonna look like a fool on stage, I am! So I'd rather look like a fool this way than by completely fumbling the passage!
I had an experience with translating short, highly simplified subtitle texts for a documentary that kept inexpicably filling with typos whereas pages of more complex text full of subclauses and difficulties between the languages' phraseology were all correct - and then met someone a few years later who had exactly the same issue with translating the tiny texts about the paintings in an Art museum. We didn't come up with any explanation
some passages are so easy for a rach concerto, that you dont practice them as much, almost ever actually then panic, because playing slow + lack of practice of said passage = disaster
Such a great video for us pianists! First, it is teassuring to see the best level pianists screw up! Makes us schlubs feel better. Second, I loved watching the different fingerings on thos nadty, exposed trills! Your 3-5 is very impressive, 2-4 works better for me, buy even the 135-2-35 works! Thank God. Lastly, Garrick Ohlsen is such a real charmer! Totally loveable! ps I played #1 and 3, but never 2. Too tricky! Even Rubindtein fakes the last movement! 🤣
Really interesting video.... Just as a side note, I've heard that some pianist miss out a note or two in the 1st movement chords because they are so hard to play without resorting to splitting or rolling the chords. I find it impossible to play the 2nd and 8th bar chords without breaking them. Thanks for a really absorbing episode. Cheers Ian. Leicester UK.
Rachmaninoff breaks up the chords even though he didn't have to. But there's a trick to the 2nd and 8th chords. Play the C-Db half step in the right hand with the the thumb playing both notes. It's surprisingly comfortable and reliable, and more manageable for most hands.
Number five: these concertos require incredible concentration to play. Here’s the one passage that says you can relax and catch your breath for a moment and drop your concentration.-Toby
As a fellow Rach 2 player, the hardest but easiest section for me are clearly the two piano buildups to the climaxes in the development of the 2nd Movement. Very hard to remember.
I wonder if muscle memory has somethijg to do with it too. By the time one masters this kind of piece every strong and fast passage has been trained do exertion and is completely written in the pianist brain's synapses, to the core of his arm, pukse and finger nerves. But a mellow, soft passage in the modsft of such a complex piece might not have had the same attention as the rest.
Ps. : quite a clever save from the "younger" undosclosed pianost. Nerves of steel, I've heard the concerto a lot of times, live and recordings and i thik i wouldnt notice it.
That reminds me of a finalist at the Leeds piano competition some time in the 90´s who was playing Rach Paganini variations very beautifully. When he got to the very famous variation (18th I think) he had a really serious memory slip. He´d probably hopped over it during his practising a few times thinking "Oh I know that one."
it's so interesting how professional pianists think; they seem to memorize "groups", or I guess the musical term would be phrases and think about the harmony and music theory behind it... so when they make a mistake, its on the whole phrase where as for amateurs, we just fumble and "misclick" because we are memorizing individual notes, not seeing it as a cohesive block and thinking about why those particular notes are chosen
Yes indeed!! As I think you've now realized, the amateur way just doesn't work at all. It suddenly breaks, leaving you falling from 40000 ft. I only became able to perform entire works from memory after getting to know some great concert pianists, and understanding how they work.
@@JSB2500 Well, I was able to get to RCME grade 10 in Canada so it works to some level... but I could never understand how people can just improvise on the spot or sight-read so well or re-create the sheet music for anime music and such just by listening to it.
@@ysf-d9i I understand. By "works" I meant "works safely" in the sense that one's career would not be wrecked if it went wrong. With an exam you can retake it if it goes wrong from a memory block or whatever (I'm not suggesting you did do that). The brain works best by recreating, not by literal recall, so the concert pianist in a sense becomes the composer and improvises a piece that just happens to be identical to the one that Bach or Rachmaninoff etc composed. If they can't get it exactly right, they can come very close. None of the pianists threw in a G#! (AFAIK). That's what I do, anyway. I've used this method to memorize (internalize) many Bach organ Prelude and Fugues (see my channel). I'm currently memorizing Rach 2, which is why I'm here. This discovery changed my life - greatly for the better! All the best.
I don't know if anyone already said this but this gets even worse knowing that there was a printing error in the Pavel Lamm score. The first arpeggio had an e-flat followed by a d-sharp in the score, which is the same tone. Maybe this was what Rachmaninoff himself might have tripped over.
I've played the Rach 2 in concert at least eight-times. I can't remember ever playing every-single-note correctly. Vladimir Horowitz, appearing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in 1975, missed one entire bar in the third movement. He laughed as he corrected himself and drove-on to the finish of the movement. The crowd gave Horowitz his usual standing ovation. On our way to the car, my wife asked me, "did you catch Horowitz's mistake in the first movement?"
I think the reason this passage is fumbled so often is because, since pianists have heard the piece so many times and the melody is fairly simple, it's really easy to slip into playing by ear instead of playing from memory. They probably didn't spend much time practicing it, so they don't have strong muscle memory to fall back to. No muscle memory + playing half by ear, half from memory = high probability of making a mistake.
It strikes me that what goes wrong (where it is actually *wrong*, rather than a finger slip) is that many pianists seem to switch off their attention, while playing. This is not all bad, of course, because it is the autopilot, neurologically, that is actually doing most of the playing. If you have bothered to learn it, why interfere? But where there isn't anything much for the cerebellum to do, conscious playing has to take over. And if the music has been playing itself, this is when disasters are likely to happen, as consciousness will arrive late on the scene. This is why Sokolov is so exemplary here, because he is so obviously attending to the music, consciously, with focus on the melodic outline of each phrase (not just the triplets) and to the harmonic architecture.
Yes, one of the big breakthroughs in any pianist's development is learning to perceive who phrases as a unit, the way we do when we read/think in sentences (nobody reads letter-by-letter in their native language). But professional pianists still struggle with memorizing such groups of notes according to their inner logic and there's still plenty of rote memorization and dependence on muscle memory.
It isnt a "fumble" if the pianist manages to recover and make it sounds emotionally and harmonically fitting. rachmaninoff himself was known for improvising and changing the score a lot in his playing just. listen to recordings of him on youtube. in general a section which is less dense in notes used to mean the preformer himself was expected to improvise and expand on (mostly baroque music). i think it is beautiful that not every performance of this passage is note perfect, it makes it much more human this way, human error leads to musical variety in the context this simpler musical line.
It is interesting. I cant say for sure this is what happened to everyone, but if it was me I'd be using the comparatively simple section as a brain-breather moment where you just go on autopilot and think about whats next more than whats going on, and then that leads to more mistakes deapite being objectively easier.
What a terrific video. Not petty at all, but a real exploration of just how come the errors made by so many towering performers happen over not just the same small stretch, but frequently at exactly the same note! The suggestion at the end (no pun intended) is a beautiful explanation. I want it to be true. I wonder - has every pianist, amateur or professional, at least once as a kid or adult, tried playing a few notes with their nose? I have, and it's not a very good method. Myth (?) has Mozart doing it. But Gould? Schiff? Argerich? Ravel? You lot?
At my graduation concert, I played the middle note (G) of the final chord of Schumann's Toccata with my nose. However, it's true that when that note isn't played there, no one notices it because it still sounds anyway.
I can’t even play the first friggin measure because my hands are too small. 😂 However, I’ve managed to play the first few measures by rolling, if not leaving out the more than octave chords in one hand. I used to be a viola/violin double, but now morphed into a viola/bass double.
I have listened to this concerto since I was a teenager and I though the triplets were all in the same key and were just one repeated three times! This means I don’t have perfect pitch for sure. Anyway Rachmaninov playing his own concerto sounded beautiful to me mistakes and all.
This is by far your best video, side-splitting. I can’t believe the hairsplitting editing you did …kudos, but do me a favor throw away that horrid green stained T-shirt that color comes with a jail sentence. it is against the law to wear that color in public Ew.
Now, if you would only spend as much time at the keyboard, as you do, doodling with your videos …aw, good luck at your concert break a leg!
Thank you. The stains are meant to symbolize the wrong notes that "stain" the passage in question.
Supposedly Beethoven said that to make a mistake is unimportant but to play without passion is unforgivable.
oh my god i laughed so hard agahaha
Amazing detail. Such keen sense of hearing. Congrats!
We all can learn a lesson on revenge from tonebase pinning this comment
Professional pianists hit wrong notes. It's okay to hit wrong notes. What matters is how you respond to that. Thank you for talking openly about that. I feel a sense of relief.
It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, it does matter if you don't keep going on with the performance. ❤
I am really impressed with how people stitch together their mistakes with something very believable. They just keep going and make it up.
This video reminded of what my piano teacher taught me years ago which was "don't bumble around trying to fix mistakes, act all natural and move on".
I LOVE your channel. For an aging physician who formerly studied piano at the DMA level at a distinguished US conservatory, who has so little opportunity to even maintain my playing ability and repertoire, let alone advance either, your posts are such a lifeline to me both musically and pianistically. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and may success follow you wherever you go!
Your ANALYSIS was excellent and is the key to correct performance in my opinion.
Maybe you will be inspired by another retired physician ua-cam.com/video/ScofggiB3lM/v-deo.html
As someone with anxiety issues, this video made it sky rocket! My deepest admiration to those who pull through playing live
now you just need to book a performance of rach 2 at carnegie hall
@@ysf-d9i well those that can do have the skill. In my journey I noticed my anxiety comes from a lack of skill/too little exposure to success. For every failure you need about 3 wins.
I had a chance to watch Mikhail Pletnev rehearse this concerto last year in Jūrmala. He would repeat this passage again and again and again during the breaks, and I remember thinking "wow this is so weird, why would he be so obsessed with these few notes". Makes so much more sense now 😂
This video was a lot of fun--more of this kind of content, please. Experienced pianists thoroughly enjoy comparative analysis of the "greats" and learn much from it.
I have played this concerto several times and never messed up this passage - but I am impressed by your ability to play the trill so fast with the 3th and 5th fingers haha
16:38 Love the connection with hypnosis, since this concerto was dedicated to Rachmaninoff’s psychiatrist who hypnotized him
This is why I'm a jazz musician, there are no wrong notes as long as you play with confidence lol
in jazz you're always right until someone tells you you're wrong
@@hawkvandelayjust say Nuh uh and then you’re right again
repetition legitemizes.
Wrong notes or more spice? Who knows
No wrong notes in jazz... Just opportunities
Man... I had a memory lapse in this precise place while performing this live... I never realized it was such a common phenomenon :D
The last movement of Schumann's piano concerto would also be a suitable case for treatment, lots of memory lapses have occurred there, including Adelina de Lara, who fled from the stage in tears in a performance with Landon Ronald, when she messed up the repeat of the third subject. It probably didn't help that the day before in rehearsal the conductor told her that the last three times he had conducted the Schumann concerto, the pianist's memory has failed during the performance. Also the film "Madam Sousatzka" (where Shirley Maclaine plays an eccentric piano teacher) features a scene where her pupil has a memory lapse in the third movement.
what a thoughtless conductor
4:08 Sokolov
5:20
5:58 Gavrilov
7:01
7:12
7:25
7:37 Melnikov
7:47 Bunin
8:00 Howard
8:10 Zimerman
8:19 Kissin
9:03 Kocsis
9:17 Ohlsson
11:23 Rachmaninoff
Great subject. Yes, I have heard pianists screw this section. It’s so easy to switch train tracks between the 2 occurrences. I got it right when I played the concerto a couple of weeks ago, but I fluffed the 5th chord of the opening, which was a bit of a surprise. I went into a short holding pattern and nobody noticed! My head was still in the previous piece where I was faking harp on keyboard.
Most people are completely oblivious to mistakes because the level of complexity in a piece like this is outside the scope of their comprehension. I am an amateur pianist and when I play Brahms' Hungarian Dance no.1 on a public piano I occasionally hit the wrong octaved bass or make mistakes in chords in all those large leaps over the keyboard which sound dissonant even to an untrained ear but people genuinely think I am a concert pianist. Because I play the piece in roughly the right tempo and with roughly the right phrasing and dynamics while playing through any mistakes.
The bar is really that low and I am not at all surprised that even pros benefit from it.
train tracks
Also, it is a very contemplative moment in which it is easy to get lost in the beauty of the sound. Keeping a warm heart and a cold mind is not so easy sometimes. Loved the video, BTW.
I can relate. I'm trying to get through Czerny Opus 599, No 2. I hesitated between describing the feeling of failure and getting the passage wrong as either vertigo, constipation or diaper rash.
I usually just belch and carry on. The only one that noticed a mistake is my teacher, and the neighbour's dog.
Your hairsplitting is entertaining! Thank you! I love all the erroneous versions that don't sound wrong at all!
Very informative and interesting video! Good luck on Rach. 2, we believe in you 🥰
babe wake up new tonebase video dropped
Ok
Ugh 🙄 so lame
Holy hell
They always sleeping, eh?
Dude, spot on as usual 👏 I also think that when the passage returns in Gb the fact it's not an exact transposition can confuse an already-overtaxed memory at this point in the piece...good luck with it!!
Mega-kudos to Ohlsson for discussing his mistakes in public. My admiration for that man is still soaring.
I love how I don't even play piano but I'm always fascinated by discussions like these.
Coming from a jazz improvisational perspective, my favorite sounding "error" is Garrick Ohlsson´s :).
very entertaining and very valuable: what tonebase is pointing to at the end is the usefulness of a knowledge of functional harmony in the secure memorization of tonal music--and functional harmony is the easiest part of music theory for a pianist to master: we can see it on the keys, we get to hear it in chords modulating, and we get to make it part of the train of thought as we play and tend to finger technique
Fascinating. I wonder if the opening of Rach 3, also a baby-simple passage, ever creates similar problems.
I think it's a little different. I don't hear pianists botch that theme, probably because it's not sequencing - it more or less stays put. And the chromatic moments are very distinct and harder to forget.
I would doubt it, because it's a pretty distinctive (and famous) melody that's easy to sing back. It's also the opening, and people definitely practice openings.
The opening of Rach 3 is NOT easy
@@pineapple7024 It´s easier than the opening to the second and third movements!
i really really enjoyed listening to Ushida Tomoharu's playing of the concerto 2 during the 10th Annual hamamatsu tournament he played very nicely
Great video and logical explanations. Regarding memorizing fingering, Georg Solti commented on this problem on his autobiography. I read it years ago, but I think he relates that when he was in exile in Switzerland during World War II, before becoming a conductor he aspired to a career as concert pianist. And during a performance he made some mistakes which he put down to muscular memory rather than actually memorizing the score and the harmonic development.
Absolutely. Muscle memory without musical understanding is playing with fire.
So awesome!😎
This channel is awesome!😎
Rach is awesome! (However I wish there were more vids on the 4th concerto, my favorite of his concertos.)😎
Ben is awesome!😎
Ohlsson Is awesome!😎
And all the people on here are awesome! 😎
Thank you!
If my memory serves me well, Cortot also botched the passage and played instead of the E-flat a Chopin Prelude by mistake…alas
underrated comment
The first bars of his 3rd piano concerto's first movement are utterly easy as well ! Hiding the upcoming nightmare...
the editing is sublime
The number of notes in only one of Rachmaninoff's piano concertos is larger than the number of atoms in the visible universe.
☺
I’d love to see an analysis of the eight repetitions of the main theme of the slow movement from Mozart C minor Concerto, K 491. Each time has a different rhythmic/melodic variation and drove me to insanity. Mozart played with the score and improvised in any case. Brendel does his own thing each time, and I think that’s totally in the spirit of the style. Make it up as you go along. To play exactly as the score says each time is enough to put you in an asylum. The same goes for the various repetitions of the Promenade in Pictures at an Exhibition. I had to write out the differences in words to be able to retain it. Anyone else relate to that? This video uses exactly the correct way to solve this issue- analytic approach is the only dependable way to approach it. My ears aren’t good enough to depend on for this. I have to know each note and how it fits in the chord. Visual memory also helps me.
The way I recognized my school’s hall in your first example 😅. The first pianist is my classmate and I was able to be at this performance, she’s an amazing pianist!
I played Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no 2 a couple weeks ago on cello during our community orchestra concert! The cello part is very difficult as well, but I love listening to the piano part in this piece, and it was my first concert I’ve ever played on cello! Definitely will never forget playing this piece, it is so magical and difficult!
The cello warms my skin and bumps my heart on this piece .... this concerto for me is not just the piano ... is a dialogue between the strings .... the piano ... the cello .. the bass its pure love :)
I have never seen a music video so humorous and still educating. Victor Borge meets Leonard Bernstein!
I loved this vídeo, as tonebase channel, very nice aspects treated with humour and excellent analysis👏👏👏I hope your rendition can be fine!❤
Ironically, I’ve never had issues here but now I might because I’ll overthink it….
Same
Yes!it’s never crossed my mind. But now…
What a niche and fantastic video.
Don't. Keep your way 😂
I never forgot it or had a problem remembering it because every time I play it or practice it, I would sing it in my head using solfege (fixed do) like I do with all melodies: do si do, si la si, la sol la etc.
I was not taught music using the ABCDEFG system and I think that only benefited me.
I think every pianist at one point should try memorizing the melodic line by singing it in their head every time they practice it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to play that melody without singing every note in your head. Works like a charm! ❤
I agree completely. When you've solfeged your way through a piece, it's hard to forget.
Things like this happen as one gets older (I speak here from personal experience). Its one reason why many pianists of a certain age will use sheet music in public performance.
I´m 68 now and my finger memory has deteriorated a LOT!
Playing note-perfect is overrated. The greatest recording artist of all time, Alfred Cortot, made mistakes in every recording but they're musically brilliant. Spontaneity = more important than note-perfection. Same for his contemporary, Mark Hambourg. And virtually every pianist from their generation. Striving for note-perfection has robbed the world of many brilliant performances: almost no one dares to take on the Henselt piano concerto, which is purely because almost no one is capable of playing it without making mistakes, hence only super virtuosos like Michael Ponti, Raymond Lewenthal and Marc-André Hamelin have or had it in their repertoire. It was part and parcel of the standard repertoire until the dawn of recording technology ensured that any performer would be unmasked making mistakes or simplifying passages. A wonderful piece of music was lost to obscurity in the process and all we have are a few recordings.
If pianists all had the mindset of Cortot they'd just play such a work, knowing that a few wrong notes here and there are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The standard repertoire would be a lot bigger and the music world would greatly benefit from this. I don't want to hear 25 recordings of the Rach 3 for example. I'd much rather hear 25 recordings from a dozen piano concertos from not only Rachmaninoff but also Henselt, Scharwenka, Litolff and the Rubinstein brothers to choose from and only occasionally hear several renditions of the same piece. Even if some of them have mistakes in them.
It's interesting to see that people care at all. I have heard several of these performances and it never even occurred to me to go and look for imperfect rendition of specific parts of the score because I just don't care. What matters is the grand scheme of things, not details. Doesn't make this video any less interesting though because we can still take valuable information from analysing something trivial.
I agree. The record companies who splice together perfect Frankenstein performances make audiences expect it in live performances. But other than the rare 'live' recordings, recordings are all most people have. 😢
If it sounds good, it's right
Throwing notes under the piano by no means destroy the performance if you make the music convincing and meaningful.
Spontaneity is not _always_ better than playing what they guy wrote, dear. It depends on the taste and ability of the performer. And a mistake is just a mistake, even if it is an improvement.
@@RaineStudioI think the main point they were trying to make was that if your only concern is with perfection then you run into issues of performers not even trying pieces because they are afraid of failure. That it is better to be spontaneous and roll with the "mistakes" then to just refuse to play a piece because somebody might come along and say you missed the Xth note in the Yth measure of the Zth movement
We are human, we make mistakes. Beethoven didn't write the moonlight sonata with the expectation that every performer would play the exact same way every time. Every composer has always understood that there will be variability in performance (either intentional or otherwise). So think of the mistakes as adding to the long narrative of the music to its listeners, rather than as something that needs to be pointed to and shamed over.
hope this blows up!!! i loved it and it really deserves more attention
Love it, more Rach content please
Fantastic video. Very interesting. Thank you
I love the hypnotic interpretation discussed. My understanding is that Rachmaninoff composed this piece after receiving treatment from Dr. Dull, who used hypnosis. Tonebase is a fantastic resource.😄
When it comes down to triples, it might help to accentuate always the first note of the triplet, so you know always exactly where you are - and the listener also does.
My only strategy for passages like that is playing it always with the exact same fingering and getting it into the finger memory until I don't have to think about it anymore.
I'll never forget a recital I heard in the 1970's performed on a new 3-manual German-built pipe organ in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The guest organist was performing the entire recital from memory. During one piece, he suddenly stopped due to a complete memory block. He tried to backtrack a little but couldn't get past that point. The church's resident organist took him out of the balcony and talked him out of just ending the recital by encouraging him to finish the recital using the sheet music. He knew that if the recitalist didn't do this, he might never be able to bring himself to play another recital. Thankfully, the recital continued, including that particular piece.
Organists don't typically perform recitals from memory unless they are virtuosos or participating in a competition or exam for which it is required. This is because a pipe organ is unlike all other instruments. Each pipe organ is a unique instrument because of differences in the number of keyboards (anywhere from 1 to 6 keyboards, plus - usually - the pedalboard). The organ may have anywhere from 61 pipes to thousands of pipes, which may be situated directly in close proximity to the organ console or scattered throughout the entire church or concert hall at great distances from the organ console, so much so that there's a delay between the time the organist presses a key until that pipe or set of pipes is heard. To control those pipes, the organ console may have anywhere from a few control mechanisms to hundreds of them. Since no two pipe organs are identical, the recitalist must learn where everything is located plus what pipes are most suitable for each piece of music to be performed everytime they perform in a different location, usually within the span of a few days if they're on a tour. There's also the reverberation of the room that must be comsidered. So, in short, the pipe organ can be an extremely complex instrument, and therefore most organists simply don't perform recitals from memory. And to make an already complex situation even more complex, the organist plays with both feet as well as both hands.
This is just the type of thing that we pianists obsess over. 😊. Gotta go practice now.
Actually the vertigo feeling happened to me while playing the first movement of one of Bach's Tiro Sonatas for organ.
amazing video! Super entertaining and informative. Thanks!
We'll see you in January for this, Mr Ohlsson! 😉
What a little gem!!!
The inserts of movie are so fun! Thank you
That's a great point right there at the end "it's a beautiful metaphor, it doesn't matter if its true." It just works
Amazingly fun video! Yet another approach to "solve" memorization issues is to use tools such as grouping, in and out, alignment, and more using the Taubman Approach that I'm studying. It's more about the movement of the body (and some neuroscience) than music theory. I'd like to try this section. I'm impressed how the college student did!
Like so many of your videos... interesting, entertaining and refreshingly unexpected.
Confession: I sometimes just REWRITE those irregularities into more regular and memorizable versions. For example in his Sonata no.2, 1st mvt when the 2nd theme comes back in Gb maj near the end of the piece, it is not a literal transposition of its previous instance in Db maj, for no apparent musical benefit. So I just say screw this, I'm playing it as a literal transposition. The composer is not the one who's gonna look like a fool on stage, I am! So I'd rather look like a fool this way than by completely fumbling the passage!
I'm laughing, not at the pianists but at Rach for making this deceivingly simple passage
Had this same experience with the 4 d minor bars on the first page of "the snow is dancing" from Debussy's Children's Corner.
I had an experience with translating short, highly simplified subtitle texts for a documentary that kept inexpicably filling with typos whereas pages of more complex text full of subclauses and difficulties between the languages' phraseology were all correct - and then met someone a few years later who had exactly the same issue with translating the tiny texts about the paintings in an Art museum.
We didn't come up with any explanation
some passages are so easy for a rach concerto, that you dont practice them as much, almost ever actually
then panic, because playing slow + lack of practice of said passage = disaster
Such a great video for us pianists! First, it is teassuring to see the best level pianists screw up! Makes us schlubs feel better. Second, I loved watching the different fingerings on thos nadty, exposed trills! Your 3-5 is very impressive, 2-4 works better for me, buy even the 135-2-35 works! Thank God. Lastly, Garrick Ohlsen is such a real charmer! Totally loveable! ps I played #1 and 3, but never 2.
Too tricky! Even Rubindtein fakes the last movement! 🤣
I'm a violinist and I've definitely made the same kinds of mistakes described here without playing any Rachmaninoff
Interesting and fun. Thank you!
Very similar issue we can get playing the transition on Chopin's Barcarolle... Very hard to keep that "balancing" touch...
I really wish maestro Elizondo would record Rach 2 😢
Watched this for a long time and quit. He’d never get to the actual mistake. Maddening.
I've had nightmares about those few bars the night before performing this concerto
Did he really just say that all the notes in his concert is more than all the grains of sand on every beach combined
This is just superb!
Really interesting video.... Just as a side note, I've heard that some pianist miss out a note or two in the 1st movement chords because they are so hard to play without resorting to splitting or rolling the chords. I find it impossible to play the 2nd and 8th bar chords without breaking them. Thanks for a really absorbing episode. Cheers Ian. Leicester UK.
Rolling a chord is a minor transgression
Rachmaninoff breaks up the chords even though he didn't have to.
But there's a trick to the 2nd and 8th chords. Play the C-Db half step in the right hand with the the thumb playing both notes. It's surprisingly comfortable and reliable, and more manageable for most hands.
@@tonebasePiano Thanks, I will be giving that tip a try. Cheers Ian.
The real lesson is this: theory isn't just for nerds, it makes you a better performer
Number five: these concertos require incredible concentration to play. Here’s the one passage that says you can relax and catch your breath for a moment and drop your concentration.-Toby
As a fellow Rach 2 player, the hardest but easiest section for me are clearly the two piano buildups to the climaxes in the development of the 2nd Movement. Very hard to remember.
I wonder if muscle memory has somethijg to do with it too. By the time one masters this kind of piece every strong and fast passage has been trained do exertion and is completely written in the pianist brain's synapses, to the core of his arm, pukse and finger nerves. But a mellow, soft passage in the modsft of such a complex piece might not have had the same attention as the rest.
Ps. : quite a clever save from the "younger" undosclosed pianost. Nerves of steel, I've heard the concerto a lot of times, live and recordings and i thik i wouldnt notice it.
Hahaha as a pianist I can confirm! The easiest parts in a difficult piece are often overlooked, thus not memorized quite as well!
That reminds me of a finalist at the Leeds piano competition some time in the 90´s who was playing Rach Paganini variations very beautifully. When he got to the very famous variation (18th I think) he had a really serious memory slip. He´d probably hopped over it during his practising a few times thinking "Oh I know that one."
I feel like I just practiced this passage for hours just by watching this video.
it's so interesting how professional pianists think; they seem to memorize "groups", or I guess the musical term would be phrases and think about the harmony and music theory behind it... so when they make a mistake, its on the whole phrase
where as for amateurs, we just fumble and "misclick" because we are memorizing individual notes, not seeing it as a cohesive block and thinking about why those particular notes are chosen
Yes indeed!!
As I think you've now realized, the amateur way just doesn't work at all. It suddenly breaks, leaving you falling from 40000 ft. I only became able to perform entire works from memory after getting to know some great concert pianists, and understanding how they work.
@@JSB2500 Well, I was able to get to RCME grade 10 in Canada so it works to some level... but I could never understand how people can just improvise on the spot or sight-read so well or re-create the sheet music for anime music and such just by listening to it.
@@ysf-d9i I understand. By "works" I meant "works safely" in the sense that one's career would not be wrecked if it went wrong. With an exam you can retake it if it goes wrong from a memory block or whatever (I'm not suggesting you did do that).
The brain works best by recreating, not by literal recall, so the concert pianist in a sense becomes the composer and improvises a piece that just happens to be identical to the one that Bach or Rachmaninoff etc composed. If they can't get it exactly right, they can come very close. None of the pianists threw in a G#! (AFAIK).
That's what I do, anyway. I've used this method to memorize (internalize) many Bach organ Prelude and Fugues (see my channel). I'm currently memorizing Rach 2, which is why I'm here.
This discovery changed my life - greatly for the better!
All the best.
The do it with your nose caught me dying 😂😂
It doesn’t matter if it’s true was really nice to hear ❤❤❤
8:37 It's violinists who do that...
underrated comment
Richter execution of this passage is unreal ❤
YO I messed up on this same part during a concerto competition!
So when/where’s the concert? I love this piece!
3:25 lmao nice flexing those 35 trills
What an interesting and funny phenomenon!
WITH A GOOD PIANIST, EVEN THE MISTAKES SOUND GOOD.
I don't know if anyone already said this but this gets even worse knowing that there was a printing error in the Pavel Lamm score. The first arpeggio had an e-flat followed by a d-sharp in the score, which is the same tone. Maybe this was what Rachmaninoff himself might have tripped over.
I've played the Rach 2 in concert at least eight-times. I can't remember ever playing every-single-note correctly. Vladimir Horowitz, appearing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in 1975, missed one entire bar in the third movement. He laughed as he corrected himself and drove-on to the finish of the movement. The crowd gave Horowitz his usual standing ovation. On our way to the car, my wife asked me, "did you catch Horowitz's mistake in the first movement?"
I think the reason this passage is fumbled so often is because, since pianists have heard the piece so many times and the melody is fairly simple, it's really easy to slip into playing by ear instead of playing from memory. They probably didn't spend much time practicing it, so they don't have strong muscle memory to fall back to. No muscle memory + playing half by ear, half from memory = high probability of making a mistake.
Who were you Rachmaninoff?
It strikes me that what goes wrong (where it is actually *wrong*, rather than a finger slip) is that many pianists seem to switch off their attention, while playing. This is not all bad, of course, because it is the autopilot, neurologically, that is actually doing most of the playing. If you have bothered to learn it, why interfere? But where there isn't anything much for the cerebellum to do, conscious playing has to take over. And if the music has been playing itself, this is when disasters are likely to happen, as consciousness will arrive late on the scene. This is why Sokolov is so exemplary here, because he is so obviously attending to the music, consciously, with focus on the melodic outline of each phrase (not just the triplets) and to the harmonic architecture.
Yes, one of the big breakthroughs in any pianist's development is learning to perceive who phrases as a unit, the way we do when we read/think in sentences (nobody reads letter-by-letter in their native language). But professional pianists still struggle with memorizing such groups of notes according to their inner logic and there's still plenty of rote memorization and dependence on muscle memory.
I concur. I´ll make far fewer memory slips in a piece if I am thinking about something else entirely. It´s probably boring as hell though.
It isnt a "fumble" if the pianist manages to recover and make it sounds emotionally and harmonically fitting. rachmaninoff himself was known for improvising and changing the score a lot in his playing just. listen to recordings of him on youtube. in general a section which is less dense in notes used to mean the preformer himself was expected to improvise and expand on (mostly baroque music). i think it is beautiful that not every performance of this passage is note perfect, it makes it much more human this way, human error leads to musical variety in the context this simpler musical line.
That why I never play with notes open.
Or maybe because I don't know to read them.
Or actually I can't play at all.
You guys need more views.
It is interesting. I cant say for sure this is what happened to everyone, but if it was me I'd be using the comparatively simple section as a brain-breather moment where you just go on autopilot and think about whats next more than whats going on, and then that leads to more mistakes deapite being objectively easier.
What a terrific video. Not petty at all, but a real exploration of just how come the errors made by so many towering performers happen over not just the same small stretch, but frequently at exactly the same note!
The suggestion at the end (no pun intended) is a beautiful explanation. I want it to be true.
I wonder - has every pianist, amateur or professional, at least once as a kid or adult, tried playing a few notes with their nose? I have, and it's not a very good method. Myth (?) has Mozart doing it. But Gould? Schiff? Argerich? Ravel? You lot?
A more interesting question would be if people have actually tried playing a note with their bell end!
Who would ever play piano by nose, rather than by ear?
At my graduation concert, I played the middle note (G) of the final chord of Schumann's Toccata with my nose. However, it's true that when that note isn't played there, no one notices it because it still sounds anyway.
I can’t even play the first friggin measure because my hands are too small. 😂 However, I’ve managed to play the first few measures by rolling, if not leaving out the more than octave chords in one hand. I used to be a viola/violin double, but now morphed into a viola/bass double.
I have listened to this concerto since I was a teenager and I though the triplets were all in the same key and were just one repeated three times! This means I don’t have perfect pitch for sure. Anyway Rachmaninov playing his own concerto sounded beautiful to me mistakes and all.