In Piano Playing, I Do Not Want To Hear (or Rather, I Do Not Need To Hear) An "ideal" Performance However

In piano playing, I do not want to hear (or rather, I do not need to hear) an "ideal" performance however I might define it for myself. What I need is to hear the mind and the making of another, someone of wonder and intelligence and beauty telling me something delightful, painful, astonishing, banal, etc, but not trivial, or trite, or pretentious (except in certain circumstances I cannot quite define), or easy. In this performance by my long-loved Alexis Weissenberg of Schumann, I hear an Arabesque I have not heard before. Is it how I would play it? Is it how I should like to play it? Those are not the right questions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless the symphony is tied, isn't the game over?

readmorewikipedia:

ihatemusic1943:

The curse of the ninth is the superstition that a composer will die after writing his ninth symphony, but before he has an opportunity to complete his tenth. The most prominent examples are Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Spohr, Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler.

Wikipedia surprises me every day. I never expected to have an entry on this urban legend.

Curse of the Ninth

I like the player Balazs Szokolay very much. He gives quite the spirited reading of Bartok's Mikrokosmos. Of course what else are you going to do with it? Here is Vol. 6, No. 146, Ostinato: Vivacissimo.

I like this brief biographical assessment by Stephen Isserlis. I cannot say it represents my feelings exactly, as his Schumanning is much more mature, more ripened, than mine, but I'm in enough sympathy with the gist of it as an emotional level.

Fred Hersch is a beautiful player. This is an interesting and well-written expo of his recent tribulations, which I very much wish he hadn't had to go through.

Thanks to @concertmarvel for bringing this to my attention.

I want to watch this person play the piano.

kari-shma:

henna - hand (via darcitananda)