As Promised, Here Is MrSzokolayplaying That Delightful K.9 Of Scarlatti. Whether Or Not It's Everything

As promised, here is Mr Szokolay playing that delightful K.9 of Scarlatti. Whether or not it's everything you want it to be, it has some tight dynamic and juice: an enthusiasm for putting the key down into the keybed.

In Short: Splash

In short, I think the division of music into good and bad, even perhaps more shockingly into what one likes and what one doesn't like, is a bit of an ass puddle. This isn't to say you cannot or should not have an opinion if you like. Have any opinion you will. But opinions too are a bit of an ass puddle. Wouldn't it be a classic to find something a little more substantial to set one's foot to? These puddles, after all, dry up and blow away so soon, so soon. You didn't like that yesterday, today you might. It changed your life, now you could as like to flush it. I'm not even sure there is a proper way around these matters. Music is a special case. We'll have to speak more about why.

I want to watch this person play the piano.

kari-shma:

henna - hand (via darcitananda)

wordsandeggs:

Album cover via Project Thirty-Three.

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.

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.