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Some piano stuff for you guys

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steven-miller:
Do not feel obliged to listen to this stuff if you don't like piano music or don't have an interest in getting to know what can be done with that beautiful instrument. These are some performances I absolutely - love - both compositional as well as in terms of the actual playing.




Let's start with some Franz Liszt, an Hungarian composer everybody should know. Unfortunately he is still not widely recognized by his musical genius but rather famous for his pianistic virtuosity (although he died in 1886 and therefore no living man heard him play, but the success he had as a concert pianist in his heyday is probably without comparison in the history of classical music). There are lots of interesting things to be said about Franz Liszt, but I will leave it at that and let the music speak.

This is the piano reduction of one of my favorite pieces called Totentanz (which translates to "dance of the dead") played by Valentina Lisitsa.

Part I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxMKB-xe3lM

Part II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM27fk6CWIw


More to come :-).

adarqui:
nice man, enjoyed those.. i grew up around piano/classical/jazz because my dad is a pianist/piano teacher.

peace!

steven-miller:
Hey, that's great! Do you think this has influenced yourself in terms of taste of music or appreciation of the arts? I always wondered what my life would have been like growing up in a really musical environment... I only acquired a serious interest in music in my mid to late teens unfortunately...

Joe:
I do not understand music. The sounds (as in, not the lyrics) elicit no emotional response in me. Merely the lyrics suffice to do that. My tone sensitivity is not very great, so often I struggle to make out the lyrics.

I do, however, respect the genius required for the most high level of creation of any kind, music is no exception.

steven-miller:



Next is Frederic Chopin, the famous polish composer and pianist. Some of the most beautiful romantic era music stems from his hands. In the early 1830s Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin lived both in Paris, along with several of the greatest virtuosos and artistic minds of the century, some examples being Hector Berlioz and Charles Valentin Alkan, two very important composers of the time, the poets and writers Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Heinrich Heine and several famous painters, for example Eugène Delacroix. Besides Liszt and Chopin there were literally dozens of great, great pianists living in Paris at that time, some being Kalkbrenner, Dreyschock and Thalberg.
Anyway, the following piece, op. 10 no. 12, is said to have been written by Chopin in response to the november uprising in Poland in 1830. Chopin was on tour in vienna when he heard of the fall of Warsaw. So he was essentially cut of from his native country and eventually landed in Paris, desperate because of his exile.
The pianist playing is Sviatoslav Richter. I am sure there are many interesting things to say about him, but one thing that stuck in my mind is that he slept under the piano of his teacher Heinrich Neuhaus for a certain period of time since he was essentially homeless - a little like Chopin perhaps, who could not go back to Poland...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hOKcdZJJFU

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