I didn't want 2018 to get too far gone without taking note of some of the composer anniversaries. There have been plenty of Leonard Bernstein celebrations in the US, of course, this year being the 100th anniversary of his birth. Bernstein didn't write a great deal for the piano, and I don't play what he did write. Also, it's all under copyright so I can't legally record any of it. But you have probably gotten plenty of Bernsteinania elsewhere so I don't feel too bad about the omission.
There are some deathiversaries as well. Claude Debussy's is the biggest. He died in 1918--I haven't posted much about him, either, though there are a few short piano pieces in the archive.
But since the internet doubtless has him covered, it is worth mentioning a couple of smaller figures that might not be getting the blanket coverage.
One is Cesar Cui. I wrote about him in the spring, I think, when I discovered a little organ piece which I recorded. You can read the blog and listen to the piece here.
There is one more from the archive, though, and it stands right at the top of the page of piano music. The page is listed alphabetically by composer, so this fellow gets to be right at the top, even pulling rank on venerable Johann Sebastian Bach.
I'm talking about Felix Arndt. He didn't live very long, and the flu epidemic of 1918 didn't help. What he did compose would be classed as novelty piano, which I don't really specialize in. But a few years ago I was playing a concert in an old vaudeville theater and a short post-intermission crowd pleaser seemed in order. I chose Nola, a piece he wrote for his fiancee, the eponymous princess of his heart, a person, not a city.
Over the Christmas break I remember practicing the piece in the living room of a distant relative (I was really throwing this thing together fast--the four days between Christmas and New Year's Eve were about all the practice I was getting and I was learning this piece from scratch). My host thought she remembered some words.
If you are the right age, you might, too. I think I played the piece slowly enough that you might be able to sing along. Apparently, Liberace made a thing of playing the piece really fast and virtuoso, but I like the elegance of a more stately tempo. Here is my recording, which I made a day after we got the piano back to its environs from the theater to which it had been moved (I don't always take my own pianos when I play on location, just some times!). It might have been some moisture on my shoe, but the pedal squeaked a bit. If you have the recording turned up super high you may notice it. If you notice it, turn it down!
And enjoy the music. Here's Nola:
Nola by Felix Arndt
Showing posts with label Arndt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arndt. Show all posts
Friday, October 19, 2018
Monday, January 20, 2014
speed records
The Winter Olympics are coming up in a couple of weeks and I thought I'd opine on what would happen if they would let pianists compete along with the other athletes which is, of course, to set speed records.
Bigger, faster, stronger? Of course. In every human endeavor. The longest and hardest piano concerto. The loudest and fastest interpretation, and so on.
Really, though, it is just a chance for me to sit here comfortably while the snow falls outside and the wind threatens to blow my face off if it gets the chance, and go over some of my past recordings rather than braving death to go make a new one.
We'll start with something pretty recent. I mentioned, at a recent concert, that Scott Joplin had a rule about not playing ragtime fast and that a lot of pianists didn't care to hear it and that that was what set up the curious conflict in the first movement of Bill Albright's Grand Sonata in Rag that I played. On that concert I also played a little novelty piece called "Nola."
In the course of some internet research (such as to see if I had spelled the composer's name correctly) I found some other recordings of Nola online and happened to notice that they are about a minute or so faster than mine. That's a pretty wide gap. Now as it happens I had only played Nola for a perilously short time before I played it on stage and got no practice right before the recording so I thought it would be wise to take a conservative tempo. However, I also felt that the piece had a certain elegance and suavity that way, and I didn't really see any need to play it any faster anyhow. Obviously some other pianists don't see it that way. I'm going to stick by my tempo, and put up a sign "slowest recording of Nola on the internet" and see if I get any takers.
Here's Nola
I've made up for it, however. About a year ago I recorded Bach's "Little" Fugue in g minor at what is apparently at least 45 seconds faster than any of the other recordings I noticed on the web. It was a Tuesday evening right after choir practice and right before I had to drive across town for another appointment and I had about twenty minutes free to set up the equipment and do a couple of takes. I was tired and full of manic energy and I had just had enough time with the piece to be able to play it fluently and not yet enough time to play it comfortably. Which meant I played it quite fast. Given the miniature organ registration I used, however, I think it works rather well. I'll try it sometime again with an alternate approach. In the meantime, do I get a medal?
Listen
Often, as a professional, I'm likely to take a faster tempo than would an amateur. I can, given my technical facility. But it doesn't mean I always want to.
I remember a teacher at the conservatory who had a maddening obsession with tempo. The first week my chamber music partner and I would come in for a lesson on a piece we'd only been assigned the week before. Naturally it was a little on the slow side--we could play it, but weren't really comfortable enough to just let it fly, yet. She'd get out the metronome right away and give us the speed she wanted. The next week, having seen the piece for twice as long, and having really assimilated all the runs and jumps, we'd have that piece up much faster than it needed to be. By the third week it was just right. Given that "Goldilocks" phenomena, I've always noticed how the tempo of a piece can change, from too slow to too fast to settling in once you've gotten comfortable with it artistically. Most of the pieces in the pianonoise archive were recorded on precious little practice so one could consider this when listening to the artistic approaches, tempo and all. I've often thought of them as beta versions of the pieces that I simply don't have time to perfect given the eternal demands of next week. But I don't think the tempi would be all that different; I can usually get what I want, more or less.
What I want turns out to be variety. Each piece speaks to me differently and calls for a different tempo and mood. And this is where art and athletics differ. You don't see races to see who can be the slowest, or the most middle of the road. Most sports don't give points for style or individuality, and the ones that do have the most controversy and judging scandals and angry fans. You can argue over those because opinion matters in a sport like that, and everyone's is different. And right.
I'll leave you with one more recording, of one of J. S. Bach's Schubler Chorales, a piece called "Wake up! A voice calls to us" (though generally translated as "sleepers, awake"). I took this one on the quick side. I can still remember comments from disgruntled Youtubarians over a Cd recording of this piece by a famous organist. They thought he was in much too much of a hurry. Probably used to the grand registrations and broad tempi of the middle of the century when everybody was playing Bach that way, they just couldn't fathom somebody being in this much of a hurry.
Except for three reasons. One is that it is fashionable to take Bach faster and to play with more articulation and less heavy texture these days, which isn't necessarily a great reason except that the researchers in this area have reason to think this approach is more authentic. Another is that the Chorale tune itself is the slowest part of the piece (the nasally reed stop you hear about 45 seconds into the piece is playing the hymn that Bach's congregation sang) and at this speed you might not only recognize it, you can probably sing all the way through a phrase without collapsing. Also, the point of the hymn is to get people to wake up and stay vigilant (in anticipation of Christ's coming), not to relax and luxuriate--which also argues for a quicker tempo.
Listen
Those are my reasons. But I won't guarantee I won't slow down a little bit some time the next time I make a recording of "Wake up!" It was a hot day in July, after all.
Bigger, faster, stronger? Of course. In every human endeavor. The longest and hardest piano concerto. The loudest and fastest interpretation, and so on.
Really, though, it is just a chance for me to sit here comfortably while the snow falls outside and the wind threatens to blow my face off if it gets the chance, and go over some of my past recordings rather than braving death to go make a new one.
We'll start with something pretty recent. I mentioned, at a recent concert, that Scott Joplin had a rule about not playing ragtime fast and that a lot of pianists didn't care to hear it and that that was what set up the curious conflict in the first movement of Bill Albright's Grand Sonata in Rag that I played. On that concert I also played a little novelty piece called "Nola."
In the course of some internet research (such as to see if I had spelled the composer's name correctly) I found some other recordings of Nola online and happened to notice that they are about a minute or so faster than mine. That's a pretty wide gap. Now as it happens I had only played Nola for a perilously short time before I played it on stage and got no practice right before the recording so I thought it would be wise to take a conservative tempo. However, I also felt that the piece had a certain elegance and suavity that way, and I didn't really see any need to play it any faster anyhow. Obviously some other pianists don't see it that way. I'm going to stick by my tempo, and put up a sign "slowest recording of Nola on the internet" and see if I get any takers.
Here's Nola
I've made up for it, however. About a year ago I recorded Bach's "Little" Fugue in g minor at what is apparently at least 45 seconds faster than any of the other recordings I noticed on the web. It was a Tuesday evening right after choir practice and right before I had to drive across town for another appointment and I had about twenty minutes free to set up the equipment and do a couple of takes. I was tired and full of manic energy and I had just had enough time with the piece to be able to play it fluently and not yet enough time to play it comfortably. Which meant I played it quite fast. Given the miniature organ registration I used, however, I think it works rather well. I'll try it sometime again with an alternate approach. In the meantime, do I get a medal?
Listen
Often, as a professional, I'm likely to take a faster tempo than would an amateur. I can, given my technical facility. But it doesn't mean I always want to.
I remember a teacher at the conservatory who had a maddening obsession with tempo. The first week my chamber music partner and I would come in for a lesson on a piece we'd only been assigned the week before. Naturally it was a little on the slow side--we could play it, but weren't really comfortable enough to just let it fly, yet. She'd get out the metronome right away and give us the speed she wanted. The next week, having seen the piece for twice as long, and having really assimilated all the runs and jumps, we'd have that piece up much faster than it needed to be. By the third week it was just right. Given that "Goldilocks" phenomena, I've always noticed how the tempo of a piece can change, from too slow to too fast to settling in once you've gotten comfortable with it artistically. Most of the pieces in the pianonoise archive were recorded on precious little practice so one could consider this when listening to the artistic approaches, tempo and all. I've often thought of them as beta versions of the pieces that I simply don't have time to perfect given the eternal demands of next week. But I don't think the tempi would be all that different; I can usually get what I want, more or less.
What I want turns out to be variety. Each piece speaks to me differently and calls for a different tempo and mood. And this is where art and athletics differ. You don't see races to see who can be the slowest, or the most middle of the road. Most sports don't give points for style or individuality, and the ones that do have the most controversy and judging scandals and angry fans. You can argue over those because opinion matters in a sport like that, and everyone's is different. And right.
I'll leave you with one more recording, of one of J. S. Bach's Schubler Chorales, a piece called "Wake up! A voice calls to us" (though generally translated as "sleepers, awake"). I took this one on the quick side. I can still remember comments from disgruntled Youtubarians over a Cd recording of this piece by a famous organist. They thought he was in much too much of a hurry. Probably used to the grand registrations and broad tempi of the middle of the century when everybody was playing Bach that way, they just couldn't fathom somebody being in this much of a hurry.
Except for three reasons. One is that it is fashionable to take Bach faster and to play with more articulation and less heavy texture these days, which isn't necessarily a great reason except that the researchers in this area have reason to think this approach is more authentic. Another is that the Chorale tune itself is the slowest part of the piece (the nasally reed stop you hear about 45 seconds into the piece is playing the hymn that Bach's congregation sang) and at this speed you might not only recognize it, you can probably sing all the way through a phrase without collapsing. Also, the point of the hymn is to get people to wake up and stay vigilant (in anticipation of Christ's coming), not to relax and luxuriate--which also argues for a quicker tempo.
Listen
Those are my reasons. But I won't guarantee I won't slow down a little bit some time the next time I make a recording of "Wake up!" It was a hot day in July, after all.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part six)
I forgot something in my rundown of the concert on Monday. It's a little piece called "Nola" which I played after the intermission.
"Nola" was written in 1915 by Felix Arndt and dedicated to his then fiancee Nola. I first ran across the piece on the internet a couple of months ago and was considering it as something to play on the concert which turned out to be a very interesting choice.
Over the holidays I had the usual problem a pianist has when he is on vacation and there is a concert coming up: where to practice? (someone once wrote to me to ask about this, and my answer is here)
That somewhere turned out to be at a relative's house nearby. My wife has several members of her family in close proximity and one of them graciously offered her piano for my daily use, without which I definitely would not have been able to make this concert happen: I simply had not gotten more than a few days of practice on some very demanding pieces before the holiday. Even if I had played most of them before, three or four days of practice is not enough, not to mention what can happen if you don't touch the piano for a week leading up to the concert!
As I told the audience at the concert, my host had only one request: that I play a certain piece for her before I left. That piece turned out to be "Nola."
After I played the piece for her, I learned that the piece had been outfitted with words (not so unusual for a piece of that era), although she could only remember a few. I relayed this to my audience and suggested they sing along if they happened to know them; if not, they could just join in the part I knew: "I'm in love, so in love with NO----LA!" which I sang for them (you're lucky if you weren't there; you missed my singing). I told them they must be in fine voice after the singalong we'd just had: they laughed.
And then I played--this--for them: (Enjoy!)
Nola by Felix Arndt
And now, the exciting conclusion.
"Nola" was written in 1915 by Felix Arndt and dedicated to his then fiancee Nola. I first ran across the piece on the internet a couple of months ago and was considering it as something to play on the concert which turned out to be a very interesting choice.
Over the holidays I had the usual problem a pianist has when he is on vacation and there is a concert coming up: where to practice? (someone once wrote to me to ask about this, and my answer is here)
That somewhere turned out to be at a relative's house nearby. My wife has several members of her family in close proximity and one of them graciously offered her piano for my daily use, without which I definitely would not have been able to make this concert happen: I simply had not gotten more than a few days of practice on some very demanding pieces before the holiday. Even if I had played most of them before, three or four days of practice is not enough, not to mention what can happen if you don't touch the piano for a week leading up to the concert!
As I told the audience at the concert, my host had only one request: that I play a certain piece for her before I left. That piece turned out to be "Nola."
After I played the piece for her, I learned that the piece had been outfitted with words (not so unusual for a piece of that era), although she could only remember a few. I relayed this to my audience and suggested they sing along if they happened to know them; if not, they could just join in the part I knew: "I'm in love, so in love with NO----LA!" which I sang for them (you're lucky if you weren't there; you missed my singing). I told them they must be in fine voice after the singalong we'd just had: they laughed.
And then I played--this--for them: (Enjoy!)
Nola by Felix Arndt
And now, the exciting conclusion.
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