Alexis Weissenberg

I wonder how Weisseberg managed to pull the wool over Karajan's and Marc Andre's eyes!? AFF

I don't know. The point is - there are some people with stellar ears who admire his playing. So it seems more a question of personal aesthetic. I can understand your distaste for his playing. Strong personalities can get strong negative reactions. This was true of Busoni, Horowitz and Gould. I am not putting Weissenberg on the same platform as these three giants but the point still holds. Anyway, if we cannot get into a discussion of what he is doing right or wrong, we might as well put the matter to rest.

Would love to hear his recording of the Rachmaninoff etudes... perhaps that would be a good place to start... AFF

AW plays like a machine and I beleive his art was to cut off all emotions something that was pretty cool in those times-I think. Today we have techno which I as strangely as it is can appreciate a kind of music totally deprived of emotions which can have a curious effect on the listener.Or like Chet when he sings loaded with drugs. Karajan had the same strive he was a fanatic perfectionnist and compared to his fellow chefs d'orchestre his interpretations were -at the time- often judged as cold and untouching. So these two artists had a lot in common...

In case you're interested, here is a video of Weissenberg's Rachmaninoff 2nd with Karajan. A portion of the Tchaikovsky: Recordings of the preludes are also up on youtube. I think there might be a video of Op.23 no.2 as well.

My opinion remains unchanged... it is brilliant and eminently unsatisfying playing. I managed not to turn it off immediately but I could not listen to the end. There is so much wrong with it that I would need to write a book to explain it to you. AFF

I can understand what people dislike about his playing. That doesn't need any explanation. You just haven't convinced me that his playing is anti-musical. Your dislike of him does not make you a superior musician. He is an extremely capable pianist with a unique musicality. It makes sense to criticize a pianist for lacking intelligence, intuition or skill. But Weissenberg has all of those things. He just uses his talents to realize a musical vision that you find abhorrent. Nothing wrong with that. You are criticizing him because you can't stand his musical personality but that alone cannot persuade me to change my opinion. There are lots of reasons to find Gould, Horowitz or Nyiregyhazi distasteful. I am not trying to change your opinion. The only reason I posted the other videos was to show his collaboration with Karajan.

I beg to differ. Much of what is wrong with him is actually technical. You bring up a very good point: to your mind, if a pianist has a musical vision and then uses an extremely imperfect technique to "realize" it, such that the result SOUNDS BAD because it lacks even the most elementary qualities of phrasing, then he is still a capable pianist. I disagree. If you will listen closely . He does not play legato. The notes of his phrases come out 'bung bung bung,' they do not sound well, and you say that just because he obviously has a good idea in his head, that it's OK for him to bring this idea into Aural Being in this highly imperfect way. But that's the whole problem we have with pianism today! Many people play like this, Weissenberg is far from being alone, it's just that he's the most extreme example I know. They have some 'musical idea' in their head, and . They are in the habit of 'trusting their intuitive reflexive skills' to manifest their idea, but the lack of control of the tonal qualities of the instrument is so great that the result is truly ugly. And yes it is anti-musical. This is not a clash of personalities. I do not like his playing because there are basic pianistic/musical qualities that it lacks. It is ugly for a reason. You should listen more closely. And read again everything that I quoted from Arnold Schultz on legato: THAT says exactly what's wrong with Weissenberg's playing. One of the main reasons I do everything I do is to educate people as to what piano playing is really about and to improve our listening until we learn to recognize what I am talking about here. There was a day long ago when I was like you - I could not recognize these things. But something in me rebelled against that kind of sound and so I educated myself to find out why that was. Respectfully submitted, AFF

1. I do not understand where you get the idea that he doesn't phrase. If you mean that there isn't a delineation of musical ideas then you are wrong. It is obvious that he plays with a sense of narrative coherence. He just connects the phrases completely so that it feels like one breathless experience. 2. Phrasing and beautiful tone are not the same thing. Even if he doesn't shape beautiful lines that does not indicate a lack of musical design. By the way he is entirely capable of playing with sensitivity and color. Brendel might have an ugly tone but his sense of musical coherence is superior to that of many pianists with beautiful tone. 3. Whatever the problems you might have with Weissenberg's playing, I do not find his "deficiencies" symptomatic of modern pianistic culture. He communicates and he has an amazing control over the piano. These qualities are special in any time period. Anyway there is a tendency now towards the very opposite of Weissenberg's aesthetic where pianists try to wring emotion out of a piece. 4. Of course your dislike of his playing is rooted in what Weissenberg does musically. I am just not convinced that what he does is bad musicianship or bad pianism. Just because I do not share your opinion does not mean I am missing something. I can hear the punchy tone and the apparent monotony in loud sections. 5. All good musicians trust their intuitive reflexive skills! I think that the problem lies in a lack of trust. By the way there is a difference between the body's natural sense of aesthetics - when you can sense that a movement is elegant and the body's mechanical routine. I would distinguish between intuition and . Some pianists fall into a routine of physical movements and they do not listen to their intuitions to find out whether their movements are elegant and to the point. 6. We might as well drop the discussion. No need for your consistently patronizing attitude. I understand your point and do not agree. There are other master videos that might lead to a more fruitful discussion.

Why drop the discussion, it is just getting fruitful! I am not patronizing you or Weissenberg, I am trying as hard as I can to really evaluate what he does. Please re-read Chapter 37 of Honing, Arnold Schultz on Legato. Weissenberg's playing is the best and most extreme example I know of what Schultz calls 'ugly tone' and its underlying cause. It's not patronizing of me to say so, I feel the need here to call a spade a spade. We're not going to get anywhere in developing a really competent approach to piano technique if we let such glaring inadequacies pass uncensured. The trouble is, that type of playing is so common that we have allowed our ears to get used to it, and even in some cases to like it. The early Andrei Gavrilov and the later Zoltan Koscis are two other notable modern purveyors of Schultz's 'ugly tone,' and they are both popular, successful artists. Perhaps we could say that Weissenberg is a 'good musician' and only a bad pianist, because he does have good musical ideas but fails to use the most basic element of pianism - a true legato touch - to express those ideas beautifully. However, I myself prefer not to hear somebody's good ideas when you have to 'translate' them and try to filter out the actual tonal message you're receiving. Perhaps Karajan feels you're a good musician if you can slow down and speed up just the way he thinks you should. But phrasing isn't only about slowing down and speeding up to create inflected aural musical structures. Albeit this is an important, yea a crucial part of musicianship, and yes, Weissenberg achieves way more than many pianists in this domain. I can't stand his playing but I am equally or even more intolerant of the far-too-numerous pianists who have no real sense of phrase but some sort of weak rubato that passes off as expressivity. Yes, in this sense of the word Weissenberg's gift of phrasing is very strong. But for a pianist as well as other musicians, another basic element of phrasing is I question the practice of being brilliant at the former and totally deficient in the latter. Again respectfully submitted, AFF