Moriz Rosenthal

Over the past year and a half I have become obsessed with 19th century players. I love everything about the style. One characteristic that nearly all the players I like have is the ability to make the piano SPARKLE. There seems to be a very judicious use of pedal and lots of different finger touches; these guys really knew how to "tickle the keys." I would be very interested in hearing from Alan as to if he know how the approach to pedaling and tone production was taught in this time period. I really want to try and bring some of these qualities out in some way in my playing.

You have to have a great deal more orchestrational capabilities to pedal that richly and have it sound well. Mostly our pedalling homogenizes our sound instead of enriching the orchestration, because the blending quality makes all the voices the same. Only if you do extreme dynamic differentiation does the pedalled sound become magic. And of course you have to articulate as well: don't do this differentiation with weight - you'll just create more musical mush! Thanks for posting an exquisitely poetic and beautiful performance - what a treat! AFF

Thanks for the advice. That is exactly what I have been working on. Something I like to do in my practice it get a slightly different physical sensation in each finger for each stroke; this has increased my articulation dramatically. Of course no pedal during practice to get the legato correct. As for the pedal, when it is added in there just seems to be something different about the way these old timers are going about it. There is a dryness and crispness to their playing, perhaps part of it has to do with possibly different designs in pianos from that period? When I listen to someone such as de Pachmann it seems like he is playing on a vastly different instrument than myself; perhaps he is just a vastly better player, sigh. Anyways, if you liked my last post have a listen to this sadly forgotten pianist. Von Koczalski plays with the individuality of a true artist. The nocturne has quite a few ornaments that you don't normally hear. These are possibly passed down directly from Chopin to Koczalski's teach Mikuli, or are possibly the result of a person taught to think with his imagination and therefore has the ability to really interpret rather than simply reproduce. As for the 4th ballade lets just say it is played a bit untraditionally. 1) op.9 no.2 2) op.52