Technique and methods
28 posts
Started 18 Jan 2017
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Alanfraserpiano
Have never heard Lovo live but would love to...
Ivo's hands are great for piano playing. It's his training that has taken him down a "wrong road." Lately he has gotten worse in terms of using his arm more but not in a productive way... There is a hilarious moment in a private video of him playing Rachmaninoff 2nd Sonata at the Kennedy Center where he uses the arm so much, his hand actually falls off the keyboard!
AFF
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A pianist
I do not believe it has anything to do with his training because I have seen a few videos of his teacher explaining how he retrained him because he held so much tension. He later when she died said in an interview that he was changing his technique to "go back to his roots". It is apparently known that his teacher held him under alot of supervision and he sort of collapsed upon her death. Mentally and physically on the piano.
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Alanfraserpiano
Yes, that's what I mean: his training before his last teacher, who did save him from all his previous teachers. I spoke with someone who studied at Moscow Conservatory the same time he did. She told me that he had a terrible time there because nobody knew what to do with him. He was completely headstrong and impossible to deal with and went from teacher to teacher for several years before finally coming to what's her name...
"His roots" is the old arm weight technique schtick; she managed to get him out of that - almost...
But when you see how they worked until her dying day, it is shocking. They would rehearse phrase by phrase, he trying his best to reproduce what she was doing. This still went on when he was a fully-successful, world-famous, seasoned concert performer!
In other words, he never became a mature, independent artist!
AFF
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A pianist
Interesting stuff.
I would like to see a video him playing that Rach sonata.
I sometimes have to think about Alice Kereradze (or whatever her exact name is) saying "his hands are completely free now". There must be at least some truth in that.
I have heard the guy play live many times and I never noticed any fysical problem. On the contrary...
There is no post - or I can't find it - about Grigory Sokolov.
This is in my opinion a good example how to play the instrument.
The connection between the musical image and the fysical action are wonderful to experience.
By the way Alan: I share your opinion about Alexis Weissenberg.
Nice to read when someone agrees so deeply
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A pianist
Interesting forum. I'm new here.
I found Kemal Gekic here. Didn't know him. Certainly a very interesting pianist although I think he is a little bit too 'wild' or 'fast'. For example his first Scherzo of Chopin. I like the way he 'experiments' but sometimes it seems to me he has some 'standard tricks' he uses. I heard that Liszt's Dante Sonata. A piece I love but never have heard really the way I feel it.
My pianist hero's are Sokolov and Pogorelich.
Both for their total dedication and incredible variety of sound.
Ivo has taken a road I do not really understand though. Recently I heard him with Chopin's 1st concerto which was quite magnificent.
Sokolov seems to be born behind the piano.
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Alanfraserpiano
Always gratifying to find someone who agrees with me about Weissenberg. But let's not get started on that
About Ivo. The physical "problems" aren't problems in the sense of any flaw in his virtuosity. I have heard him play totally amazingly. I heard a Liszt sonata in Ottawa years ago which was most amazing because it was the only time I heard him bring humility to a performance.
But we are trying to analyze what makes a complete and transcendent technique here and so we have to take a look at whatever might be limiting him in any way.
About Kemal - his limitations are more musical than technical. He tells me that he is still on the path to find interpretations that fully reflect the musical content. He senses the poetic, dramatic and spiritual depth of the music he plays much more than he feels he can actually bring to the interpretation.
It's amazing to hear him speak like this when his interpretations these days are almost always way more full of musical, poetic and spriritual content than what we are accustomed to...
The B minor Scherzo is from an earlier, experimental period. And by the way, it's not really THAT fast - he only does things to make it SEEM fast...
Welcome to our forum!!!!
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Alanfraserpiano
PS Sokolov. Yes.
AFF
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A pianist
Well that is an ambitious goal
I could write pages with questions and thoughts about this but I will not do that. Isn't that search something like the old searching for 'enlightenment'?
And in the end discovering it does not exist?
And I forgot Gyorgy Sebok, the wise Jedi.
Unique man. If you listen to his 'sound' or connection of voices it is not perfect at all! But he moved me like no one else did!
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Alanfraserpiano
This forum hungrily awaits your pages of thoughts on this deep subject... So what if enlightenment doesn't exist, let's look anyway.
And by the way, how do you it doesn't exist?
AFF
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A pianist
Because I found out myself
It is merely a projection of the unhappy mind.
I'll post some of my thoughts here this summer. After reading some of the things here, which are interesting.
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