Category Archives: Piano

How Schubert listened to the brook’s lullaby

Franz Schubert’s lieder do not sound like poems set to music.  They sound like actualizations of musical settings.  It is as if the composer cast in notation the inner musicality of these pieces which, to his mind, were already written … Continue reading

Posted in Listening, Piano | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Piano paraphrase

What is a piano paraphrase?  Part of its seductive fluidity is that it is not a transcription (faithful rewriting), an arrangement, a piano reduction, a fantasy, a souvenir, or reminiscences yet it may contain elements of all of them. Furthermore, … Continue reading

Posted in Classical Music, Listening, Piano | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Participatory listening

I call “participatory” the creative listening where we are invited to contribute actively to our musical experience as opposed to sit back and absorb it.  In participatory listening we are expected to play an energetic role in the creation of … Continue reading

Posted in Classical Music, Listening, Piano | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The friend of Schubert’s winter traveler

Sometimes I think that my blog could have a single topic — the circulation and uses of this musical landmark which resonates across Western culture:  Since Dr. Pantelis Polychronidis, my “other self,” is a collaborative pianist, the question of the … Continue reading

Posted in Friends, Melancholy, Piano | Leave a comment

Piano music at sunset/Im Abendrot

Pantelis loves walks but does not like to go out at sunsets because they slide into something indeterminate that makes him feel insecure.  Sunsets may lead to bliss or annihilation, or both. In lieder, sunsets come at the end of … Continue reading

Posted in Friends, Listening, Piano | Leave a comment

Taking favorite solo sections out of their piano concertos

Listening to the opening movement of the Brahms 1st piano concerto I am reminded of the great number of splendid solo passages that can be found in concertos of this kind.  Such passages may be the opening of the piece, … Continue reading

Posted in Classical Music, Listening, Piano | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Listening to classical cover versions

I read with special interest an interview that Benjamin Grosvenor gave recently on playing the Liszt sonata.  Instead of analyzing the work itself or placing it in the history of classical music, the 28-year-old pianist compared his recent recording to … Continue reading

Posted in Classical Music, Listening, Music, Piano, Popular Music | Tagged | Leave a comment

The pianist’s “divine madness”

Sequentia Cyclica (1948-49) is by any measure a demonic artwork.  One of the longest and arguably the most monumental piece of classical piano music, it is based on this theme, a version of the well-known Gregorian chant Dies irae: This … Continue reading

Posted in Friends, Piano | Tagged | Leave a comment

Piano recitals (2)

Some recitals offer an anthology of great autonomous works from the canonical repertoire.  Others place works in a sequence to narrate the grand story of a composer, genre, or tradition.  A more recent kind of recital assembles a variety of … Continue reading

Posted in Listening, Piano | Leave a comment

Piano recitals (1)

Traditional piano recitals, both live and recorded, consisted in precocious and neurotic virtuosos performing anthologies of canonical compositions by precocious and neurotic geniuses.  This interpretive tradition has recently come to an end, together with its supportive critical and scholarly discourses … Continue reading

Posted in Classical Music, Listening, Piano | Leave a comment