“When warming-up for a concert of his own work, Chopin would not rehearse his pieces, but rather play something like fourteen preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, from memory.”
PianoBoost
PianoBoost is a collection of inspiring performances and recordings.
Parker: Donna Lee (Variations)
I’m not sure about this, but this is what I think is going on: the original, a splicing together different fragments of the original with certain fragments being looped, originals in canon, melodic displacement at various octaves to create a Webern-like disjunct melody.
This is interesting on two levels: on the one hand, this is a totally unorthodox treatment of a standard, on the other it obviously contains an immense amount of preparation. Is this jazz?
Prokofiev: Piano Sonata no. 7
Grigory Sokolov plays movement III: Precipitato. He is really acting the music and its gestures here, which is what brings this performance to life; it strikes me because he manages to dramatize his playing without letting the “pianistic” image, although prominent, overpower the music: it actually complements the liveliness of the movement. Some parts toward the end are a little pounded, but overall, his immense control over timbre and dynamics while maintaining the character of the movement delivers what I would consider to be a knock-out performance.
Bach: Partita No. 1 in B-flat major BWV 825
Piotr Anderszewski plays the sarabande, menuets I and II, and the giga. His tone is very lyrical, and his ornamentation, tasteful though sometimes daring. I’m on the fence as to how sacrilegious his unwritten 8vas are, but they are very expressive. The giga is too fast; it’s impressive that all accompaniment is done with one hand (I switch mine in the B section) and at that speed too, but it’s too fast.
