Music Discussion thread

[Bridge]

Am I the only one outraged at Lin's popularity despite her complete lack of musicianship?

Well my first impressions are that sound is only coming from the right headphone and the quality is so low you cannot even hear the middle voices, so I don't feel comfortable judging her playing based on this recording alone. However I do agree that it is played at an excessively quick tempo (in fact I didn't even recognize the piece at first), and subtlety is lacking from what I can hear.

What do you guys (Chrono and Kiandra) think of Gould's interpretation of Beethoven's 14th piano sonata? It's true that the Kempff version (of all the sonatas actually) arguably takes even more liberty with the tempo and dynamics but I just don't feel anything when I listen to this. With all of his shortcomings, Kempff is just so sincere and it really comes across in his playing. Every single note just carries so much weight and it ends up being so powerful (Kempff's version of mvt 3 is one of my favorite recordings ever I think).

And yet I really do respect Gould and his performance of Moonlight movement 1 is maybe the best there is. I dislike the agonizingly slow and pathetic manner the piece is normally played in. Not only because it is the exact opposite of what Beethoven intended I just feel the piece loses all of its momentum and ends up being a little boring. Compare every version you've ever heard of it to:





Hopefully you see what I mean. The pianist Andras Schiff is also of the opinion that the pedal should be held down the entire time (or at least employ half-pedaling or 3/4ths pedaling (or whatever you would call it)). The result is equally interesting:





This is probably the closest you can get to how Beethoven himself played it. The tempo also I think is perfect here (Gould plays it a few clicks too fast). As Schiff explains in his lecture, by using the pedal so extensively the harmony becomes so blurred as to blend together somewhat, and the end result is a really haunting kind of sadness, rather than the pathetic Romanticized sadness that seems to be emphasized by most pianists.