Music Discussion thread

[Bridge]

After listening to the whole piece and briefly looking over the piano part, I can probably say that a valid criticism of the concerto is that the piano is all over the place. It's made up of a ton of arpeggios and octave slides, which might be impressive to play but is indeed very "Lisztian." Not that Liszt is a bad composer, but he's definitely quite famous for being a showoff composer, and spamming arpeggios is something that does appear quite stunning to the audience.

What is rather good about this concerto is the orchestration, not that that's a surprise (as you've already mentioned). In many portions of the piece, particularly at the beginning and also at the andante section that starts somewhere after 6:00, the orchestra accompanies the piano beautifully. The style of the concerto actually feels very modern - I was reminded of the feel of a lot of modern soundtracks as I listened to it, and an in-depth analysis would probably complement my views. Which means that the main reason why people may dislike the piece is that it simply isn't suitable to compare with the other romantic (or post-romantic) composers of Korsakov's era.

But the main reason is that the piano isn't spectacular, comparatively speaking.

That's a little unfair isn't it? It's a concerto - it's almost guaranteed to "show off" every aspect of the piano. And I happen to like Liszt. I'm not sure how you can say this is all over the place and yet worship Chopin, unless you mean to say it is simply bad piano writing - in which case I disagree. Also, compared to Liszt I think it's quite economic in its techniques actually, Rimsky-Korsakov uses little to achieve a lot. I don't agree with your diagnosis that it "spams" arpeggios and octave slides at all. Overall I think the piano part is quite melodious and a high emphasis is placed on creating unique textures by blending the piano into the orchestra.

Why does it remind you of modern soundtracks (apart from that one woodwind part that you do hear in film scores occasionally, or something similar in any case)? And why is it unsuitable to compare to other Romantic works, apart from it being short? Finally, what is so unspectacular about the piano? I can only speak for myself here, but I find the concerto absolutely riveting with just the right amount of balance between everything, whereas I sometimes do get bored listening to say a Beethoven concerto.

Your post is way too vague for my liking. Bear in mind this piece is not normally regarded as a poor composition, it seems like almost literally the only people who hate it are these two or three YouTubers.

EDIT: But I definitely don't consider it a *great* concerto either, I just don't find anything wrong with it considering what it is.