Any information on the Granados Piano Concerto?

Started by pianoconcerto, Friday 09 March 2012, 14:18

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Gareth Vaughan

QuoteIt seems that liberty taking with the score has died out. A shame, as for me it would be at the very heart of romanticism.
And particularly in this sort of piece. I bet pianist/composers like Dreyschock, Herz, etc (and even Liszt, I wouldn't be surprised to learn) hardly ever gave a "note-exact" performance but threw in embellishments and extra bits of bravura as the mood took them.

eschiss1

Liszt is known to have done so if not always intentionally (as when he couldn't remember the slow movement of the Kreutzer sonata and inserted a Gypsy-cadence into its main theme during performance). (I get the impression from the Walker biography I read that he did make distinctions between better and worse, more and less artistic, ways to make such adjustments and much preferred the former, likewise his attitude towards making cuts in his compositions about which Walker does sum up his attitude exactly so...)

jerfilm

I think I've mentioned this before, but if you haven't read Harold Shoenberg's old book "The Great Pianists- from Mozart to the Present", there are some great stories about Dreyshock, Herz, Liszt, Thalberg and others and the way the interpreted and competed, etc.  One of my favorite books.  Still available in paperback from Amazon.

Jerry

giles.enders

There is a true story about Dohnanyi in old age playing one of his piano concertos from memory and getting lost.  Afterwards a woman remonstrated with him, to which he replied' I am the composer and you have just had the privilege of hearing the first performance of the revised version.'
Geirr Tveitt was notorious at 'revising' his concertos as he played them.

eschiss1

Still offtopic to Granados, but if that topic doesn't remind me of Enescu's 2nd piano sonata, said "by some" to be a placeholder name given him to whatever sonata he felt like improvising at a concert (or perhaps a work continually in progress that he did not write down- I may have this entirely wrong and have forgotten the right story, apologies!!) - well- nothing does...

FBerwald

The Granados is being released in April as Vol. 63. Coupling.... the obvious Albéniz :)

Alan Howe