UKH

I love sitting down with a piece of music and working on it until I can play it well enough do it justice. Anyone working on a piece currently? I've just spent the last month with "Solfeggietto" CPE Bach.   

Why is this restricted to pianists? I'm working on loads of bass trombone repertoire currently, and thoroughly enjoying it!

You are right! this should be open to all musicians. 

Schubert Impromptus Op 90. Part of a fifty year project!

Big Ger is a massive pianist. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdyHTAeASVw/

Major project is Rachmaninoff's Sonata No.2, but it's years away yet. 

I stopped playing as a teenager (sports got in the way), but have started again aged 47. Curently I am slowly working my way towards contrapunctus 1 of JS Bach's Art of Fugue. I can play the first part OKish, but afterwards it gets embarrassing.

CB

Can anyone play Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No2? Incredible piece of music!

Is that the mad one with no chords where it’s hard to resist playing it as fast as humanly possible? Racing arpeggios starting on an E Flat in the bass?

Playing Liszt might be like breaking into E grades; the hardest part is convincing yourself you could do it if you tried, then work on technique. I have so far failed at the first hurdle.

+1 My dad used to play these when I was a nipper in bed and he got home from work at about 10pm and hammered them out regardless. I can stumble through a couple.

In terms of the OP, my favourite is anything by Scott Joplin. They're not too technical and people like listening to them. However Santa gave me Islands by Einaudi so I have a date with that - probably several.

Good thread - like fitclub music

Thanks
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Lang Lang does one of the best renditions of this, Horowitrz's own arrangement which is even more virtuosic than the original.

I do enjoy a lot of Liszt, the consolations and nocturnes especially (Liebestraum No.3 is another project - was almost finished when I broke my hand a few years ago and I'm basically starting again), but much of it was written purely to show off his incredible abilities. His contemporary, Chopin, was the superior composer.

Agreed, i know very little about music, i just like what i like and Chopin is/was magical.

Most will disagree but i like Valentina Lisitsa's rendition of HRno2, going to find the Horowitz version.

Cannot stand Lang Lang!

I love Einaudi, Nuvole Bianche, I Giorni, Divenire, Primavera, Experience....i could go on. 

I haven't played piano in over 15 years an i keep telling myself im going to buy one and learn, just to play those pieces.

Ok, troll hat half on.....

Does anyone else also dislike the style of Lang Lang? Technically ultra precise, but almost automaton like in its lack of soul. I have seen him play Chopin and Liszt in Munich and was less than impressed.

Just compare his recording of Chopin's nocturnes with, say, the Brigitte Engerer or Arthur Rubinstein versions.

.... troll hat off.....

Great thread, by the way!

He is mostly known as Bang Bang for the way he beats the keyboard like it owes him money.

Its worth comparing some of his recordings against the likes of Martha Agerich.

I like him, but because he's a showman, and has flamboyance - a bit like Liszt himself. He wouldn't be my first choice for a recording.

Like i said before i am no expert, but its his body movements and facial expressions that i don't like....really annoys me! Plus i don't think his renditions could hold a candle to others in the same "league".

That's the one!

CPE Bach's Solfeggietto was my piano high point as a kid, I had lessons for a few years but adolescence in the industrial north-east did not tally with continuing piano lessons so I ditched it so as not to look like even more of a ponce at school. 

I've suddenly taken up playing again at 83 having not played for 20 years and even then only sporadically since my youth. To my amazement it is extraordinary how the neurones have joined up and I find I can still hack my way through the Waldstein first movement pretty effectively and the last movement of the Mendelssohn Gminor piano concerto which I played as a schoolboy (my teacher was Ronald Smith, "the amazing Mister Smith".) However, no neurones can replace the end of my R hand little finger which I took off on 5th Avenue back in the 1960s, awkward for octave passages. But oh the joy of sitting down once again at a piano and finding the pleasure of playing rather than just listening. Pourvu que ça doure as Napoléon's mother said at his coronation as Emperor. 

At the other end of the age range, I saw a Chinese child prodigy play the Waldstein in Buxton. Tremendous!

Mine was Evgenia Horowitz. Vladimir was her great grandmother's brother. A tenuous link, I know.

My excuse is a fusion of two bones in my right hand, which limits some of my flexibility. The result of a fall on Smith's (Ben Nevis) Three years ago.

Ha, sounds like there is still hope for me (even though I never really reached your level in the first place...)!

CB

I started playing again about 5 years ago after a 25 year layoff and was pleasantly surprised how quickly I regained and surpassed my childhood ability, although in fairness I was crap as a teenager because I didn't practice anywhere near enough.

At the moment I'm working on Chopin's Minute Waltz. I always thought I just couldn't plat that fast (not that I can play it at full speed yet) but then I decided that that was because I never tried to because I didn't think I could!

 So working on the theory that you get better at whatever it is you train at I initially started trying to play scales much faster and then moved on to pieces which didn't have too much expression in them, just lots of notes which I could gradually work faster and faster and was quite surprised when I tried the Minute Waltz that it came together quite quickly because when I tried it a few years ago I couldn't get anywhere near it.

I'm in the process of memorising it at the moment so I don't have to read it and play it at the same time and can just concentrate on the playing.

I'm amazed how many climbers turn out also to be musicians. 

I'd say Liszt and Rachmaninov are definitely in the E grades and way out if my reach. I'd call myself a solid VS pianist and recorder player (whilst barely a VDiff climber). Mostly Baroque. I had various thoughts for things to learn over Christmas ... but my daughter is back home with her flute. So I've been learning the piano accomp of Bach's Suite no 2 - the one with the "Badinerie" at the end.

I am working on Bach's Bourrée from Suite in E minor, Carulli's Romanze and Tárrega's Maria on guitar. I can play them but to get them to sound like beautiful music...that's the thing. The more I try, the more my admiration for the masters increase, bit like my climbing. 

At times peeps on the internet hit a particularly difficult nail right on the head. Lovely to see this kind of humour just when it's most needed.

Go for it. I had a 10 year break in my 20s and then went and did just that. You do need time to play though - I failed with a cello a few years later for that reason, may give it another go sometime.

On a bit of a tangent, one of the film awards ceremonies in 2003 - possibly the Academy Awards - gave Colin Farrell the job of announcing Best Actor for Adrien Brody in The Pianist. Deliberate pranking?

I had to choose between classical guitar (long nails on my right hand), and climbing (the nails stopped me crimping). Not to mention that a full-time job leaves you only really enough time for one serious hobby. I decided I'll climb in my youth, and when I'm old I can pick up music again.

Well done on the minute waltz, that's one I will hope to learn soon.

Similarly I have returned to the piano after a long gap and have surpassed the level I got to as a child. I actually think I learn more quickly now as a middle aged person. Not sure where this notion of not being able to learn an instrument as an adult comes from? 

To further extend the climbing metaphor, try not to get intimidated by a composer's reputation and just pick something that sounds good and you'd like to play.

Definitely! Perhaps also the best pianist is the one having the most fun (so long as no-one is listening).

But I do love the fact that it is pretty much impossible to fall off a piano stool.