cosempliciebanane:

Lunch-break

Me 85% of the time I practice

besbrodepianos:

A Bechstein concert grand piano with a polished, black case and carved griffins on piano cheeks. This Bechstein piano is the same model that Franz Liszt played. A rare model.

Reference Number: 1940
Make:     Bechstein
Serial Number:     13420
Age:     1882
Wood:     Black
Finish:     Polished
Size [cm]:     length: 265   width: 155
Description:     Piano to be rebuilt. Price includes rebuild.

_{La Musique de Piano, II | [listen here] | a selection of exhilirating piano compositions by Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy}

_{i. gnossiene no. 1 - satie | ii. le gibet - ravel | iii. clair de lune - debussy | iv. vexations - satie | v. alborada del gracioso - ravel | vi. ballade - debussy | vii. gymnopedie no. 3 - satie | viii. ondine - ravel | ix. brouillards - debussy | x. d'edriopthalma - satie | xi. pavane pour une infante defunte - ravel | xii. girl with the flaxen hair - debussy | xiii. gymnopedie no. 1 - satie | xiv. scarbo - ravel | xv. ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest - debussy | xvi. nocturne no. 1 - satie | xvii. valses nobles et sentimentales - ravel | xviii. reverie - debussy}

_{La Musique de Piano, I | [listen here] | a selection of enlightening piano compositions by Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schumann}

_{i. liebestraume - liszt | ii. venetian gondolied - mendelssohn | iii. tristesse - chopin | iv. des abends - schumann | v. un sospiro - liszt | vi. lieder ohne worte op. 85 no. 1 - mendelssohn | vii. nocturne in c sharp minor - chopin | viii. von fremden landern - schumann | ix. au lac de wallendstadt - liszt | x. lieder ohne worte op. 30 no. 1 - mendelssohn | xi. raindrop prelude - chopin | xii. in der nacht - schumann | xiii. consolation no. 3 - liszt | xiv. romans sans paroles op. 19 no. 1 - mendelssohn | xv. nocturne op. 9 no. 1 - chopin | xvi. traumerei - schumann | xvii. mephisto waltz no. 1 - liszt | xviii. sonata op. 106 - mendelssohn | xix. prelude in e minor - chopin | xx.davidsbundlertanze - schumann | xxi. les adieux - liszt | xxii. fantasie op. 28 - mendelssohn | xxiii. ballade no. 1 in g minor - chopin | xxiv. piano sonata no. 1, mvmnt. 1 - schumann}

Frederic Chopin and Clara Wieck Schumann

Robert Schumann’s critical praise introduced the name Fryderyk Chopin to Europe. His wife Clara’s performances secured a place for Chopin’s music in the piano repertoire. In return, Chopin had very few kind things to say about Robert’s compositions. But he described Clara as “the only woman in Germany who can play my works.”

Chopin’s Variations on the Mozart aria “La ci darem la mano” inspired Robert Schumann to write his rave review— “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius” —in 1831. And who better to play it than a young piano prodigy named Clara Wieck, barely 12 years old at the time. It’s the first Chopin piece she performed.

By then Clara was already on her first European concert tour, which included a stop in Paris. Chopin didn’t attend. But when Chopin visited Leipzig in the fall of 1835, Felix Mendelssohn introduced them. Clara played some of her own music, a piece by Robert and two Chopin etudes. The performance reportedly moved Chopin to tears.

This was a time of transition for the piano recital in Europe. Audiences and critics had a taste for light, showy repertoire. After a recital she gave in Hamburg, Clara’s father Friedrich Wieck wrote that one reviewer called Chopin’s music “musical nonsense.” He added later, “How people must wonder at Clara, who plays such crazy things by preference.”

In HIS critical writing, Robert Schumann dismissed that sort of response as philistinism. And Clara only increased her focus on the new Romantics: Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin, turning recitals into a more serious musical platform. All of these composers would die young, but Clara carried on as an eloquent champion of their legacy. Robert said his wife was “a greater virtuoso” than Chopin: “Clara…gives almost more meaning to his composition than he does himself.” [x]

diaryofkat2:

Music, when soft voice dies, vibrates in the memory

Frederic Chopin and Robert Schumann

They were two pillars of the Romantic Generation, born three months and 400 miles apart. One was a Polish exile who made his fortune in Paris; the other, a German, eventually betrayed by his own imagination.

As a young music critic, Robert Schumann introduced the 21-year-old Chopin to Europe with the famous words, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” Schumann was also the one who wrote, “The works of Chopin are cannons concealed amongst flowers.“ And this: “He plays just like he composes, in other words in his own unique way.”

That’s not to say Schumann was unfailingly positive about his Polish contemporary. He noted “blemishes” in Chopin’s Op. 25 Etudes, and famously wrote that in his Piano Sonata No. 2 Chopin had “yoked together his four maddest children.”

Chopin seems to have had far less to say about Schumann. For one thing, he was not a critic. For another, he did not admire Schumann (or many other composers, for that matter). Typical was his reaction to Schumann’s “Carnaval.” According to a second-hand account, Chopin told his publisher it was not music at all.

On the other hand, Chopin did dedicate his Ballade No. 2 to Schumann. And different though their music and their opinions of each other may have been, posterity has yoked Chopin and Schumann together. As critic Harold Schonberg put it, their innovations demonstrated that “a small but perfect form, one that captured and exploited a single idea, could be its own aesthetic justification.” [x]

detailsofpaintings:

Edward Poynter, A Day Dream

1863