Raindrop Prelude
July 10th 2010 11:24
Hello.....
I am now listening to Chopin's Prelude No. 15. It's GORGEOUS. So, pretty. I bought this cd from JB HiFi for, like, eight bucks. (i love getting cheap music). It's Chopin Piano Favourites with Idil Biret on the piano, who i have just this very exact moment discovered, off Wikipedia, is a girl. I dunno, for some reason i thought a guy was playing. Funnily enough, a friend of mine thought it was a guy playing the Rach 3 that I played off my iPod for him. It was, in fact, the magnificent Martha Argerich. He said he always assumed it was a real man's concerto... which is pretty silly, i guess (except for the massive chords thing - women tend to have smaller hands i guess... i wouldn't know, i span a ninth comfortably, and the opening to the Rach 2 is a mighty stretch)
anyway, yes, Idil Biret is a girl and so is Martha Argerich and i actually own 2 versions of the Raindrop Prelude played by each of them. I prefer Idil's version. Martha plays it too quickly, which i guess is her curse (a blessing when it comes to Tchaikovsky's concerto, have you heard the slow-ass versions of that?) Idil takes her time, savours the note, which is a very Chopin thing. He's all about the rubato AT THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE, and Idil tends to do it all at the right time and place. It's kind of like making jokes about dead people... you have to not only do it at the right time and place, but in the right way... and Chopin hated excessive or inappropriate rubato... but imagine his second nocturne without rubato? It'd be like a bird without feathers (i'm all about the similes today...)
Chopin also hated when people gave nicknames to his pieces, like Raindrop, Military, Funeral March. He didn't want his listeners to be given a definition of what he thought should be purely interpretive. My other theory is that it was because Beethoven got a lot of nicknames for his pieces, and he hated beethoven's style (i'm sure that's not the reason).
I remember - way before i knew what a prelude or a sonata or an opus was - i asked my piano teacher (who is also my best friend) - why didn't pianists name their pieces? How does Concerto no. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 give justice to a piece? and she said, Firstly, composers outputted so much work, they couldn't name it all. and i think that's all she said. but i realise now, you wouldn't want to give a name to a classical piece. leastways one that described the piece (yes i am aware of operas and tone poems, but i'm talking about the grander scale of sonata's, symphonies, concertos etc.). And this was Chopin's point. a work is only as good as the listener's ability to interpret it and transform it into whatever it means to them. i guess the raindrop prelude sounds like raindrops. but to me, it's those chords in the middle section, that spring from nowhere, that arouse so much passion and yearning, that a word or title can't really cut it the way simply listening to it can.
- Andrew
I am now listening to Chopin's Prelude No. 15. It's GORGEOUS. So, pretty. I bought this cd from JB HiFi for, like, eight bucks. (i love getting cheap music). It's Chopin Piano Favourites with Idil Biret on the piano, who i have just this very exact moment discovered, off Wikipedia, is a girl. I dunno, for some reason i thought a guy was playing. Funnily enough, a friend of mine thought it was a guy playing the Rach 3 that I played off my iPod for him. It was, in fact, the magnificent Martha Argerich. He said he always assumed it was a real man's concerto... which is pretty silly, i guess (except for the massive chords thing - women tend to have smaller hands i guess... i wouldn't know, i span a ninth comfortably, and the opening to the Rach 2 is a mighty stretch)
anyway, yes, Idil Biret is a girl and so is Martha Argerich and i actually own 2 versions of the Raindrop Prelude played by each of them. I prefer Idil's version. Martha plays it too quickly, which i guess is her curse (a blessing when it comes to Tchaikovsky's concerto, have you heard the slow-ass versions of that?) Idil takes her time, savours the note, which is a very Chopin thing. He's all about the rubato AT THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE, and Idil tends to do it all at the right time and place. It's kind of like making jokes about dead people... you have to not only do it at the right time and place, but in the right way... and Chopin hated excessive or inappropriate rubato... but imagine his second nocturne without rubato? It'd be like a bird without feathers (i'm all about the similes today...)
Chopin also hated when people gave nicknames to his pieces, like Raindrop, Military, Funeral March. He didn't want his listeners to be given a definition of what he thought should be purely interpretive. My other theory is that it was because Beethoven got a lot of nicknames for his pieces, and he hated beethoven's style (i'm sure that's not the reason).
I remember - way before i knew what a prelude or a sonata or an opus was - i asked my piano teacher (who is also my best friend) - why didn't pianists name their pieces? How does Concerto no. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 give justice to a piece? and she said, Firstly, composers outputted so much work, they couldn't name it all. and i think that's all she said. but i realise now, you wouldn't want to give a name to a classical piece. leastways one that described the piece (yes i am aware of operas and tone poems, but i'm talking about the grander scale of sonata's, symphonies, concertos etc.). And this was Chopin's point. a work is only as good as the listener's ability to interpret it and transform it into whatever it means to them. i guess the raindrop prelude sounds like raindrops. but to me, it's those chords in the middle section, that spring from nowhere, that arouse so much passion and yearning, that a word or title can't really cut it the way simply listening to it can.
- Andrew
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Heck, if you glanced at the blog's name for a passing moment, thank you. i think the process of writing all this has been enough to be grateful for xx