Ya all know epic effectful pieces.
Talking about those which end in full frenz and often even abruptly…and you can hear the audience mumbling a “woahhhh…” before they actually start clapping.
Had a concert today with Volodos’ Paraphrase on Rondo alla Turca as an encore…and it caused the “woahh…” effect.
yeah, i also kinda hate that volodos transcription. its too much like a circus act. if it had more interesting musical ideas, it would almost be decent.
one piece that came to mind immediately was the corigliano etude fantasy (when performed correctly). im sure i can think of more later. i am trying to avoid naming a lot of other circus act like transcriptions, which would include a lot of the mediocre liszt ones. the better ones, like norma, ernani, tannhäuser, etc would definitely work though, i think. i personally dont care for rigoletto.
Based on peoples arguments, its kinda weird that youre disliking the volodos transcription. You have to take it for what it is, a showy encorepiece with a lot of noise, “fast” playing and humor. If you start comparing it to works with great musical value, then of course you will be disappointed, its not even in the same category. Its supposed to be a circus act, like a cartoon after a great novel. Now wether you like this kind of setting is another question. I know horowitz stopped doing those because it made people forget about the actual recital, and only remember the flashy fun bit at the end. To me it realy depends on what the programme was. If you ended with something like the lisztsonata, then doing some volodos as encore is just stupidity. But if the programme ended with lets say schumann carnaval or some rach etudez or w\e, then it feels ok to play some HO or VOL stuff.
I love it, and I agree with nicco. I actually do think it has some great musical ideas, and I think its quite cleverly put together.
The recording of Volodos playing it in Japan, is proof enough that it is intended to be no more than a circus act. I will post it later on. They start clapping along with it, laughing at his technique, screaming! They sound really crazy and hyper!
I think thats what you meant w3sp
i got the Woaah… with Liszt’s HR2. Of course you have to perform cadenza of your own. Bartok sonata works also nice, but please don’t rape where you don’t have to.
Well, whether Mozart would hate it or not, according to Volodos himself it’s just a paraphrase…an experiment which hasn’t ANYTHING in common with the original piece besides the theme itself.
It’s a pure showoff piece which imho has some pretty cool combining ideas e.g. combining the first A part (played in left hand) with the B part (f# minor) played in right hand. Or later on the f# minor theme in left had octaves + the A major theme in right hand.
The Stars&Stripes arrangement by Horowitz is very cool too, but it WILL cause an noob audience to clap for sure. Just as they’d clap on the military march by Schubert haha.
@GRiM: Yeah, but that was just for fun and played veeery sloppy, hadn’t played it once in 1.5 years and the piano there was very bad with some fuckd up keys (often hearable on some certain notes).
@marcomedina: Wow now that’s a very cool piece. I dl’ed the sheetmusic and listened to some recording on youtube and gotta say the entire suite is pretty cool.
Diz epic piz might b approvd 2 b mei debutz ov da alkanizer
Any Hamelin etude that he’s recorded will do that pretty fine.
I get that kind of effect with the Godowsky Passacaglia. If you can play the more virtuosic chopgod etudes for left hand or some circus act like that then you’ll get that effect too.
It really depends on the audience more than the programme though… imo, even after a Liszt Sonata there’s always some sort of leeway for a circus act (perhaps as a second after a less showy encore) but if you get a tight-assed audience then good luck
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