let’s make a poll
- Liszt could play the leaps
- Liszt couldn’t play the leaps
- Ban da X!
0 voters
Seriously though he definitely could play the leaps, like any decent pianist nowadays can.
But even the best pianists make a mess of the leaps every once in awhile
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Horowitz played the shit out of it in 1946
33:17
Not any worse than any live modern rec, honestly
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I can’t find it now but there is a 1948 Richter recital where he absolutely massacres the final octave leaps, much worse than what Horowitz does here. Must have been so unsatisfying for him
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Hmm, Richter rarely played that spot 100% clean but that was not the point.
He went for raw excitement. Like in the Liszt Mephisto and Wilde Jagd leaps.
I doubt Richter would have been bothered by a few missed notes.
His 1961 studio rec is pristine btw.
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I think that’s the way to go. Horowitz is taking the easy way out, it’s clearly the climax of the composition and I think it should sound like it.
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The 1946 Horowitz unleash is pretty wikid.
I wonder how he played it in the 1920’s
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No it’s not, it’s a mezzo-forte precision whack-a-mole performance. He plays it pretty safe.
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My favorite rec overall is Moiseiwitsch 1953
The leaps make or break most modern audition and comp perfs, but are a very small part of the piece.
I honestly think it’s much better to go all in and fail than to pussy out and drop tempo and dynamics to play it cleanly. Even if you miss half the notes, the effect is still there. If you play it safe but hit everything however, you mess up both the narrative and the structure.
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I shouldn’t go there, but it’s like the revised cadenza to Rach-3. He’s been building it up for minutes, and then… nothing special. For me it simply doesn’t make sense to play it that way - unless you have a very anti-virtuosic way with the piece. I did think the revision made sense in Abbey Simon’s performance for instance.
I don’t prefer Kissin for most of the piece but he gets the leaps just right imo even if it’s missing a couple of notes.
I like the revised version.
The big caddy is excessive imho and the heaviness can get tedious.
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Hahah da errorz wuz zumwut
RECTIFIED 
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Arrau’s leaps are amazing!
The second movement is trash. Sofronitsky for mvt 1.
Yes
Sofronitsky is pretty gud.
Oh my god, Yves Nat’s EMI rec is the worst example of that. It’s made even worse by the extremely hard splice that occurs right before the leaps which ruins the entire recording.
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zepp demo cumah
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