Re: Increasing standards of playing?

[Leah Stanwyck <lstanwyk@RYERSON.CA>]

I've never attempted Gaspard - Scarbo is definitely a tricky one hehehe!
There's no question the technical quality of playing has improved quite
a bit over the last 100 years - just like most competitive sports.
Ballet dancers are much more flexible as well these days, since the
times of Pavlova or Fonteyn.  Think the competitive aspects of our
nature cause us to strive for something better than what has come before
us - a sort of 'standing on the shoulders of giants' thing.  I remember
fellow BMus students always trying to 'one up' each other on the
technical brilliancy of certain passages, etc.  I once reheased years
ago in a studio next to Pogorelich - he was playing Liszt's B minor -
now that was pretty intimiating!

Cheers!

James Whiskeychan wrote:

> Cristalle has made some good points.  I disagree with your first point.
>
> > A couple nights ago I was talking to a friend of mine who's studying
> > piano
> > at the local university. She made an interesting comment, along the
> > lines
> > of
> > "standards of playing piano have risen since the last
> > generation of pianists." As an example she gave Ravel's Gaspard,
> > saying that twenty years ago there were only a handful of pianists in
> > Canada who could play it and now "everyone" (well, of course not
> > literally everyone!) plays it. (She just learned it last year, for
> > example.)
>
>
> I don't think you can take Gasping Gaspard as an indicator of any kind of
> standard.  Pieces fall in and out of favour.  It is quite likely that
> in ten
> years "everyone" will be playing something else.
>
> > Do you think (as I do) that it's mainly due to Glenn Gould's favorite
> > activity: the splicing and editing of recordings?
>
>
> snip
>
> > But because the public has gotten
> > used to hearing an artificial, edited technical perfection, they have
> > begun
> > to demand this not only in recordings but in concerts as well,
> > putting more
> > pressure on performers to acquire extreme technical polish.
>
>
>
> You could be right.  It has been my experience that when I "let myself
> go"
> during a performance and get into the music I make  blunders.  If I am
> carefully trying to avoid finger slips the music sounds bland.
>
> > Or have more prodigies appeared in the population, for some inexplicable
> > reason
>
>
> Perhaps with mass media we are more aware of musicians from other
> countries.
>  Also, until recently, air travel made concertizing outside one's own
> continent easy.
>
> > And, finally, do you really count this as an "increased standard of
> > playing?" Just because more pianists can play repertoire that is
> > famous for being difficult, does it really mean they're better
> > pianists, or just more technically fluent? It seems to me there are
> > more important things in piano playing than technical brilliancy.
>
>
> Agreed.  Glenn Gould was always famous not only for his technical
> brilliance
> but his personal interpretations.  Competitions tend to produce clones.
> Making music is more important than technique.
>
> James
>
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