Wednesday night, piano night.

This week at least...

Seeing everyone else at home had their things to do, and I can get to the grand piano in the church down the road on evenings when there's a club meeting in the adjacent hall... I sloped off after dinner to spend an hour at a decent keyboard.

I always feel a bit naughty playing from Pictures at an Exhibition in a church (Don't get too excited, I play it all veeery slow). In particular Gnomus and The Hut on Chicken's Legs seem a bit too devilish for the space, so I stumbled through the first Promenade and then stuck to Beethoven and Chopin, cleaning my hands with little bits of Bach in between.

Chopin I tend to read through over and again in the hope that my fingers will one day just do it without my having to put in any effort. Beethoven is great when you just want to revel in the range of sound you can make. but Bach I could pick a piece and play the same one over and over and over again.

Actually that's pretty much what I did... I'm now really good at the Cmajor prelude from book two of the 48 preludes and fugues. I've been playing it over and over again for about 10 years now... My wife hates it. But... I'm ashamed to admit I only got really good at it in the last few months when I finally decided to pull it apart, play it separate hands, work out the phrasing, and generally try to play "that melody" over "that bass" instead of "all those notes". Having only now discovered what this does (I wish I'd been humble enough to take the time ten years ago) I was suddenly able to make sense of the fugue that follows it and also to do less damage to the Cminor prelude and fugue. Now I'm working on the Dmajor prelude.

This is Sviatoslav Richter playing The Cmajor prelude and fugue.




In the prelude you have two play two instrumental lines with each hand. If you just play "all those notes", especially with the in the right hand, you miss the opportunity to bring out a wonderful interchange between the top two lines. Richter does a nice job of this. If you browse through youtube for BWV870 and compare him to the likes of Ashkenazy and Glenn Gould you'll see what I consider to be the wrong way to play this piece. Instead of bringing out the conversation between the parts which makes me love this piece, they seem to hash them all together and make the right hand sound like one very complicated but rather boring melody.

Now, I like my version even better than Richter's. Why shouldn't I? It makes perfect sense that I should be more likely to play a piece of music in the way I like best than anybody else... even if they are famous.

What I would like to do over the next year or so is to get hold of a suitable video camera and start making my own recordings and sharing them on here.