for the piano: Schubert vs. Mozart vs. Chopin

young aerosmith would have voted Chopin so fast it would have hurt his finger, but not so it hurt it bad enough to keep him from punching you in the face if you suggested that you were going to vote for either of the others. but Alicia de la Rocha's Mozart sonatas completely murder me, he sounds so modern & super-intelligent, as literary as musical, kinda, and Schubert...sometimes I think the purpose of being alive is to begin understanding Schubert

I am still 'young' so I'm going chopin

considering pf repertoire alone, chopin by a fair margin, though in general i'd rather the other two

liszt above the lot tho, and bobby schu 'in with a shout'

I feel you dayo and may still vote Chopin, this is a really hard one to vote on for me, but may I strongly suggest you check out Paul Badura-Skoda doing Schubert's sontatas 14 & 20...unfuckingbelievable

lizst will be in a future for the piano poll

probably llszt vs. schumann vs. beethoven

also it's alicia de larrocha, lest anyone get worried abt any relation

Chopin for me, too.

tbh I may also vote based on who has the most punnable name

mozart was a drag to play back when I played piano, all light & staccato-y and summery, could not roil the dark storms of a 9 year old's soul

mozart's piano concertos are supreme but the sonatas are mostly nice juvenilia and the rest of his solo rep fairly small iirc, with a few nice trinkets like 'ah vous dirais...' variations

I kind of don't have any problem with Chopin taking this in a walk but if anybody's been totally floored by Chopin and hasn't had "holy fuck, wait a minute" moments with Mozart sonatas I wanna say fuckin give the dude a hard listen because for me the Mozart I listened to at 16 sounded very different from the one I heard at 30, etc

Mozart is and remains my favourite classical composer, but when it comes to piano music, Schubert was pretty ace as well.
This alone secures the win for Mozart though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LqdfjZYEVE

3rd for the piano poll will be debussy vs. ravel vs. satie and satie will beat debussy and I will go all choogla-choogla eyes with rage like a guy in a warner bros cartoon

yeah but geir u admitted u know fuck all about classical music, like only a few classic radio staples and think string quartets are for nerds iirc

if debussy beats satie in an ILM poll...

...

there's no way dayo but debussy's etudes are just the fuckin business, satie can't compete imo

Exactly. And I *really* like Satie, too. But yeah.

i've never had the chance to hear the mozart sonatas at 30 obv, but i've probably heard each of them a hundred times and i'd be surprised if i eventually decide more than three or four are really amazing

wait aerosmith

I meant if satie beats debussy

I fuckin love debussy

I meant, if satie beats debussy in an ILM poll, I am personally driving to ILM's server center with a giant magnet

it's late, I'm tired

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1oapO3eZ9A

I had one of those weird personal-moment things with a Mozart piano sonata about ten years ago that changed the way Mozart sounded to me. I know his piano sonatas aren't big ambitious things like the company I put them in, but one morning the clock radio went off and it was some piano music and I'm lying there listening goin', what the fuck, this is amazing, who's this, and I lay there hearing the whole thing through and at the end of it, holy shit, Mozart? for real? no way! and ever since then I always feel like I'm hearing real gleaning of genuinely-modern stuff in Mozart. weird little dart-in-from-the-future things. just me probably but it was like I had suddenly heard a voice in his music that I hadn't noticed before, something very distinct.

there's plenty of play and experiment in the sonatas, 'rondo alla turca' often cited as the first use of ~exotic~ eastern material in the western classical tradition

Chopin > Mozart > Schubert

totally voting chopin btw

nice try with the "yeah I used to like him but now I'm older and wiser" verbal jujitsu but chopin is for life — u gettin' soft old man

(altho "the purpose of life is to begin to understand Schubert" intrigues me, admittedly)

nice try with the "yeah I used to like him but now I'm older and wiser" verbal jujitsu but chopin is for life — u gettin' soft old man

― odd future wolves GM trade them all (bernard snowy), Thursday, 3 March 2011 15:33 (58 seconds ago)

tbombing with fiyah like osaka 1945

wish it wasn't 10:30 am so I could be quaffing bourbon and listening to nocturnes :<

someday we'll do a "which classical composer is best to listen to stoned" poll but I'll warn you in advance that Beethoven wins that one too

Chopin just makes me want to kill myself, but I'm not familiar enough with Schubert or with Mozart's piano music to cast any vote. So: nothing.

xxp at some point lurching up from the computer to twirl unsteadily 'round the room with my eyes closed in a look of pure innocent bliss as the camera circles slowly

yo aero have you ever listened to the cycle of preludes+fugues Shostakovich did after Bach's WTC? #24 — in d-minor, THE SADDEST OF ALL KEYS — is basically the trippiest piano shit EVAR

"fireflies circling and dancing above the corpses lying in a field after an epic battle" is how I described it the first time I heard it

have any conspiracy people noticed that Bach was up on the WTC hundreds of years ahead of time

actually there was a memorable ILM thread where somebody asked for light dinner party piano music recs and someone mentioned that piece (referring to it as "the WTC") and the thread-starter was like "are you sure? that sounds like it might be too sad/somber for the occasion"

not making this up, it was pretty funny

btw here is the shostakovich, played by Keith Jarrett(!) because that is the first one I found on the tubes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM9PSUJ95bE

Voting Schubert, he looks like a friend of mine... or vice versa I suppose. Good music too. Nice sounds.

the chillllll sounds of frankie schu

hahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q2NPG0F5ko

none could get close to the despondency of schubert, and it's not just the bresson connection

Schubert for sure. Listen to Piano Sonata in B flat (DV. 960). The stuff he was writing was pretty much unprecedented at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkH0cPzg-IU&feature=related

I love me some Mozart but I'll give Fred the piano and Wolfie the strings

If this is STRICTLY about solo piano, then it's Schubert for me. (The Mozart solo sonatas are a nut I have not yet cracked but I am certain it's still my problem, not his).

But if the brief includes Mozart's piano concertos, then I cannot vote. The Mozart PCs vs. the Schubert sonatas? Best stalemate in the universe.

I actually wrote a bunch about Schubert already in the Liszt v LvB v Schumann poll thread.

Chopin, jeez I've tried SO MANY TIMES with him, heard the whole body of work dozens of times, and it just never quite takes. I think I'm just not made for him, constitutionally. He's too perfect! The bleeding edges and ruinous grasp of Liszt and the torn impulses and disjunctions of Schumann suit me better on a gut level.

That's a really interesting take on Chopin, to me. I don't subscribe to it - he seems so emotional to me, the first thing I feel when I hear Chopin is affinity, sympathy, common emotional ground. But I do see what you're saying: every note is in place. Most of my favorite music is rife with imperfection! But Chopin -- the depth of emotion is all to me, with him.

Yeah i feel that it's THERE but it just doesn't pierce into me somehow?

It's funny, if I was a pianist instead of a guitarist/former saxist I wonder how different my responses to all these guys would be...

OK, I'm curious what an example of a classical piece that's appealing because it's "rife with imperfections" would be. I agree that "every note is in place" with Chopin, but that's not exactly the first thing I would think of to describe, say, some of the Op. 28 preludes. Or the coda of the second sonata!

The pieces that initially got me into Chopin were the polonaises.

Well yeah finale of the second sonata, true true. In fact most of the second sonata.

Also the etudes, the barcarolle, the ballades, the scherzos

The melodic/harmonic material as well, especially in the D 960, though you could argue that it also falls under the umbrella of 'structure'.

I just wonder if melodic/harmonic means we are talking about Schubert's musicality (as being transcendent) or if we are again talking about formal matters.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between form and musicality in music.

I.e. it's all form to me.

"Musicality" for me would be the distinction between something that manages some kind of expressive accomplishment in its use of form rather than merely managing something that is of interest for its formal aspects.

I get what you're saying. For me, a form is 'musical' (in the meliorative sense) if it is formally interesting, which always implies expressivity, including when the stated goal is inexpressivity. Said form can be simple or complex, and I don't think of it as being reducible to 'dead notes on a page'. Rather, the interaction between score and performance (in most classical music anyway) brings about a specific form that is the music itself, which can then be broken down into subcategories (treatment of melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.), so I suppose that's a broader understanding of what we usually mean when we say 'form' or 'structure'. But I'm not a musician so my conception of these things is no doubt rather idiosyncratic.

It seems to me that the view of music you are describing would lead one to think that a Mozart opera overture is only as interesting as one of a lesser composer as long as there are the same number of things that are of formal interest in the latter, i.e., that there is no consideration of the magic in music that, yes, works within a formal design but cannot be reduced to it.

Then you misunderstand my point, which is precisely that form is not a mere architectural plan. It is alive, and it is unpredictable, and it is context-dependent. I get the sense that we agree but are approaching the concept of form from two divergent angles.

If it's context-dependent, then I'm curious what those contexts are that make these sonatas transcendent in ways that Mozart and Chopin are not.

Every musical performance is a singular event that creates a context of its own. Such as Sviatoslav Richter's above. Pollini's readings of Schubert's late sonatas, while incredible in their own right, don't emphasize their 'transcendent' aspects nearly as much.

By the way, I love Chopin (Mozart, not so much, aside from his minor key works, all too rare in his oeuvre).

I thought we were talking about the compositions!

I mentioned above that I think of form (in this context, at least) as stemming from the encounter between score and performance.

OK, I'm just referring back to your original statement, which was about what these three composers wrote.

The music was written to be played, no? Neither composer was a conceptual artist. Anyway, I've said my (aesthetic) piece. YMMV, etc.

I get where pomenitul is coming from because listening to those Schubert sonatas is one of those "this somehow is more than music" feelings - like he's wrangling something bigger than he is, but managing to stay in command of his instruments in so doing. but Chopin's waltzes practically define "transcendence" - from simple, recognizable-to-his-friends folk themes, he sculpts music that's both enduring in its form & graspable by people who know nothing of waltzing - some of the most beautiful music ever written, and also just some dances - this for me is transcendence itself, in part because you can transcend or stay earthbound as you see fit

I probably haven't listened to the waltzes enough thinking they weren't as serious as some of his other pieces but I remember liking them a lot and I have a nice old LP of them played by Ingrid Haebler so that problem is easily rectified!

chopin is great but i confess i haven't heard any of his piano work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJXYqAim3ks

I personally favor Schubert over Chopin and Mozart by quite a lot; I think I favor him over Beethoven at this point, even. He’s probably my favorite 19c composer right now.

His last three sonatas are stupendous (and the D956 Quintet, my god) but I hope it doesn’t lead to people undervaluing the earlier ones... I think D894 is my favorite of all.

I like what JCLC wrote about the waltzes there. ‘The art that conceals art’

Schubert's String Quartet no. 14 >>Chopin's Nocturnes>>Mozart's Piano Concertos. They are all rather good though.

Mozart PCs are amazing - my favorite area of his. I wish my current way of living was more conducive to opera listening though. I get the sense that’s the meatiest bit of him.

tbombing with fiyah like osaka 1945

just made me laugh out loud, god this place is poorer since you retired

The adagio of K. 332 is something I can listen to over and over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXtjkNpTPy8

I haven't listened to any classical music in a long time, which is my bad. I had a very stressful weekend and was lucky to find this album on YouTube. I have the CD at home, but not digitized I don't think. As a good Bill Evans nerd, I of course love Chopin, but ultimately, I think Schubert's Impromptus are my favorite. It's just something I always go back to. Years ago, I would have Debussy hands down, but the older I get, I go back to Schubert most frequently.

yeah - Schubert has been taking over more and more of my solo piano bandwidth with each year I get older too - i play him and Schumann the most out of all the 18th and 19th c masters these days. I'm not sure if it's just that I wore out every beethoven sonata and Liszt piece with intensive comparative listening for so many years or if there really is something that makes Schubert a glove for the conscious aging mind

Schubert Impromptus are def among my favorite romantic piano works

my faves

Sonata D784
Sonata D894
Sonatas D958 and D959
both Impromptus sets

I logged in to my Google Play Music Library for the first time in several years this morning because I knew had a bunch of classical saved on it and I came across this album, which is just fantastic. I went through a period a while back where I was where I was pretty much obsessed with Cesar Franck and finding that CD for a quarter at a Salvation Army was just short of finding a holy grail for me. Definitely right there with the Schubert stuff.

I went through a Franck period, definitely due for another! Got an old '50s LP with a side-long version of that Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue. Also fond of his chamber music.

(Old Columbia LP by Witold Malcuzynski)

The last 8 or 9 Schubert sonatas are a total treasure trove, with D960 standing as the one unquestionably perfect work. I don't know if when people talk about the Impromptus they include Klavierstucke, but the second part of that in my opinion is, along with D960 and the adagio from the String Quintet, the mountain top of Schubert's achievement.

I always forget about those (D946)

Gonna listen to them tomorrow

I realized I didn't have any recordings of the Ravel solo piano stuff, so I fired up Arkiv music picked up this guy. The 'Miroirs' suite that opens disc one is pretty muc worth it on its own.

RE: Cesar Franck
While I was going through my phase, I picked up this album at a thrift shop because it was something I didn't have. I don't normally like those multiple composers on one record kind of deals, but I'm glad I picked up that one, because 'Psyche`' has become one of my favorite pieces of music ever.

Freedom, thank you for the recs on the later Schubert stuff. Was able to get on Arkiv and find some recordings. Very much looking forward to hearing them.

Also, I actually have this album, but for some reason, I only have 'Reliquie' archived on my computer. Probably get that second digitized this weekend. I love side one of the album (again, 'Reliquie'), but I need to sit down with side two.

Miroirs is my favorite Ravel piano work. My favorite recording of it is Frederic Chiu on harmonia mundi. Also Abbey Simon on Vox (part of a cheap and excellent complete Ravel piano set). I'll have to listen to that Centaur one you ordered.

Gilbert Kalish is awesome. I got to see him and Wu Man performing Crumb and Bartok's two-piano works. I don't think that solo Schubert of his has ever made it to CD. If you digitize that LP I'd love to be privy.

Richter on the Monitor label is a fantastic Reliquie (he has later live ones which are too slow).

As far as solo Ravel goes, these are my tops:

Gaspard de la Nuit: Ondine and, especially, Le Gibet
Miroirs: La Vallée Des Cloches
Sonatine: Mouvement De Menuet
Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales: Moins Vif (the 7th one)
À la Manière de ... Borodine

But the rest are all fantastic as well, et al.

I put on the Ravel set yesterday evening for my pre-bedtime internet browsing and it accompanied me off into dreamland. Listening again this morning at work —obviously paying a bit more attention this time— and the entire first disc is absolutely wonderful. There's a lot of tension in this stuff, but he always seems to find release and redemption, even if it's really brief; usually in the last ten seconds of the piece. Just top stuff. Really can't believe I'm 37 years old and just now hearing this for the first time.

Also, xpost to Jon: Yeah, I did some research on Arkiv and couldn't find that particular recording of 'Drei Klavierstücke' D946 anywhere (the Gilbert Kalish one). I'll digitize it when I get home this evening and YouTube it for you.

basically any nonesuch solo piano LPs that never made it to silver, i am categorically interested in hearing (ditto anything on Connoisseur Society - their way of recording pianos is heavenly to me)

I used to just buy any Nonesuch classical and "Explorer Series" stuff I came across just because. Never saw any "Silver Series" records that I recall.

As far as Connoisseur Society, I know I've seen those records a million times if I've seen them once. Off the top of my head, the only one that I know I have for sure is this one, but the vinyl is not in the best shape.

Also, what about Scriabin? I remember reading about his piano stuff in the Bill Evans biography and then coming across a bunch of the records serendipitously a couple weeks later. A couple were the ones on Melodiya, with the goofy faux "psychedelic" covers. I got them home, listened through once and completely forgot about them. I still have the records, but I remember nothing about them, outside of the ridiculous sleeve art.

we did ravel on one of the other "for the piano" polls!

for the piano #3: Debussy vs. Ravel vs. Satie

and then the middle was was schumann and liszt and beethoven

for the piano #2: Beethoven vs. Liszt vs. Schumann

We never got around to Bartok v Prokofiev v Messiaen

Also, what about Scriabin?

Try this one: https://open.spotify.com/album/6MUV87OKjoPXU6UvOwmndT

As for Ravel, I love Bavouzet's set. He does away with the dare I say anglocentric emphasis on softer tones that we've come to expect from 'impressionist' composers.

You are welcome, V/Austin.

Schiff is not always seen as a go-to interpreter of Schubert, but this is a very good set of the non-sonata solo piano stuff: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Impromptus-Klavierstucke-Moments-Musicaux/dp/B000007OTU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1530918314&sr=8-8&keywords=schubert+schiff

ECM Schiff much more interesting than London Decca Schiff in almost any repertoire IMO

Jon — Sorry, I know it's late, but I got there eventually: https://youtu.be/KuDYXWixedk

Hey - I was finally going to try to capture the audio stream from this but the video's not up anymore :(

started learning Fantasy in Fm for four hands with someone who is much more experienced in playing classical music than me...we'll see how it goes