Archive for Piano

Grieg and Elgar at the National Concert Hall

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2024 by telescoper

Yesterday I once again headed off after work into Dublin by train to attend a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra this time under the direction of guest conductor Dinis Sousa (whose name is new to me). The programme consisted of two very familiar works, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor by Grieg and Elgar’s Enigma Variations by Elgar.

To start with, however, we heard a very interesting short piece by Anna Clyne called Masquerade which I enjoyed very much. This is only about five minutes long in performance, but full of energy and dynamics, and was a very suitable appetizer for the courses to follow.

The soloist for the Grieg Piano Concerto was Louis Schwizgebel who played it very well indeed. His articulation was crisp where necessary but also flowing when called for in the more romantic sections. The performance was very well received by the audience and by me. Actually I think that was the best performance of this work that I’ve heard live. Incidentally, I’m told the piano on which he performed was a brand new Steinway. Also incidentally, Edvard Grieg was only 24 when he wrote this piece.

During the second movement a member of the viola section of the orchestra had to leave the stage. I don’t know if she had broken a string or was just feeling unwell. I suppose both of these most happen from time to time in concerts, but I’d never seen it before. Thankfully she was back for the second half.

The Enigma Variations is another piece that is performed quite frequently. I’m not a huge fan of Elgar but this work definitely has its moments and I think anyone who doesn’t find Variation IX (“Nimrod”) uplifting must have something wrong with them. That said, that part is often played too slowly for my taste and can sound funereal rather than inspirational. Anyway, I hadn’t heard this in live performance for a long time so it was very pleasant to hear it again. I had forgotten that there is an organ part to this, actually, and it was good to hear the splendid NCH instrument used especially in the finale.

Overall it was a short (just 66 minutes playing time) but enjoyable concert. I’ll certainly be looking out for Louis Schwizgebel’s name on recordings in future as I think he is a fine soloist.

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Mad about the Boy – Blossom Dearie

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , , on April 17, 2024 by telescoper

The song Mad about the Boy was written by Noel Coward and published in 1932. It’s a song about an infatuation with a movie star and has generally been performed by female singers, although it was apparently inspired by Coward’s own crush on Douglas Fairbanks Jnr (which wasn’t reciprocated). The song became popular again in 1992 when a version recorded by Dinah Washington was used in a famous Levi commercial. . I never liked Noel Coward’s own recording – with him singing in a curious falsetto – very much at all, although I suppose it is authentic to what Coward was writing about. For a long time my favourite version was Dinah Washington’s but recently I came across this version, which has now, for me, eclipsed that one.

Blossom Dearie was a very underrated singer and pianist. Her voice – very high and girlish – was well suited to the whimsical songs she seemed to like to sing, but it meant that she wasn’t taken as seriously as a singer as she might have been. The lack of appreciation of her singing also extended to her piano playing, which was consistently excellent and innovative. No less a pianist than the great Bill Evans was a huge admirer of her musicianship, and he even attributed his use of stacked fourths in the left hand as inspired by Blossom Dearie. Other reasons to like this recording are that it was made live at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London and she goes straight into a verse that’s missed in many versions, probably because it uses the word “gay”. I love the way the accompaniment changes the mood each time she repeats the verses.

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Pianissimo!

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , on January 27, 2021 by telescoper

Not a lot of people know that I acquired a second-hand piano when I bought my house in Maynooth. I’ve been having a go on it from time since then. Fortunately it’s a detached house so that doesn’t cause the neighbours to suffer too much. I wish I’d got it tuned before the lockdown though. It’s a little bit flat in the middle range and gets worse as the notes get lower. Still, I’m such a terrible player that doesn’t make too much difference!

I can read music but am used to single note instruments and find piano parts difficult to read especially if there are complicated chords – or even simple ones, for that matter. I find having the notes squashed together like in the bass part here makes it difficult to disentangle them.

Fortunately I have a basic knowledge of harmony and can cope with chord symbols so I generally don’t try to read the bass parts but instead fill in chords according to the symbols. If the chords aren’t written on the music like the above example I add them myself.

Even for an oldie like me it’s quite easy to get used to playing basic chordal accompaninents. Most standard progressions involve only three or four chords. You can start playing block triads like in the example above just to get the idea. Adding, for example, the odd 7th here and there helps to explore the sound produced by different harmonic ingredients. After that you can play left-hand figures based on the chords to make it more interesting.

I know you’re all thinking that I’m way too old to be trying to teach myself how to play the piano. One of these days I think I’ll put up a YouTube video to prove that you are right.

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Hampton Hawes – The Trio, Vol. 1

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on March 25, 2014 by telescoper

The old blog has been generating far too much traffic over the last couple of weeks so I thought I’d try to calm things down by posting something about Jazz (which usually scares the traffic away). I was listening this album the other day and thought I’d write about it because the pianist concerned Hampton Hawes is so underrated.

The Trio – Vol. 1  was Hawes’s first LP under his own name and it proved to be the start of a long and successful association with Contemporary Records. Hawes’s playing has been described as a more-or-less literal keyboard transcription of Charlie Parker and indeed his lines do sound more like Parker than those of Bud Powell, the archetypal bebop pianist. Indeed Hawes stated that Powell had never really been influence, or at least not as much of an influence as he had been on the rest of his generation of jazz pianists. Like Charlie Parker, Hawes had a great gift for playing the blues and even when not actually playing standard 12-bar blues material he somehow managed to make almost everything he played sound like the blues; a great example from this album is the ballad Easy Livin’ which Hawes augments by inserting some blues phrases into the melody. There are three “orthodox” blues tracks on the album, although one of them Feelin’ Fine is based on an altered chord progression.

Fast tempi gave Hawes very few problems. On the album he seems completely comfortable maintaining the logic and continuity of his improvisations even while playing at about 80 bars to the minute.  I Got Rhythm is taken at a very brisk pace but Hawes is always master of the situation. The track I’ve picked from Youtube, the great Jerome Kern standard All The Things You Are, the chords of which lurk underneath a great many bebop tunes, is very different, with an out-of-tempo introduction picking up into the jaunty medium pace “bounce” that’s very characteristic of the bebop era.

Throughout the 50s and 60s, Hampton Hawes was head and shoulders above most of his competitors. Red Mitchell (bass) and Chuck Thompson (drums) remained his colleagues for years, which is no doubt why their playing is so together.

 

 

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Spiegel im Spiegel

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , on February 11, 2013 by telescoper

I’ve been so busy this last week that I really needed to unwind a bit on Sunday morning, for which purpose I picked this beautifully spare and sublimely contemplative piece by the great Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. This music always makes me think of the first line of the Desiderata…

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence

..except of course that it’s not silent.

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Nora the Piano Cat

Posted in Music with tags , , , on March 19, 2012 by telescoper

A busy day, filled with meetings meetings and more meetings. Time to relax with some music. This is a complete performance of a work by Mindaugas Piecaitis, featuring Nora the Piano Cat….

 

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