liszt85 - Chopin Fantaisie Impromptu 66: Message Board

liszt85's Comments

This was recorded 4 years ago on a digital piano using just my laptop mic array. I also play slightly better these days but I'm just getting back to playing. The last page of the piece is very sloppy, I'll get back to working on that soon. Hope you enjoy! Thanks for listening.

Post your comments on liszt85's performance!

Name	Date	Comment
Elene	2010-10-22 12:20:00	Despite the issues you mentioned, this is still a very strong performance. Although many, many people play this piece, not that many play it really well, and you were certainly moving in the right direction 4 years ago; surely you are even closer to the ideal now. I hope you will stick around and that we'll hear more from you. Music, physics, psychology-- you sound like someone I'd like to meet! By the way, there were peacocks in Warsaw, at Lazienki Park. For some reason I was surprised to see them-- thought maybe they'd be too cold or something. The peacocks only add to the fun on this recording. (If it makes you feel any better, the best take of my nocturne recording from last year included my mother sneezing hugely. She felt really bad about it but couldn't help it!)
Andy Platt	2010-10-20 21:45:34	I like the way you say "the most difficult part" ... like some of it isn't! I love this imprompu and the performance was great.
timmyab	2010-10-20 10:13:27	You've got great skills.I'll look forward to hearing more from you especially if you've improved beyond this already advanced level of playing.
heidiv	2010-10-20 07:12:04	Lovely performance with flair! Great phrasing. I'll never be able to listen to this piece again without thinking of peacocks. :)
ab-ster	2010-10-19 21:02:32	liszt85, thank you for submitting your works for this ecital. This piece is one of my favorite as it sounds so grandioso. You played this piece really well. I love the connectedness of the fast phrasings. Very well execution of accents too. And you played this 4 years ago? Wow. Great work!
liszt85	2010-10-18 18:25:59	Thank you all for your kind comments. @Gerg: I started off by doing the polyrhythms by tapping (3 on the left against 4 on the right). I then started playing what I learnt slowly on the piano but as you yourself may have discovered, it seems as though its easier to do that faster than slower. So I ended up doing it faster than I would normally when beginning to play/learn a piece. However, if you slow down the recording, you will suddenly discover all kinds of problems with the playing. The ONLY way, I've discovered, in the 4 years that passed after I made that recording, is to learn a piece by playing it at the slowest tempo possible. I failed to do that with this impromptu, leading to inaccuracies in note values (that you can hear if you slow down the recording). So while this sounds alright at this speed, this is in fact, not so good a performance ;). Oh and I learnt it hands together for the most part but did do separate hands for the slightly more difficult parts (last page for instance). Also there might be interpretation issues as this was done without instructions from my teacher as nobody (including him) had attempted this piece before. The waltz (my other recording)though was learnt under the watchful eyes of a very competent teacher in Vienna. @LisztAddict: No, unfortunately :( I wanted to major in music but being from India (where there are no schools that offer western music degrees), I found it impossible to do that. There was the option of coming to the US to do that but I couldn't do it without financial aid/scholarships and I really didn't think I was good enough to get a scholarship to major in music. So I ended up doing Physics and I've now enrolled in a Psychology PhD program. I now sing with the University Symphonic Choir and am also part of the music cognition research group, so that's about the only music I get to do "officially". I bought a used upright piano with the hopes of getting back to practicing the piano on a regular basis. Thanks again everybody. I hope we'll all continue growing/improving in each other's company!
CMohr	2010-10-18 16:27:41	Very impressive! An all time favorite done with verve and elan! Man, what flying fingers! Bravo.
gerg	2010-10-18 12:28:05	Peacocks! :D Love it! In seriousness, I think a measure of humility is necessary to bring out of Chopin what the great poet meant to convey. By your comment, it sounds like you may be moving in this direction. Good playing of one of the more difficult pieces. I can appreciate firsthand the challenges of the 4-against-3 polyrhythm in the main theme. It's a fun piece to play once you have the rhythm internalized, and I can imagine the exhilaration you must have felt as you began to master those polyrhythms, hands together, while learning this music. I'd be curious as to the approach you took. Did you learn it with the hands together or separately?
Inlanding	2010-10-18 11:21:21	You have some serious skills, my friend. Excellent work. Look forward to hearing more from you, for sure!
LisztAddict	2010-10-18 08:57:12	Awesome! were you a piano major student at university?
Mistaya	2010-10-18 00:03:42	Amazing - I enjoyed your playing very much and appreciate your sharing this with us. Inspiring to those of us lower on the learning curve. Our neighbours had peacocks - 1/2 mile away was the perfect distance.
AnotherSchmoe	2010-10-17 13:44:58	Wow, consider me floored! I can't imagination the dedication and skill needed to play something like this. Great execution, very clean, very impressive. I enjoyed hearing the peacocks chiming in as well. I haven't seen a peacock in YEARS, it must be a pretty cool place you were at if they were just hanging around, they really are beautiful creatures. Thanks for sharing.
liszt85	2010-10-17 12:06:55	You can hear peacocks in the background. This was at my undergraduate university where peacocks were abundant.. ;)