as brahms said - after you finished a work, it doesnt belong to you anymore. as we all know, rchmaninov could´t play his piano concertos as horowitz, ashkenazy, berman or surely... bolet. to be a great composer doesn´t necessarily mean to be a great interpreter. mozart wrote the most beatifull horn concertos, alltough he couldn´t blow a single tune out of a horn. people mix there many things up. this is a housewives claim , to believe that mozart plays the mozart sonatas at the best.
This is the Sixth Version Godowsky made of Chopin's opus 10 number 5 (Black Key Etude).
In Godowsky's Studien uber die Etuden von CHOPIN it is number 12.
The right hand part is an INVERSION of the right hand part of Chopin's original etude.
The left hand two note melodic fragments are a counterpoint to the right hand part. They are a new figure added by Godowsky--not from any other Chopin Etude.
Godowsky titles this "Inversion, for the right hand" of the Black Key Etude.
It sort of suggest the composers weren't living gods... here for a moment and then whisped away from the face of the earth. It's suggestive that a performer, an artist in terms of interpretation and quality of performance and or understanding of a given piece or artist has not only the potential but the means to become knowing or even entitled to putting the notes and phrases to his or her voice or performance. I agree with what he says.
this is an etude where one plays 2 chopin etudes, one on each hands, called badinage...one is the blak keys(op10 no5) and i guess op25 no.9...scary even to listen to!!how hard would it be to play? bolet rocks!!
I will be criticized for this comment, but here it goes: Why is it so important to follow the composer's intentions? You will always have conservative pianists that will just ape each other and all sound the same because they are intent on playing "correctly."
If someone wants to play the music as eccentrically as they want, then what is wrong with that? If you don't like it, don't listen. Others may find it refreshing.
I want to quote Picasso as an answer to your question;I hope that will clarify :
"When you want to draw a circle, do so as perfect as possible. That will inevitably be your own most personal statement". (As opposed to draw it as personally as possible)
I want to quote Picasso as an answer to your question;I hope that will clarify :
"When you want to draw a circle, do so as perfect as possible. That will inevitably be your own most personal statement". (As opposed to draw it as personally as possible)
Bolet did not have the benefit of having such even finger lengths as Rubinstein and also Richter seemed to have. Those two players were born to be pianists.. judging from their fingers. Bolet and most of all pianists just need to struggle a bit more with their "usual" fingers. Well he did too.
As a composer and performer i completely agree with Bolet's comments. I often write pieces and when i play them much later on i always interpret them differently to what I've written on the page. Sometimes i find that notation is very limitting, it's a rough guide for the performer, but when it comes to tell the performer how musical to be it's virtually impossible to do this. Every performer is going to play a piece differently, simply because every person has different thoughts and emotions.
I have been a fan of his playing for a long time (his performances of the Chopin preludes were the first I ever heard), but this is the first time I have ever heard him speak. He is a very intense man.
I totally agree with Bolet's idea that performers often know the music better than composers do. Performers spend 100 times more hours on the works than composers, so why shouldn't they? Many great composers are often not skilled at all in using metronomes and give very bad metronome suggestions. Yes, we should try to do our best to follow what's on the page, but there comes a time when one's judgment and intuition need to take over. I can't stand "Urtext freaks" who are afraid to take risks.
Maybe a good illustration of what Bolet was saying is Rachmaninoff who not only composes but also plays his own music. He plays his music very different from how he wrote it. Not to really alter the whole meaning of the piece, but subtle changes that makes sense to him at the time he's playing it.
sounds very intelligent to me, and his idea that a performer can know a work better than the composer of the work - this is a novel idea, but I think he's right. It is not that the composers couldn't know the work as well as those who perform it for years, it's that they wrote it and moved on, before interpreting and re-interpreting the work.
He was a master in the whole sense of the term. His recordings are there to prove it. He was totally right in what he said. I have most of his recordings and thery are a real delight, always fresh and a testament of one of greatest pianist of all time.
The interviewer is also a very fine person, extremely knowledgeable.... My dad recorded several of his programmes in the late 70s and early 80s off the BBC...
This comment has received too many negative votesshow
He is indeed being presumptuous when he suggests he knows the piece better than the composer himself. The greatest pianists play many more masterpieces over the course of a career than composers compose. Do the math.
It's pretty clear he's talking about time spent. A year spent writing a piano sonata versus a lifetime playing it. This "big, big difference" is only yours and not Bolet's, from what I can tell.
A composer spend most of his time composing other stuff and do not normally edit or study a piece he's written a while ago. A performer has to spend his life trying to make a piece really work and hence had to study and analyse it deeply.
OK, but I'm saying something different. All I'm saying is that if you take the total output of a performer and record it on CD, even at a max of one interpretation per piece, it's still way more than a composer's collected works. Especially for Bolet.
Most performers define knowing a piece as getting insight into the performer's intentions. By this definition, the presumption is absurd.
I love Bolet, etc., but this stuff is just pandering to personality-worship. (It's very forgivable.)
I don't think his difficulty expressing himself had much to do with weak English (not to mention that he speaks better than many natives). He was attempting to describe a process which is complex, subtle, and only somewhat conscious; anyone would have trouble doing that unprepared.
Toscanini, when asked what he thought the 1st mvnt.of Beethoven 'Eroica' signified, dismissed all this empty talk by replying: "To some it is Napolean, to others a philosophical struggle, bah, to me is allegro con brio!". So, let the music or this great pianist's playing speak for itself. sd goh (malaysia)
What an experience! Thanks for posting this superb piece of musical history. Jorge Bolet one the the greatest pianists ever and interviewed by Robin Ray who did so much on British radio in the 70's to spread the appreciation of classical music, especially piano music. By the way anyone who aspires to play the Chopin/Godowsky studies and has not yet learnt Chopin's originals to perfection had better forget it.
Bolet,s Liszt playing is inspirational here. Robin Ray,the interviewer was an expert in his quest for researching all the Great Pianists of his era and earlier, brought to us Brits. in "Face the Music" T.V. Remembered not forgotten, both.
Greetings from Nashville, Tennessee (USA), where I heard Mr. Bolet regularly during his performances and Master Class appearances at the International Piano Festival organized during the 1968-1978 time period, by the School of Music, George Peabody College for Teachers. Mr. Bolet was a great conversationalist, perfectly at ease with English, and extremely charming.
I doubt Bolet was a poor lecturer. What happens is that he is Cuban, and spanish is his birth langiage. He certainly speaks English with a clear accent, and pauses a bit, but the mesage is there.
Bolet gives with few words, the point not to miss here, the performer has to grow and develop and with herhim the piece follows. Herein lies the value of a performance. The performer must be a creator too and can further the composer's intentions. The written piece shoud not become an enslaving cage. However, Bolet indicates the responsability of throughly absorving the composer musically when interpreting herhis music.
I don't know who published the Godowsky Paraphrases and don't really know where you can get the score, but I do know they are among the most difficult things ever written for the piano. There are videos on Youtube of Berezovsky playing many Chopin etudes, each of which is followed by Godowsky's paraphrases of that etude. You can hear many of the paraphrases here at Youtube if you enter the name Berezovsky in the search engine. Greetings from Iceland.
You are right. This is one of the paraphrases on the Chopin etudes by Leopold Godowsky, this paraphrase being based on Chopin's Etude in G-flat Major, the so-called "Black Key" etude.
Agreed, I think you just can't follow the score literally. There are so many ways of doing a crescendo or accelerando! Of course there's another fact: if you do only what's set onto the score your interpretation will suck. Music is full of things that we can't write
Actually, he's a very interesting interviewee...he talks about freedom of interpretation & the score as a guide, however, it's just not realistic to follow every score exactly as written....sometimes the performance dictates modifications that are not wrong, just different from the score....if you really look at good performances and have the score in front of your, you will see the liberties the performer takes even he or she may still be incredibly faithful to the score.
as brahms said - after you finished a work, it doesnt belong to you anymore. as we all know, rchmaninov could´t play his piano concertos as horowitz, ashkenazy, berman or surely... bolet. to be a great composer doesn´t necessarily mean to be a great interpreter. mozart wrote the most beatifull horn concertos, alltough he couldn´t blow a single tune out of a horn. people mix there many things up. this is a housewives claim , to believe that mozart plays the mozart sonatas at the best.
paganviodio 4 months ago
This is the Sixth Version Godowsky made of Chopin's opus 10 number 5 (Black Key Etude).
In Godowsky's Studien uber die Etuden von CHOPIN it is number 12.
The right hand part is an INVERSION of the right hand part of Chopin's original etude.
The left hand two note melodic fragments are a counterpoint to the right hand part. They are a new figure added by Godowsky--not from any other Chopin Etude.
Godowsky titles this "Inversion, for the right hand" of the Black Key Etude.
marcxopoco 11 months ago
I think Bolet meant to say "forged" (when he was looking for the metal analogy). Like when you forge a sword.
mrpossibilities 1 year ago
It sort of suggest the composers weren't living gods... here for a moment and then whisped away from the face of the earth. It's suggestive that a performer, an artist in terms of interpretation and quality of performance and or understanding of a given piece or artist has not only the potential but the means to become knowing or even entitled to putting the notes and phrases to his or her voice or performance. I agree with what he says.
TheSingingCello 1 year ago
The more I listen to Bolet, both playing and speaking, the more I am awestruck by him. This is a man who understands music.
HotSo0P 1 year ago
the man is terrifying! such fierce eyes
jegspillerpiano 1 year ago
this is an etude where one plays 2 chopin etudes, one on each hands, called badinage...one is the blak keys(op10 no5) and i guess op25 no.9...scary even to listen to!!how hard would it be to play? bolet rocks!!
satyu131089 1 year ago
This is not Liszt. This is Godowski Chopin etude. (After Chopin "black keys" etude)
lacarra 1 year ago
What did that man say at the end? He was like "I think you're stupid, sort in safe hands Jorge Bolet?" Am I hearing that right?
modelstatue 1 year ago
I think that your students are in very safe hands,Jorge Bolet ..:))
israelkastoriano 1 year ago
I will be criticized for this comment, but here it goes: Why is it so important to follow the composer's intentions? You will always have conservative pianists that will just ape each other and all sound the same because they are intent on playing "correctly."
If someone wants to play the music as eccentrically as they want, then what is wrong with that? If you don't like it, don't listen. Others may find it refreshing.
MrCaffeinebuzz 1 year ago
Very well said, I agree 300%
modelstatue 1 year ago
I want to quote Picasso as an answer to your question;I hope that will clarify :
"When you want to draw a circle, do so as perfect as possible. That will inevitably be your own most personal statement". (As opposed to draw it as personally as possible)
israelkastoriano 1 year ago
I want to quote Picasso as an answer to your question;I hope that will clarify :
"When you want to draw a circle, do so as perfect as possible. That will inevitably be your own most personal statement". (As opposed to draw it as personally as possible)
israelkastoriano 1 year ago
Bolet did not have the benefit of having such even finger lengths as Rubinstein and also Richter seemed to have. Those two players were born to be pianists.. judging from their fingers. Bolet and most of all pianists just need to struggle a bit more with their "usual" fingers. Well he did too.
joumiet 1 year ago
Bolet is a very great and true artist - LOVE IT !!!
pastafantastica 2 years ago 4
@pastafantastica Yes. But to be honest, i really discovered him quite some time after my interest in classical music grew.
I do not understand, why it seems, that he is not one of the very famous ones...
Gilels called him once "one of the best piano players in the west"
MyzTiC44 2 years ago
I'm curious about how the Chopin-Godowsky and the Liszt Transcendental Etudes compare. Anyone played them both? Which is harder?
demosj 2 years ago
As a composer and performer i completely agree with Bolet's comments. I often write pieces and when i play them much later on i always interpret them differently to what I've written on the page. Sometimes i find that notation is very limitting, it's a rough guide for the performer, but when it comes to tell the performer how musical to be it's virtually impossible to do this. Every performer is going to play a piece differently, simply because every person has different thoughts and emotions.
kevpianist17 2 years ago
A rarety: pensive honesty by one of the greatest. Many thanks for uploading.
BuckshotLaFunke 2 years ago
R.I.P Jorge Bolet my friend!
serjwill 2 years ago
Bolet is VERY correct on what he says. At least i agree with him and it comes natural to me to do the same thing as he does.
ClaudioArrau 2 years ago 2
I have been a fan of his playing for a long time (his performances of the Chopin preludes were the first I ever heard), but this is the first time I have ever heard him speak. He is a very intense man.
bluebychoice 2 years ago 2
did you notise on begining it says that this is Liszt Transcendental etude no.1... stupid newsmens...
predoje 2 years ago
Since people are not bothering to read my description of the video, I have added an annotation correcting the identification of the etude.
BofferBings 2 years ago
What a fascinating technique!
girlindisguise200099 2 years ago
"Refined" I think is the were you were looking for.
everythingistken1291 2 years ago
Rest in peace Jorge Bolet.
andrew190495 2 years ago 6
I totally agree with Bolet's idea that performers often know the music better than composers do. Performers spend 100 times more hours on the works than composers, so why shouldn't they? Many great composers are often not skilled at all in using metronomes and give very bad metronome suggestions. Yes, we should try to do our best to follow what's on the page, but there comes a time when one's judgment and intuition need to take over. I can't stand "Urtext freaks" who are afraid to take risks.
BachScholar 2 years ago 2
Maybe a good illustration of what Bolet was saying is Rachmaninoff who not only composes but also plays his own music. He plays his music very different from how he wrote it. Not to really alter the whole meaning of the piece, but subtle changes that makes sense to him at the time he's playing it.
aspacguy1 2 years ago 2
This isn't Liszt , this is one of the Transcriptions von 5.Etude Chopin from Godowski.
aryanpianist 2 years ago
sounds very intelligent to me, and his idea that a performer can know a work better than the composer of the work - this is a novel idea, but I think he's right. It is not that the composers couldn't know the work as well as those who perform it for years, it's that they wrote it and moved on, before interpreting and re-interpreting the work.
geemusic1 3 years ago
A sufficiently subtle mind; shame about the element of reticence in his mind, and playing.
SeanMcHugh02 3 years ago
日本語でごめんなさい
こんなふうに弾けたらなぁ・・・
namaomisaki 3 years ago
He was a master in the whole sense of the term. His recordings are there to prove it. He was totally right in what he said. I have most of his recordings and thery are a real delight, always fresh and a testament of one of greatest pianist of all time.
Politeama 3 years ago 9
Brilliant man, a master.
IloveAlexisBledel689 3 years ago 5
Furtwangler, Arrau, were critized the same way, don't worry Mr Bolet, you are a great pianist.
ilbacioditosca 3 years ago 10
The interviewer is also a very fine person, extremely knowledgeable.... My dad recorded several of his programmes in the late 70s and early 80s off the BBC...
Malaka57 3 years ago
haha.. I absolutely like this piece alot and Jorge Bolet did a very good job here. I enjoy listening to this performance again and again.
I love the end! It is so.... GREAT! :D
This piece is like a crowd of birds singing and the end is so Smooth! Fantastic! :D
cirro1 3 years ago 2
This comment has received too many negative votes show
He is indeed being presumptuous when he suggests he knows the piece better than the composer himself. The greatest pianists play many more masterpieces over the course of a career than composers compose. Do the math.
sshuck 3 years ago
NO, you are not paying attention to what he is saying.
He talks about the time of the "process of creation" versus the time a performer can spend with the piece.
Big, big difference.
fabrizzzio48 3 years ago 3
It's pretty clear he's talking about time spent. A year spent writing a piano sonata versus a lifetime playing it. This "big, big difference" is only yours and not Bolet's, from what I can tell.
sshuck 3 years ago
A composer spend most of his time composing other stuff and do not normally edit or study a piece he's written a while ago. A performer has to spend his life trying to make a piece really work and hence had to study and analyse it deeply.
orcamocha 3 years ago 2
OK, but I'm saying something different. All I'm saying is that if you take the total output of a performer and record it on CD, even at a max of one interpretation per piece, it's still way more than a composer's collected works. Especially for Bolet.
Most performers define knowing a piece as getting insight into the performer's intentions. By this definition, the presumption is absurd.
I love Bolet, etc., but this stuff is just pandering to personality-worship. (It's very forgivable.)
sshuck 3 years ago
You'll never get it.
fabrizzzio48 3 years ago
What a very great, wise pianist he was.
trschaefer 3 years ago 3
At 745 he means refined
muziqueonmymind 4 years ago
I think he means tempered
Malaka57 3 years ago
wtf is that piece he plays at the start? it cerainly ain'y ANY of the Liszt Transcendental etudes thank you very much
chrish12345 4 years ago
@chrish12345
Please click on "more" in the "About This Video" box at upper right.
BofferBings 4 years ago
im not gay but i love this man
scottbos68 4 years ago
omg bolet is so so right
4444matthew4444 4 years ago 3
what a wonderful interview by the very much missed Robin Ray.
basilcruncher 4 years ago
I don't think his difficulty expressing himself had much to do with weak English (not to mention that he speaks better than many natives). He was attempting to describe a process which is complex, subtle, and only somewhat conscious; anyone would have trouble doing that unprepared.
MitchelWeaver 4 years ago 4
I like how Robin pays him that compliment at the end, and he just glares at him like he has four heads.
credman 4 years ago 3
Toscanini, when asked what he thought the 1st mvnt.of Beethoven 'Eroica' signified, dismissed all this empty talk by replying: "To some it is Napolean, to others a philosophical struggle, bah, to me is allegro con brio!". So, let the music or this great pianist's playing speak for itself. sd goh (malaysia)
301250 4 years ago
What an experience! Thanks for posting this superb piece of musical history. Jorge Bolet one the the greatest pianists ever and interviewed by Robin Ray who did so much on British radio in the 70's to spread the appreciation of classical music, especially piano music. By the way anyone who aspires to play the Chopin/Godowsky studies and has not yet learnt Chopin's originals to perfection had better forget it.
oaklinks 4 years ago 4
Brilliant! Amazing!!! Thanks for posting this!
christian6657 4 years ago 3
I am very interested in it! Please can you send it to me? Regards!
VitalijMargulis 4 years ago
Chopin/Godowsky sounds almost exactly like Liszt.
shela2 4 years ago 2
Bolet,s Liszt playing is inspirational here. Robin Ray,the interviewer was an expert in his quest for researching all the Great Pianists of his era and earlier, brought to us Brits. in "Face the Music" T.V. Remembered not forgotten, both.
shela2 4 years ago
Greetings from Nashville, Tennessee (USA), where I heard Mr. Bolet regularly during his performances and Master Class appearances at the International Piano Festival organized during the 1968-1978 time period, by the School of Music, George Peabody College for Teachers. Mr. Bolet was a great conversationalist, perfectly at ease with English, and extremely charming.
Jmichscott 4 years ago 3
I doubt Bolet was a poor lecturer. What happens is that he is Cuban, and spanish is his birth langiage. He certainly speaks English with a clear accent, and pauses a bit, but the mesage is there.
fabrizzzio48 4 years ago
Bolet gives with few words, the point not to miss here, the performer has to grow and develop and with herhim the piece follows. Herein lies the value of a performance. The performer must be a creator too and can further the composer's intentions. The written piece shoud not become an enslaving cage. However, Bolet indicates the responsability of throughly absorving the composer musically when interpreting herhis music.
fabrizzzio48 4 years ago
I don't know who published the Godowsky Paraphrases and don't really know where you can get the score, but I do know they are among the most difficult things ever written for the piano. There are videos on Youtube of Berezovsky playing many Chopin etudes, each of which is followed by Godowsky's paraphrases of that etude. You can hear many of the paraphrases here at Youtube if you enter the name Berezovsky in the search engine. Greetings from Iceland.
karlakor 4 years ago
You are right. This is one of the paraphrases on the Chopin etudes by Leopold Godowsky, this paraphrase being based on Chopin's Etude in G-flat Major, the so-called "Black Key" etude.
karlakor 4 years ago
Agreed, I think you just can't follow the score literally. There are so many ways of doing a crescendo or accelerando! Of course there's another fact: if you do only what's set onto the score your interpretation will suck. Music is full of things that we can't write
whippingmoon 4 years ago
Of course,you are absolutely right.Printed notes
cannot hold music...that is a multi-dimensional-psychic-human phenomenon.Notes are only a vague clue!
With every fibre in your being,your experience,and
your intuition...you must investigate it for your-
self.And of course,without agogics,and every tempo
flexibility...you have no chance to find meaning...
only notes.
smithsherman 4 years ago 2
Actually, he's a very interesting interviewee...he talks about freedom of interpretation & the score as a guide, however, it's just not realistic to follow every score exactly as written....sometimes the performance dictates modifications that are not wrong, just different from the score....if you really look at good performances and have the score in front of your, you will see the liberties the performer takes even he or she may still be incredibly faithful to the score.
Plazmatix 4 years ago 2
Thanks for posting this!
IM(humble)O Bolet was a much better pianoplayer than lecturer.
It's always like this: too little freedom in interpreting means dogmatism, too much freedom means charlatanism.
Pianowrestler 5 years ago 2