[part2 -Cadenza] Berezovsky prokofiev concerto 2 (best ever)

[lalahohoable]

the worse version I know..... by far! sorry!

[mytchilla]

I've lost half liter of sweat listening to this

If I were there, I think I would drop dead

[1979Musicfan]

Wonderful performance. Technically beautiful and so much depth. This cadenza is horrendously difficult to play. You may enjoy hearing Gutierrez's cadenza. It is magnificent and the best I have heard in many years. Thank you for posting.

[loboris1995]

this is amazing,but could you make an other video with a better sound qualitie,I don't minde if is only the audio^^

[Erik83474]

Just give me Kissin in this concerto! Awful!!!!

[Erik83474]

Just give me Kissin in this concerto!

[KarloFeder]

Es gibt  eine hervorragende Aufnahme des Stückes von Michel Beroff.

[The1976spirit]

@KarloFeder Béroff spielt, nicht ohne Mitschuld Masurs, gerade diese Konzert viel zu schnell.

Die Aufnahme von Volker Banfield ist dagegen von angemessenem  Ernst .

[ThePianoLad]

Lots of mistakes! Try Yuja Wang!

[Contrappunto]

Actually this is surprisingly accurate- compared say to Toradze's performance - but a pale shadow of the composer's tortured intentions. Listen to Toradzein this work, if you can encompass the whole first movement.

[dalcazar96]

ahhh my ears, this is worse than yundi li's rendition, at least he gets the notes mostly right

[billyguns2]

MakesYefim Bronfman sound as though he never had a music lesson!

[Pirotechnik1995]

Greetz Berezovsky nice interpretation. Hey I would like to see that Kissin's version is so great .

[Robotman42]

The low brasses are late after the cadenza aren't they...?

[Ellinidara]

Best ever? His version is great,but compare with Sultanov's version...

[ChrisWatch]

I much like Yundi li's Version. Superb technique. The right flare and color. Berezovsky is good here. But, I would pick Yundi Li to listen to. With Berezovsky I feel he's trying to rationalize this piece in a interpretable manner so that those who are a little slow or don't understand chaos, would simply get it. I agree Yundi Li is moving a little face in some parts. Tiny parts. Other than that everything is perfect in my ears. Not that Berezovsky is bad. To each their own.

[ablablei131]

i wonder it there was only one person who wasn't sick and didn't cough.

[Asgoodasgod]

Now this IS true power!

[djalex75]

i'll post it soon on youtube..

[djalex75]

Olivier Gardon's version is impressive..

[Tunico1977]

...

[bluesyboypete]

Berezovsky´s version is the ultimate interpretation of this piano concerto. marvelous, marvelous, stuff

[Shaojian]

@ ekphooldomali: not a difficult feat, since he IS an empty-headed child.

[syuzik712]

ни хуя не бест евер! По драматизму не дотягивает! Луганский играет на МНОГО лучше!

[ekphooldomali]

Makes Yundi Li sound like an empty-headed child.

[PianoGod1990]

@ekphooldomali Maybe the youtube one. This doesn't mess with Yundi Li's DG recording of the piece though (which was a live performance as well).

[ekphooldomali]

@PianoGod1990 I'll check it out, though my bones tell me that it is, after all, the same pianist. But on your recommendation, I'll put it on the listening list. Thanks!

[PianoGod1990]

@ekphooldomali My pleasure :P

[ThePasseraBianca]

@ekphooldomali Lots of passion just in his motion and inside himself... So just close your eyes and listen him and Yundi... Emotion here is not going to the sound. Just inside him... transfer of emotion in this video goes through eyes not through ears... ;)

[camaysar222]

@ThePasseraBianca Interesting comment, as Yundi Li jumps around far more than the intensely concentrated Berezofsky. In any case, I do appreciate Yundi Li's performance more than before, but still prefer Berezofsky's somewhat monolithic style for this piece. The music is, after all, half-crazed.

[Darklord12356]

-_-...once again...I am disappointed with Youtube Music Critics.

Berezovksy's version of this concerto, while riddled with mistakes, has much more passion than most versions, and he completely lets loose: something that many Prokofiev performers lack. It could just be my odd interpretation skills, but this Prokofiev is not meant to be played 'perfectly.' Sure, you want to hit all the right notes; but that is not the main goal.And remember; he wrote this piece after his friend committed suicide.

[Robotman42]

@Darklord12356 The only reason you were disappointed was because you expected....something.

[th3wing3dpaint3r]

@Darklord12356 I'll give you an example of why i think this performance is completely void of thought or "passion". Listen to how he plays 4:03 - 4:18 then compare it with Horacio Gutierrez (which i think is on youtube now).

If i hadn't known this concerto well, i wouldn't have understood that part at all the way Berezovsky plays it. I still don't understand his interpretation.

Plus, the many wrong notes are annoyingly disconcerting.

[JMillerBayRidge]

I think Berezovsky is an amazing talent..but I have to agree with you

[lsbrother]

@Darklord12356

"he wrote this piece after his friend committed suicide."

- that means it should be played with lots of wrong notes?



[Bachlives2]

@Darklord12356 I agree. It is good to hit the right notes. I enjoy his interpretation very much here there are certain things I think where the piano must be broken to play chords loud enough The chord at 1:45 comes to mind and I would totally milk that for everything it has there...! And barely audible sections take it to the extremes! I think Ashkenazy lets a bit more loose in his recording of this Concerto.

[Darklord12356]

@Bachlives2

I definitely agree that Ashkenazy has a terrific recording!

[rwcrx]

@Darklord12356 .Have you seen Yuja Wang playing this? - it certainly has passion but accuracy too. Berezovksy is great but Yuja is superhuman IMHO

[Darklord12356]

@rwcrx

I actually found Yujia Wang's recording too frail for my taste, :/

I stand by Ashkenazy as my all time favorite performance

[OrangeSodaKing]

@Darklord12356 His is great. Have you possibly heard Kun-Woo Paik's?

[ArtNdA]

@Darklord12356 This is still an early work (op.16) and there are many people that label Prokofiev as neoclassical. Don't be fooled by the fast passages and the frenzy of this concerto, it is a very well structured piece and it is beautiful if played thoughtfully instead of butchered. There are some beautiful things in this recording, but Mr. Berezovsky neglects many of the dynamics marked on the score, ignores many beautiful countermelodies and becomes unstable during the Cadenza's Colossale.

[pedercic99]

@Darklord12356 As I see it, the problem with Berezovsky's performance is not the wrong notes (even the ones between 3.15 and 3.25) but its crudeness, both dynamic and interpretive. I know our response to music is subjective, but where you hear passion I hear bashing, and to me his 'letting loose' sounds like sloppiness. I prefer Kissin, Lugansky or Beroff in this concerto. I am usually a huge admirer of Berezovsky's by the way, but here something seems to have gone awry.

[MrStrav81]

@pedercic99

I agree. His tempos aren't consistent, and I'm not feeling it. I don't get the chills from this performance of it. I prefer a very controlled and confident execution of it. There is a strange musical quality to a performance like that. It sounds like Berezovsky is rushing to cover up his shortfalls. I would call it passion if I was feeling something from it, but I don't. I'm not a fan of Berezovsky's playing in general. He's out to prove something. That is just my opinion.

[andresruval]

@Darklord12356 try to say the same thing after you hear Kissin's...

[zville0225]

@andresruval Kissin's interpretation of this piece is one of the best if not the best i've ever heard. i get chills listening to it.

[egyptian3rdeye]

Not quite like Horacio Gutierrez

[zkool5]

Agreed!

[zurzica51]

Claire Huangci.. too..

[fdaltrey]

Very efficient mechanism.

[MrZeyn1]

only VIktoria Postnikova)))

[janlodewijk85]

I saw a performance by a Moroccan pianist, but I forgot his name and I can't find him any more. Does anyone know him?

[ViolinMaster007]

Kissin - the best ever!

This is the hardest cadenza ever written!

I'll post the Kissin version soon

[Jw22DeeJay]

Ouch. i think Yundi li and anna vinnitskaya was better

[babymaniac]

really? not nearly on par with his liszt etudes. way too many mistakes. very dissapointing

[ienhastsklader]

Listen to Peter Rösel's version if you want a performance with very few mistakes.

[akkadian4eyes]

Horatio Gutierrez's version of the solo cadenza is better.

[MusicJeffery]

One of the plusses of this rendition is that Berezovsky keeps closer to the beat more than most. Too many others pause before the beats to get their hands in place. There may be more difficult concertos, but none that I know have such a long, exposed, and unaccompanied cadenza--or rather, minefield!

[Hervinbalfour]

THis Cadenze is probably one of the longest for the soloist out of all concertos. But then do check out Tchaikovsky's 2nd piano concerto and listen to the Cadenza from the 1st movement. It's pretty damn long as well.

[trunks2861]

good god i am speacheless

[akkadian4eyes]

I like the way Horatio Guittierez plays the cadenza.

[Hervinbalfour]

I like his interpretation of Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto. The cadenza was very passionate and intense. I love it. But right about now I am loving Anna Vinnitskaya's interpretation here on youtube. Technically perfect, passionate, explosive and driving. Yuja Wang also played this concerto beautifully.

[THM5]

how can you compare this BEAR and a little girl?

[vonPunki]

Maybe ELEPHANT is more appropriate? Yuja's TIGER performance at only 19 years old appeals to me far more.

Compare the cadenza 'precipitato' at 2:00 and 7:20... No contest.

[Enerkhan]

I agree. Vinnitskaya rendition is simply mindblowing. Berezovsky as usual makes simply too many mistakes and plays quite sloppy, although it's still quite good because he is explosive in his passions. I also miss conception. VInnitskaya's playing is perfectly timed and phrased in one passionate conception with steady tempo leading up to a white hot climax overtaken by an orchestra going wild of explosive energy. If Berezovsky wouldn't make at least one mistake per bar it would sound better.

[CoolWJL]

You must hear the Jorge Bolet's!

[P0L0K0P]

ashkenazy is so much better

[guboub]

I agree!

He takes it slower so you can feel the majesty and the gigantism of this cadenza.

From Prokofieff's own indication on the score : "colosale"

[gtyler7292]

personally I prefer Bronfman's performance with the Israeli Philharmonic... but to each his own

[didgogns]

I just listened to Volodos' performance, and I feel he is better.

[102938z]

That is a butchery. I don't mind a few wrong notes, but this is ridiculous! Plus his style is all wrong. His sound is monotonous, and yet uncontrolled. I'm very disappointed. After hearing him do a pretty good job technically on the Liszt Transcendentals I was expecting much more of him.

[PianoMan8912]

What makes someone a deep artist?  How do you know its not just your opinion?

[TheJoyfulPianist]

Lugansky is better

[irenepetroff]

nothing special, definitely NOT the best ever.

Lexo Toradze life performance is much deeper. Berezovsky is not a deep artist, he is a good pianist.

[Snufkin999]

I like how you put that, I couldn't agree more

[Androslav]

I agree too. Besides that..how do you know..what is the best..in the world. In my opinion there is no 'the best'.

[pjioayncoe]

Try Yefim Bronfman's interpretation. I think his is one of the most clean and well-controled version. Bronfman can also say so much in his music. I wish when young people think of classical music, they think of this, instead of the usual Bach and Mozart.

[anblanco333]

somebody just upload volodos performance (live, but only audio), of this concerto. It is more exciting even than this one. Go hear it!

[dabigkid]

Screw what kids these day define as "hardcore" music. One could not listen to the second half of this video and tell me that symphonic music is never hardcore. This is the most hardcore shit in the motherfucking world.

[kristoferfer]

i love what you just said...its totally true and there's lots of it too...i listen to a lot of different kinds of music (including some "hardcore", and i'm actually playing this piece...i think i'm going to play it with an orchestra (depending on the results which i should get today)...i just love seeing someone say what you just said...

[kristoferfer]

i love what you just said........love it....i listen to a lot of music...including some "hardcore"...but i'm actually playing this piece, perhaps with an orchestra depending on the results (which i should get today funny enough.)

[b3cmin]

this cadenza is great. i'd like to see what people think of it compared to claire huangci's, which is also on youtube

[crowdmaker]

Not bad, not bad. Still think Demidenko's interpretation of the cadenza completely lays to waste every version I've heard, including this one. But this isn't bad. I'd park it third place, after Joyce Yang's in the Cliburn. Jesus, midi file clean, it's really quite ridiculous.

[vocalpianist]

is there anywhere on the web where you can watch that? I've been dying to hear it

[crowdmaker]

It used to be up on the Cliburn website, now they make you pay. If you feel like shelling over some 50 or so bucks to become a member, then it's all yours, along with all the other Cliburn recordings streamed from archives online. It's good alright, but not that good.

[eeevildictator]

Fuck You

[lilhermione]

hey - way excellent at 2:10-2:30 etc - this thru here is of the absolute best i've heard and this is my fave!

[skwtsui]

it might be best ever when you posted it last year. but... now yundi li owned everybody!

[Hiro5508]

yeah i remember Yundi's performance was undoubtedly good, too.

[anblanco333]

ha ha ha, you most be joking, right?

[jcasbell]

i have to disagree about this being the "best ever;" there are many mistakes. however, this is one of the most difficult concertos in the standard repertoire, so i consider any performance of it amazing. anyway, i think yundi li did a great job on this concerto, so i recommend his recording of it

[ficolossale]

Colossale part is playing as pianissimo o_O ... BTW, El-Bacha and Gutierrez Prok2 are mah favorites :p

[dri3s]

There are a bunch of mistakes here, but I could never play it like that in a million years, so I don't really have a right to say anything... :P

[flyurway]

Nice to finally see a bird's eye view of someone playing this. I agree he made a lot of mistakes but I consider it quite a feat to be able to even attempt a piece like this in the first place. Then again, whadda I know?! Okay, let's hear it from all the pro's out here, what IS the "worlds hardest piece"?

[JonRob2109]

There's no easy answer to that my friend. I've been playing for 25 years and i fly through Rachmaninoff and the rest of the Russians. I'd rate late J.S Bach keyboard work as more difficult. Check out the Italian Concerto, or late Mozart and Beethoven Sonatas. Every note counts so when played to an audience any error stands out bigtime. In a Prokofiev/Rach concerto you can miss a few and it still goes alright

[P0L0K0P]

thats really hard to say but i think that the transcedental studies of lyapunov come very close to being the most hardest pieces in the world. for example, studie nr. 10 "lezginka" is impossible to play.

[dawoodsta]

this movement is no where close to as hard as the second or the fourth. In my opinion the first mvmt is the easiest of the four, but still very difficult, with the third hardly in front. The arppeggio section is described by prokofiev as one of the most difficult passages in the concerto, but that doesn't mean the whole mvmt is automatically harder than the others. Look at each mvmt as a whole first. And by the way, this performance has way too many mistakes.

[shentri]

how hard is this mvt?

[matt8887]

I asked my teacher the same question after endless hours of practicing with nothing to show, and he said its the hardest movement, ever, of all concertos. The arpeggio part is the hardest thing I've ever played, and boris makes a ton of mistakes, El-Bacha is way better.

[shentri]

Really? Some other people on Youtube said it was the easiest of the 4 mvts?

[jeremyajani]

the second mvmt is pretty difficult and the fourth one is no joke either. but i feel it is easier to play than the third. (just my opinion)

[Hervinbalfour]

Your teacher was really reaching if he said that this was the hardest movement of all piano concerto's. Prokofiev's fifth piano concerto is even harder than the second and the second is monstrously difficult.

[IloveAlexisBledel689]

not that much, I'm learning the cadenza and it's way easier than the 4th movt.

[Roxyitalia]

Berezovsky is a great pianist.

This cadence is incredible!

[IloveAlexisBledel689]

I prefer Lugansky or Ashkenazy performance, but still very good! great pianist.

[vjam4339]

i had to tell someone, i watched berezovsky tonight playing with sydney symphony prokofieffs piano concerto, and he walked off after the first movt, he injured his finger there was blood all over the keys, then he came back with band aids on his finger and finished the rest of it. The guts of the man

[ZicoMon]

Did they take Lugansky's version down? That was the version with the best video/sound quality! Argh.

[adistar]

j'ai rarement vu ca au piano, une telle force, une telle passion. Bravo, j'en ai le souffle coupé

[brahmsandpissed]

not quite as good as kissin or volodos

[goldberg72]

pensare che qundo e' stato composto questo concerto stupendo,milioni di ebrei,prigionieri politi,fanatici religiosi..e chi sa chi altro..morivano nei lagher nazisti..che follia!!la musica dovrebbe unire tutti i popoli

[RalleStar]

Colossal

[ardipierro]

Hola, escuchen también la versión de Vladimir Feltsman. Saludos.

[Iamabigfatpiggy]

gee...look at that giant hands....piano looks smaller than before...:p

[loves2listen]

the berezovsky-style.... i simply love it

[muratduman87]

the sound quality of this vid is not so good..

[katchum]

Good technique, but the part with "with effect" was a bit too fast and blurry.

[jszczech]

Hot, passionate!! I thought I knew this piece. Until that moment I heard this video! It seems that each pianist has a choice: either to play this concerto with passion or to take care of not making any mistake and in result play it like a boring etude (like Lugansky). I do prefer first choice. Moreover, the mistakes (quite a lot are easy noticable) make this piece more "realistic".

I wish I have a chance to listen to this concert, which I love, live - played by any pianists. :)

[alexrach99]

Berezovskiy is good. But I like less pedal in such music. So for me - Lugansky is better... And I like Gavrilov performing Prokofiev most of all but haven't heard this concerto played by him...

[John11inch]

This interp is a bit..... stale. Even da Kung-Woo Paik on naxos is more interesting, although i'm sure the sound quality here is not helping. Either way, Byron Janis is the master of this concerto.

[DF5JT]

Interesting. Byron Janis never played the concerto, so you really come across as an expert with little expertise.

And Kun Woo-Paik is one hell of a pianist, otherwise he would hardly have survived in the preliminary rounds of the Tchaikovsky competition.

[yukyo85]

it's kun-woo paik though..;;

[biegel88]

It's very admirable-he's a fine pianist. I studied this with Adele Marcus, teacher of Byron Janis, and Horacio Gutierrez performed this wonderfully. Marcus taught it remarkably and was a taskmaster. I performed it with the Oslo Phil, National (US), Danish Nat'l Radio. The secret to the long cadenza is to pace it dynamically from the brooding opening so you get through the rising climaxes to the final blow when the orchestra returns, wow! He did an very admirable job.

[Perkeno]

Berezovsky is pianistically superior to most, including Lugansky, imo. He's a BEAST!

[qwertyproulx]

This man has a phenomenal technique. The video is not professionally done, unlike Lugansky's, so a lot of sound quality is lost. It's a little unfair for comparison, though I like both very musch.

[rigel48]

Fantastic ! I would have liked to hear what Horowitz or Argerich could make of this concerto.

[tlanigan]

ashkenazy's recording is probably the best i've ever heard, note accuracy, phrasing, bombastic style, yet beautiful......... too bad he doesn't have a video of that performance on youtube

[billyguns2]

Lugansky may be more note perfect, but this has more weight, legato line, and sheer passion. I LOVE this piece!!!

[alkibiades00]

Yeah but the better performance here is in the camera work. The pianist missed half the notes. It seemed out of control.

[beakly]

good god..

[shilloshillos]

I am amazed that you can sneak a camcorder and do this in a public concert. Isn't it prohibited? I would be scared shitless to do it, lest I get kicked out or something.

[datruzepp]

ahahahah tiz y u iz not DA FUCKIN MART

[beyond9001]

man, I like concerto 2 is getting more attention now :) used to be a rare thing