Maria Yudina plays Beethoven Sonata No. 32, Op. 111 (1/2)

[kobiianardo]

this is by far the most manly version i know of.... and so much passion. the recording quality only adds to the rip-ness (had to make up the half-phrase for the occasion)! i love the fact that it's actually a lady playing haha.

[eliyaguy]

somehow I feel (who am I to know?) that beethoven meant it exactly like this. 

[evanmacomber]

if you can't play like her then you have no right to say she isn't good or that she should play a certain way.. she IS the genius, period. Those judging her performance only dream to have at least one bit of her talent.

[vkoracx]

@evanmacomber

couldn't agree more

so refreshing and original

[vkoracx]

man this is so good I am all goose bumps

[grabagoodone]

Is she David Oistrah's sister? they look like each other so much.

[DearMrT]

Interprétation fascinante, d'une grande clarté, profondément Beethovénienne. A mon avis, la meilleure depuis Artur Schnabel.

[Pischnaholic]

Sorry I didn't listen to the first movement first. The introductory Maestoso is played with great understanding and depth of feeling. The rest is played with tremendous urgency -- it even blazes with FURY where it should, and the dynamic contrasts she achieves are admirable -- but this fast a tempo is not required, and I do not like the sound of this piano.

Thee second movement was a great disappointment.

[polskaczech]

She knows like anyone combinate creativity with humanity sense. And we have a many fortune, because on our days is possible listen her performances without the restrictions imposed by the bad russian of the past. Now we have her immortality, reflected on this recordings.

[PhillipLWilcher]

Robert Graves once said : "The thing to be said, say it!" - this is what Yudina does without fuss or affectation. Quite incredible and most certainly, never to be forgotten!

[CeaserXIX]

Was it not Wittgenstein who said that? Anyway, interesting, I, too, share this feeling regarding MY's interpretations.

[PhillipLWilcher]

Possibly.

I have a book titled "In Search Of Genius" - interviews with creative folk, everyone from Picasso to Marcel Marceau, mostly artists and writers - curiously no musicians feature. Robert Graves says it in his interview.

Best wishes......

[jorgeliebermann]

@PhillipLWilcher Out of style.Listen in the same Sonata Egon Petri,Claudio Arrau,or Artur Schnabel,and attend the Urtext edition.

[PhillipLWilcher]

@jorgeliebermann It speaks to my condition, despite "style" and that is a condition which does not so easily warm to the piano sonatas of Beethoven at the best of times. Petri, yes. Arrau,yes. Schnabel, yes. Of course. And Yudina? Yes! My library at one time housed not only the Urtext but the Schnabel edition among others....even Dukas. Depleted now.

[bernardocarmopiano]

I LOVE MARIA YUDINA. Everething she used to play became an work made by a lost of deep feelings and pain (whithout sentimentalism). The conception of this sonata, for example, is one of the most dramatic of XX sentury. She, Annie Fischer, Myra Hess, Richter, Clara Haskil, the great performances...

[RabidCh]

I was listening to only a little of Ernst Levy's performance of this same Sonata movement- it reminded me of this recording of Maria Yudina's.

[smithsherman]

This goes on my BEETHOVEN FREE OF IDOLATRY playlist....

[thegoddescomposer]

omg is she still alive>>>? she is very beautifull ,

[thunder1909]

My teacher, Lydia, was a student of Maria Yudina. Did you know Maria didn't even have her own piano? She had to go other people's homes to play and practice.

[ellandelachapelle]

Neither did Schubert. (he didn´t even have a flat of his own. Had to stay with friends.)But this WOMAN - like a human tsunami! (and I used to think Argerich was a musical power station. This beats everything!) (I mean of course tsunami in a POSITIVE sense.)Where did my jaw go? (I think I dropped it.)

[chad410]

I don t have my own place. and i have many pianist friends who have to leave their homes because they can t practice. Only practice if you are well known. im lucky I have a room upstairs.thanks the lord. i heard a little boy practising the violin on the end of our row of houses it was a sunny day and I thought wow. that s what it s about. he stopped after 5 minutes.

[thunder1909]

No, but I mean she had to go and ask other people with pianos to practice. Those people could've lived wherever. I don't mean the Conservatory, that came after.

[suzettegm]

Yes, this is like 2+2=5.

[rigel48]

This sonata is one of the greatest work ever composed, and Yudina is extraordinary. After listening to her, I think of what Anton Rubinstein said to the young 15 years old Alfred Cortot after he played for him the Appassionata : "Young man, listen carefully what I am going to say : Beethoven, that is not to be played, that is to be reinvented"

[pianopera]

I've also read this version: "My boy, don't you ever forget what I am going to tell you. Beethoven's music must not be studied. It must be reincarnated."

[rigel48]

Well, as my english is far from to be excellent, here is the original text in french : "Petit, n'oublie pas ce que je vais te dire : Beethoven, ça ne se joue pas, ça se réinvente...".

Maybe someone could translate correctly.

[pianopera]

Your translation is fine. But I wonder which of the two is the "original"...

I think that most people who heard Rubinstein make that statement are now dead ;-)

[smithsherman]

Yes Gerard...You are hearing this! Argerich should listen to this...and yes...everything must be reinvented everytime it's played,

otherwise there would be no need to play it.

[rigel48]

I totally agree with you Smith. It's why I like so much pianists like Cortot, Horowitz and Argerich : because they mostly reinvent what they play.

[PhillipLWilcher]

Cortot especially - I've often thought he was the Baudelaire of the piano.

[parazsdavid]

Except Argerich, she is soulless most of the time.

[chad410]

actually Clara has a great recording of this too.

[smithsherman]

Poor Erwin...His idea of "Antique Beethoven" are the snoozepill performances of the modernists of the 1930s and 1940's.The generation that invented plastic.

[pianopera]

Poor Smith...his idea of "Traditional Beethoven" is so far removed from the truth.

We can be faithful to God *and* to Beethoven at the same time.

[smithsherman]

Erwin...You want to be Beethoven's lover?...You go ahead and "Be Faithful" to a dessicated bag of Bones! God will allow you your Necrophilia

[pianopera]

In my collection of relics there is a toe nail of Beethoven. It doesn't look very "traditional" :-)

[smithsherman]

Paint it Pink and White like Venice(in Alessandro's honor).Then it will be Authentic.

[pianopera]

Yes, we could do that. But then it would be more like a POGO-relic...

And we all know how you love his recordings of Scarlatti, just like the other Pink Pianist in your "Better Baroque Phrasing" playlist...

(I prefer more playLiszt)

[Brianjonestown]

True, and a good Pogo-relic is hard to find these days. But Pogo's Beethoven 111 is also extraordinary.

[PhillipLWilcher]

Pogorelich playing Scarlatti is a force to be reckoned with - right in every way.

[NotSoDivineMsM]

If you think Pogorelich is the 'bomb' you need to hear the Scarlatti sonatas in the hands of Christian Zacharias or Gabriele Gylyte. Now THAT is Scarlatti the way it should be played. I also like Pogorelich and Babayan playing Scarlatti but Pletnev was a major disappointment.

[smithsherman]

There we have the problem again...We shouldn't be faithful to the composer's score when it was not in the tradition to do so...

[pianopera]

There we have the problem again: we shouldn't only be faithful to a "Stylus Phantasticus" but also to Beethoven's score - he took the trouble to write many dynamic markings in it. If we ignore or change many of them, can we still be "faithful" in any way?

I prefer the "Old New" generation of Beethoven-interpreters.

[chad410]

there is a problem though when performers just read them literally and that s it. i find this discovery of somebody who is not intersted in herself so complling. she wants to speak to ludwig i think and he probaly is speaking back.

[pianopera]

Yes, but do they *understand* each other?

[smithsherman]

The music belongs to God...and as such she authorizes anyone with the BALLS to "understand it" for themselves.

[chad410]

what do you think? I am more confinced that she has Ludwig at her side tan say a certain....lol

[smithsherman]

Achtung! Hauptsturmführer Pölstra of Leon Degrelle's " Musik-Wallonie SS" iz een ze ruhm!

[pianopera]

How many vodka's did you drink tonight?

[smithsherman]

Not enough unfortunately.

[chad410]

ooh now girlies.lolxx

[smithsherman]

Don't discard your panties just yet...

[chad410]

this is the best 111 I ve evr heard. so many different pebbles on the beach.

[smithsherman]

For those born in the last 2 decades of the 19th century,It's Yudina's playing which is far closer to the Real Traditional "Classical"

style of Viennese performance.Unlike Schnabel,Fishcer,Backhaus,Kemp­ff,& R.Serkin she preserves more faithfully the "Stylus Phantasticus" declamatory style of Beethoven. 2

[smithsherman]

What she captures here much more successfully in the Declamatory style of Beethoven is the violent juxtapostion of Morbidly Static Recriminating Self-Pitying versus an Elusive Unself-knowing Compulsively Phrenetic impetus. 3

[smithsherman]

Although Schnabel has come to be known in the late 20th century as the "Standard-Bearer" for historic Beethoven performance,The truth is almost the opposite.Like Gieseking,Fischer,

Hofmann & others he saw himself as a new generation of Anti-Traditional artists who were determined to create a new "objective" style. 1

[smithsherman]

What she so successfully captures here that her contemporaries fail at by degrees,is the incredibly violent juxtaposition in Beethoven's style of absolutely morbid static

self-recrimination versus phrenetically compulsive forward impetus.  3

[smithsherman]

As usual she focuses on defining infinite space rather than attending to structural arising.She knew that Heirarchically,Vacuity is the Overlord to all Manifestations.

Ironically,it makes her Arisings much more expressively principle-laden & thus more effective. 4