Ursula Oppens Celebrates Elliott Carter

[jdbrown371]

Our western diatonic music must sound funny to the orientals with their pentatonic scales or the Indians with their Ragas. Some people can hear in twelve tone rows and find Schoenberg etc. natural but anything the carpet chewing moppets can't understand must be BAD! Twelve tones isn't better or worse than seven, you can write good and bad music in both systems. Elliott Carter is the real deal.

[tasteism]

If I hear my piano this way, I know my 4 year old nephew is at it and I stop him at once.

[aculturemind]

@tasteism

Hear what way? Incomprehensibly?

[HarryOCarpus]

Oppens is a wonderful pianist - it's worth listening to her playing with the score open. She does take liberties here and there with the pulse but only ever in ways that are sympathetic to the piece. I love Retrouvaillles with a passion - it's the first Carter piece I've actually managed to get my fingers round myself. I have her Carter CD but watching the video is really marvellous. Thanks for posting this.

[organman52]

PURE GARBAGE.

[aculturemind]

@organman52

Pure garbage where? In your head?

[organman52]

@aculturemind No - it's coming out of the piano. Don't you hear it?

[majav15mg]

Holy fucking shit. I doubt I'll ever be able to enjoy this.

[minirausch]

unfortunately the first three sixteenth notes of the piece are clipped off. lovely to have this video in any case. what a wonderful lady!

[IFStravinsky]

I attended this concert! I was sitting in the front row just few feet away. It was a memorable, exhilarating evening.

[arsamoris]

Three cheers for Oppends and Carter, the youngest musicians in the world.

[guitarmanK1982]

or they might indicate that you are a boring prick. Go jerk off somewhere else.

I was actually trying to help you with my first reply to you, yet you instantly went on the 'I know best' bandwagon.

Let me tell you something - you don't know best, in this instance, and your language is just, well, dull.

But hey, feel free to keep thinking you know best. I'm not wasting my time replying to you anymore.

[guitarmanK1982]

no - you were trying to make it look like I was ill-informed. Some people call this being a 'smart arse'.

Read the biography. Everything you are saying about sight-reading etc is mere speculation, and unqualified, unsubstantiated opinion.

And read about eidetic memory also.

PS you also haven't 'qualified' any of the statements you have made.

[guitarmanK1982]

Read his biography by Faubion Bowers. It's all in there.

Your comment doesn't inherently make sense to me. You were commenting on people who could play a piece of music after only seeing it for a short time. You mentioned Scriabin. I reaffirmed this comment.

I think you'll find the term you're looking for is an 'eidetic' memory.

Hopefully this comment is qualified enough for you.

[guitarmanK1982]

Yes - it is noted that Scriabin had this ability i.e. looking at a page of music, then playing it.

he was, ironically, a terrible sight-reader partly because of this.

[japanesesweet]

a snapshot of Carter`s style- - -my favourite piece (by a considerable margin)is Piano Concerto which Ursula Oppen`s recorded twice.interesting comment earlier about the British Premiere of this little minature.

[RayAtBristolUni]

Gould, maybe. And perhaps John Ogdon.

No, I didn't give you a negative. I see one of the Cage videos (the guy on a bus performing 4'33 on a guitar) has received -57 for one of the comments. Someone wrote that Abba was better than Cage, which caused a riot.

I hope anyone who likes this Carter piece will investigate Night Fantasies (1980), a remarkable work which will surely go down in history as one of the greatest piano works of the last century - a sort of modern 'Gaspard de la Nuit'.

[RayAtBristolUni]

It depends what the piece is! Carter's Retrouvailles is his simplest piano piece, but it's inconceivable that anyone could just look at a page of it for a minute then play it by memory. Not even Ursula!

The first performance of this piece was given by a British "specialist" in contemporary piano music who studies music superficially and always plays with EXTREME inaccuracy. It's better to take time over learning these things to do them justice - as Ursula does. She's a truly great artist.

[obgyno]

this piano sounds really good and she makes it sound even better

[toneeeeeee]

I know this is definitely possible, but I don't think you need to be able to do this to be a good pianist. I don't know many pianists that actually can, or would need to do that...

[ipmoic]

A star in N.Y. City's musical firmament for 50 years. You rock Ursula!

[jgyn]

She's wonderful.

[skharpuri1984]

OH WOW!!!!

[toneeeeeee]

Damn how the hell could you sightread that...

Carter Rocks!

[GreggaryPeccary]

I guess she learned it beforehand

[ixkey]

Brava!

[sshuck]

I love the look. Grandma with the sequined sweater.

[aandreja]

This was good.

[iwanttowatchsomethin]

Thanks for this.

[dkuzmin]

excellent!

[bsmusicd]

Thanks for the post, I was at this concert and it was amazing. Please post more.