Bernhard Stavenhagen (1862-1914): Liszt - Hungarian Rhap. 12

Stavenhagen was something of a child prodigy, whose final teacher was Liszt, who thought very highly of his playing. He began learning withLiszt in 1885 and accompanied him on his tours for the last two years of his life, acting as personal secretary when Friedheim was unable to do so. Thus in 1886 he accompanied Liszt on his own last concert tour to England, and Liszt helped to launch his career as concert pianist. Stavenhagen went on to a highly successful international concert career both as pianist and, later, conductor.

The lack of any suriving recordings by him is a great loss. One recording known to have been made is now assumed lost (Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat op. 27 no.2). He did leave a few piano rolls for the Welte system though, made in 1904 or 1905.

This work is Liszt's 12th Hungarian Rhapsody and, like Reisenauer, Stavenhagen annotates the roll as "gespielt nach persönlicher Erinnerung an Liszt" (i.e. "played according to personal memory of [the playing of] Liszt"). You can hear the many alterations made to the score.

Some technical info: this roll was played back not on a real piano, but is a digitised playback on a sampled Steinway piano made from a digitally encoded transcription of the original roll (all the dynamics, articulation, pedalling, and so on is unchanged from the original roll, and there has been no "editing" of it). This is something I am experimenting with doing at the moment and I am quite pleased with this result in general. However, perhaps this roll needs slightly more work at me getting the sonorities right, as it still sounds slightly midi-ish to my ear at least.

The photograph shows the young Stavenhagen with his teacher Liszt in 1886.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• bernhard
• stavenhagen
• piano
• classical
• recording
• roll
• welte
• liszt
• hungarian
• rhapsody
• no.12

[branmdo]

Das ist elektronische Musik. Schade, dass man nicht mehr die Orginalton herstellen kann.

[d60944]

Ja und nein... es gibt keine "Originalton": bitte lesen die Beschreibung. ;-)

I hope to improve on this electronic rendition in due course though - I am well aware of its shortcomings.

[alexilmagnifico]

I don't think it has anything to do with how Liszt would play this work................ Stavenhagen was also terrible and truely inthankful to Liszt.........

I really dislike him as a person........ I had heard this piano roll a long time ago and wanted to listen know that I am much more familiar with the great composer and its sad..........

[PhilPhilUSA]

Dear d60944, I've loved this picture for years. I was hoping the Stavenhagen concerto would be cool - but upon hearing this I know a lot more! Thank you so much for this!

[pianolasociety]

Nicely done! I also have this midi - the dynamics were automatically created from the roll scan to give an impression only, the levels chosen are appropriate but not precise. A piano roll contains data stating when the piano playing mechanism should start to operate - midi contains note data recording the moment sound is produced from the piano string. This is part of the reason the midi sounds a bit jerky. I hope to post a video with a 100% cleaned up copy shortly. Keep up your good work!!!

[NOSEhow2LIV]

Very interesting,but as so often,the merits or otherwise of the version,musically,are sabotoge by the jreky adn sotp&start mekankis of teh painorllo,hwoevre ewll is't rpeodudce. Certainly it's tragic he didn't record properly,as ther's evidence of fine playing disguised there! Would it be possible to process it differently,for the rythm problems?The sound is clear, okay, a bit plasticky. Thanks for the enterprising effort.

[antoinezygfryd]

Stavenhagen a indiqué sur le rouleau qu'il avait entendu Liszt jouer ainsi la rhapsodie...

(Wikipédia)

[alexilmagnifico]

thanx a lot!

Alexandros

[d60944]

No. He died just a couple of years too early (and if it were only as good as the Brahms recording it would still not tell us much). The best way to try to understand what his playing was like is to listen to his pupils, read their memoirs and read the contemporary descriptions of his playing, and start to learn what 19th century playing was like in general. There are a large number of recordings by 19th century pianists, some of whom even performed with Liszt. Most are on my channel here...

[manishbabu]

what is " piano roll " is this not the real recording >?