"The Banjo" by Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Lincoln Mayorga performs "The Banjo" as part of the program "American Snapshots: 200 Years Of American Song" at Schenectady Community College 10/08. The entire program can be found on a TownHall Records CD at http://www.townhallrecords.com
Visit Lincoln Mayorga at: http://www.lincolnmayorgamusic.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• The Banjo
• Gottschalk
• Lincoln Mayorga
• american piano music
• congo square
• Camptown Races
• Stephen Foster

[saiczarina]

Fabulous

[shebamaybe]

@BardCoennius Great question! No doubt Gottshalk & later ragtime composers were both influenced by music from Caribbean, New Orleans, and Africa. Did the later ragtime composers hear Gottshalk? Reaching for the book "They All Played Ragtime." (Lincoln now playing the major passage from "Gottshalk's 'Souvenir de Puerto Rico'...Caribbean ragtime!). Maybe safest to say that later ragtime composers were influenced by Gottshalk's piano style which was influenced by romantic classical composers?

[BardCoennius]

@Music4ibc Would you say that Gottschalk's work was an influence on later ragtime composers?



[SunslightAndSong]

nice. It's interesting to think of G. as contemporary with Chopin & Liszt. How sublime Chopin is with the beautiful lyricism, grandiose Liszt, & at the same time G., representing "American" music to Europe--flamboyant. Sophistication against raw flash/show. I can play Chopin. I can play much of Liszt. But every time I try G., I give up--the music is very difficult, not in complexity, but in execution. So bravo to anyone who can play it. --and still have hands attached to the body.

[notoriouskoala]

1:50 STARTS PLAYING

[Hikikomori013]

The ending sounded a lot like an accordion, with all the notes running together in a continuous flow.

That's an impressive performance.

[germanmusician]

Very good! Also, a very interesting interpretation...I have never heard it pedaled in the ways he did for the majority... The end, from 5:15 on, truly sounds like a banjo!

[Music4ibc]

As a music historian and leading proponent in early American music, I have to state that Mayorga is not only a brilliant concert orator who educates his audience with concise intellect of the work for the composer he has programmed to perform, I say with 100% conviction that even though there are technical and virtuoso errors in his performance, his execution, understanding and deliverance of this remarkable work is nonpareil to that of Earl Wild.

[inosakurachan]

I wish I could see his hands.

[viralinfection55]

bad ass