What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol.VIII)

It has been decades since I dabbled with Karl Czerny on the keyboard.  In my younger days it would have been out of necessity as many required studies for younger players just happens to be from Czerny.  Since my son started grade 1 piano around 6 months ago my interest has been rekindled.  I am having a blast learning and learning many of these studies.  Not that this is profound music across the board because it clearly isn't on the level of other great composers.  It is because Czerny had a prodigious understanding of training fingers.  For every weakness he had a way to build technique.  Most are simply rapid, well-articulated, ear-tickling creations.

Czerny wrote more than a 1000 works in his lifetime.  Prodigious enough to become a student of Beethoven and in turn he himself became a well respected teacher who passed on the torch to the likes of Thalberg and Liszt to name just two. 

From fun to profound.  No one plays Chopin without having first learnt the ropes with Czerny and others like him.  After 180 years or so, Chopin's Preludes and Etudes have not been surpassed by anyone although only a small handful might be considered to have come close.  They stand as the pinnacle of artistic creations that happen to have extreme technical difficulties central to there core.  While Czerny was mostly focused on finger exercises I do not think Chopin could ever have written just finger exercises just as the letters that form words on a page are not the primary goal of any great writer or a brush stroking paint in unique ways on a canvas the final goal of a great painter.  But all great creations rely on stupendous technique though but not as the means to an end.

Cheers

Flettster

Today so far.

Stu.

Find this gets played more when the sun shines for some reason, awesome piece of vinyl!

Now this.

My version sounds crap.

Todays music so far:-

Vinyl

Disc 2 from this 3 disc set.Stu.

Generally find Mendelssohn too sunny and simple to make a lasting impression, but happily make an exception for his second violin concerto and these two piano concertos (although the violin concerto is the clear masterpiece). 

Cheers,

EJ 

Doug, it's interesting to see that your obvious affection for the piano has led you to express on multiple occasions that you try to find the worth in every pianist's performance, refusing to 'rank them' (just in terms of personal preference, not capability of course), while you happily state that Chopin's preludes surpass everybody else's. That would include the sterling efforts of Rachmaninov and Debussy, and really Bach as well... whereas I'm happy to state my preference for certain performances while no amount of punishment could force me to accept the superiority of Chopin over Bach or Debussy. A bribe might do it, but then I grew up in a pre-crisis world

EJ

Fold out rear and postcards?

Jono

Getting ready for the programme on BBC 4 at 9pm

Sadly not, It was part of the "Selekt" range distributed by Linn. Made by Demon records in 1984.

Andy

Disc one from this three disc set.Stu.