TromboneChat

robcat2075 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:27 pm If you took piano lessons you probably played at least one movement of the famous Mozart Sonata in C.

But did you know there was a whole piano missing from your performance? Grieg thought so...





Nailed it!

ithinknot wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:49 pm Intolerable, but as something to hack through at the Pleyel double grand après liquid lunch... why not.

PosauneCat wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:34 am P.S. I enjoyed your videos and the Spacepod movie is very nicely done!

What I find most disturbing is the mixture of classical and romantic idioms. It offends my musicological sensibilities.

On 27 May 1877 Edvard Grieg wrote to his publisher: "During the winter I have been engaged on a task that I found particulary interesting - adding a free, second piano to several of Mozart's sonatas. The work was intended in the first instance for teaching purposes but by chance found its way into the concert hall, where the whole thing sounded surprisingly good."


Grieg himself went some way towards preempting potential protests by insisting that his arrangements were intended for teaching. Such a line of argument obliges to examine the customs of the time - an age in which the gramaphone was barely a glint in its investor's eye and there was no opportunity to hear and follow interpretations at second hand. As a result, it was common practice around 1880 for piano teachers to accompany their pupils on a second piano, either to ensure the correct tempo or, perhaps, to make the soloist's solitary existance somewhat less intolerable...

robcat2075 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:30 pm

PosauneCat wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:34 am P.S. I enjoyed your videos and the Spacepod movie is very nicely done!

Thank you, very much!

What I find most disturbing is the mixture of classical and romantic idioms. It offends my musicological sensibilities.

It's like that scene in "Holiday Inn" (1942) where the classical minuet keeps getting interrupted by jazz.

But it turns out to be a respected piece in its own right. Big names like Sviatoslav Richter (with Elisabeth Leonskaja) and Martha Argerich (with Piotr Anderszewski) have performed this... in public.

Here are a few notes from another performance on YouTube...

On 27 May 1877 Edvard Grieg wrote to his publisher: "During the winter I have been engaged on a task that I found particulary interesting - adding a free, second piano to several of Mozart's sonatas. The work was intended in the first instance for teaching purposes but by chance found its way into the concert hall, where the whole thing sounded surprisingly good."


Grieg himself went some way towards preempting potential protests by insisting that his arrangements were intended for teaching. Such a line of argument obliges to examine the customs of the time - an age in which the gramaphone was barely a glint in its investor's eye and there was no opportunity to hear and follow interpretations at second hand. As a result, it was common practice around 1880 for piano teachers to accompany their pupils on a second piano, either to ensure the correct tempo or, perhaps, to make the soloist's solitary existance somewhat less intolerable...

And here is an orchestral version of Grieg's addition...