Love how Liszt was so bored of being superhuman that he decided to translate entire symphonies of another musical titan so he could play them with his instrument of choice. Absolute legend.
He also wanted to democratise serious music. He trained hundreds of pianists, many of the best would have these in their repertoire. Your average person might get to hear a Beethoven symphony a couple of times in a lifetime; but every town had access to symphony orchestras and there was lots of competition for space as many concerts were still in private palaces. The gramophone didn't appear till 2 years after Liszt's death and it was 20 years before the quality became reasonable.
When you find this video 00:00 When you see comments mentioning pending copystrikes 31:06 When you see the comments are from 6 months ago and the video is still here 34:49
i've always been a beethoven solo piano works kind of guy, orchestral stuff has never floated my boat. imagine my delight finding these liszt transcriptions of the symphonies. i've got great beethoven listening from here to christmas, finally being able to properly enjoy beethovens greatest works in a way that i can listen to over and over, without feeling 'compelled' as mandatory enjoyment of the greats. i've had 7 and 9 transcriptions on blast for the past week, definitely going to be listening to all of these nonstop.
I hear ya. I like LISTENING to orchestral works. Composing for orchestra is, for me, its own special kind of hell. I'm much happier composing piano works, choral works, chamber works, or transcribing pieces for piano. The piano transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies bring out details in the structure which get muddied over in the orchestration. No fault to Beethoven: he was a master orchestrator, but when one person is playing as opposed to 60 or 70, one can hear structure MUCH better.
He has to do a few things differently, especially since a modulating piano can sound very different from an orchestra changing keys. Even things that the pianist does 'exactly right' will sound wrong because the overtones of a piano will not be the same as those you hear coming from a full orchestra. Liszt and the pianist here are probably doing the best they can. I thoroughly enjoy it because it allows you to see the bare bones of the music, giving you a different perspective.
Liszt's transcription of the fourth movement ("Thunderstorm") is no ordinary summer thunderstorm. It's not even a high-precipitation supercell with six-inch diameter spiky gorilla hail, and an embedded, rain-wrapped, mile-wide wedge tornado with horizontal vortices (think: the Tuscaloosa, AL tornado on April 27, 2011). Nope: this is *worse.* This is a musical description of *The. End. Of. The. World.* If the wind doesn't catapult you off the mountain, the lightning's gonna get you.
Incredible! Did not know this existed. Of course it will never match the orchestral version of my favorite symphony but it comes off much better than I would have expected.
As much as I respect Katsaris for his technique and musicality and his intimate knowledge of the original scores, I think he did Liszt a disservice when he recorded these. Because of his meddling with the text to incorporate stuff that Liszt left out. You have to remember that Katsaris was the first to record all 9 Symphonies in Liszt versions. And what the world got to hear was not what Liszt wrote but Liszt's versions with Katsaris' embelishments. You can do stuff like this if you are the third or fourth guy to record these, but if you are the pioneer in the discography and the first one to record these, it is your duty to stay faithful to what the score says, and not add anything to it.
Agreed. I find that I greatly prefer Glenn Gould's version, which is true to the original text and with much more color in the interpretation. Liszt knew what he was doing.
One of my alltime favorite works. Im a prof pianist and composer myself but this symphony doesn’t really work for piano.. you really need the orchestra imo. Apart from that my compliments to the way you play, this is so hard. Almost unplayable
I don't know how long did it take for Liszt to transcribe this piece, but I guess writing down the notes consumed way more time than composing itself, as many great musicians are able to transcribe symphonies to piano real-time without preparation, like Kocsis did it, eg. here in ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xoErMxHLNZo.html
I was almost sold. That second movement though... it's a brook... not a raging river. Maybe if it was taken a tad slower? That might fix the muddiness? And the end of that movement... did he listen to how that bird call passage is played at all? No pedal needed. Overall a lot of musical choices that baffle me in this recording.
Question. Shouldn't the poster of the video credit the actual performer whose work is being "lifted" off of youtube? I get it the video may not be protected , e.g., copyright or similar. But ....Marcel Simader 21.27756 years old "sttudying Computer Science at Johannes Kepler Universitat in Linz workong as Project Staff at the Institute for Symbolic Artificial Intelligence, and the Lit AI Lab Working on Open Source Projects.
Bella trascrizione di Liszt, forse un giorno la studierò. Bravo il pianista ma si può fare anche meglio, un suono pianistico più vicino a quello dell'orchestra e alla dimensione beethoveniana.
secondo me ci si può avvicinare di più alla volontà e spirito di Beethoven, senza nulla togliere a questa complessa esecuzione di Cyprien. @@albertocanova3247
There is so much wrong with this interpretation. After almost 200 years of tradition (has the pianist ever heard a live performance or a recording of this work?), here we have not so much a lack of interpretation but unmusical decisions - crashing on downbeat cadences, rhythmic irregularities, irregularities of tempos, rushing,