Let me be very clear about this: this interpretation by Georges C. pushes the boundaries of art, and thus also of mankind, forward. And Couperin is underrated in the usual perception.
I’ve been listening to this recording on RU-vid since it was first uploaded 12 years ago and I’m finally commenting on it. It’s simply the best performance of Les Barricades I’ve ever heard on piano. It’s just….man I don’t even have the words…
De la beauté et une simplicité toute apparente Du sentiment et une élégance raffinée De la douceur teintée de mélancolie Une sérénité infinie qui apporte la paix de l'âme Au clavecin, au piano, au théorbe ou autre, quand cette œuvre est interprétée par les plus grands maitres dans leur instrument, c'est ce qu'il ressort de cette pièce musicale composée par un génie de la musique française
Sweet, melancholic, minimalistic, optimistic, containing achingly-beautiful dissonances, ... what a miniature masterpiece !!!! (This is my favorite performance)!
There is nothing minimalistic and miniature about this masterpiece. What sounds deceptively simple is a composition of extremely advanced harmony rhythm combination it is constantly mutating and keeping it balanced is no less than supreme mastery. Try to analyze this piece from a musical theory perspective if you have the background, you will see that it is complex.This piece has more coup de génie concentrated than entire Mozart concerti when you reduce them to their inventive parts and trim the fluff. Not the least it is as complicate polyphonically as a fugue. If you want minimalist works look at Philip Glass it is nowhere near the caliber of this genius piece. This is arguably the best composition of F. Couperin.
Totalement génial. Un des plus grand virtuoses du piano de tous les temps joue avec simplicité, retenue et poésie, une pièce simple et énigmatique en respectant absolument son esprit, avec la même modestie que le baroqueux le plus rigoureux. Cziffra, un grand.
On avait un peu oublié le splendide pianiste qu'était Georges Cziffra dans tout les répertoires. Cette interprétation de la pièce de Couperin avec son émotion et son chant profond nous le montre tel qu'il était un artiste immense .
Magnifique, j'en ai des frissons à chaque fois que je l'entends. Du coup, je suis obligée de l'apprendre aussi. J'ai rencontré Cziffra, c'était un vrai magicien !
No amount of 'genius' can make up for the wrong instrument... Any keyboard player with a decent technique on a real harpsichord would totally surpass this pale imitation of Couperin, who, in both his study 'L'art du toucher de clavecin' and the introductions to his 'Quatre Livres' was incredibly precise as to how each piece should sound.
The secret is in the left hand.Cziffra had a very good one.He was one of the greatest pianists of the XX Century.A Franz Liszt great master EMI records.
@@julienbraudel7109 It also sounds how your ear and brain can process it. There is nothing flat about this version. Couperin wrote it for the harpsichord not because it was a better choice than the piano but because piano didn't exist.
The increase in tempo by Cziffra makes it his own and lifts it above the other excellent performances. Surely one of the best and underrated interpretations
First heard this watching The Tree of Life. It was used while Jack was praying and it cut to a shot of children playing on a playground just while the camera was circling them. It was one of the most beautiful uses of music and image I had ever seen, it was so powerful.
***** music kicks in when the mother responds that father is gone on a trip and the kids just go crazy of jpy then have the best time ever with mom, taking her into play. i think the music really fits that montage of joyful days without the seriousness that the father figure brings (which is inevitably important in the movie and in life).
C’est quand même vraiment rapide. Trop pour moi. On entend un geste précis et délicatement mesuré mais le tempo est trop élevé pour la quantité de nuance qu’on pourrait mieux savourer.
Such a beautiful piece, made the more beautiful by the soul of the man playing. Meditative, and with the sorrows of a lifetime. So grateful to have found this. Thank you.
It contours up for me a conversation between two people delighted to be in each other's company and the joy they share gets more intense and interesting with the variation/harmonisation that starts around the 1.36 mark. It seems remarkably contemporary and fresh.
+davlak I, too, have wrestled with this conundrum. And it isn't just ruthlessness and cynicism, is it? There's cruelty, murder, abuse of all kinds................how can this be?
in videos that feature performances of this piece, people are always complaining about tempo, one way or another. i first heard this piece in that malick movie, and i think this piece should be played at the pace of life. i don't know how fast that is, but this sounds about right.
Cziffra nous donne par cette version unique, oh! combien remplie de poésie de souffle et de vérité, l'esprit de Couperin! fait de sensibilité subtile...
Pas seulement un virtuose, mais un grand artiste (et j'en suis même légèrement étonné). Je viens d'écouter une vingtaine de versions, et de lire les commentaires... et notamment les controverses sur le tempo de cette pièce (de loin plus nombreuses que sur la question clavecin ou piano). Celle-ci est pour moi l'une des meilleures : assez lent, mais absolument pas sentimental pour autant. Mais d'autres versions plus rapides me plaisent aussi, à condition que cela ne devienne pas mécanique.
J'ai beaucoup comparé !!...sur tous instruments: au piano, mon interprétation préférée, pour sa profondeur, sa tristesse acceptée, son humanité.....Merveilleux. ( Mais j'adore aussi d'autres interprétations au clavecin)
I hope someday they make a movie about his life. Notice that he wears leather straps on his wrists. He was caught trying to escape communist Hungary and was sent to a concentration camp where he received so many beatings that the cartilages on the wrists needed support for him to be able to play. Also, later in his life he was greatly affected by the suicide of his son. The critics say that it affected his playing, making it more emotional and intense.
If you are trying to find the soundtrack where there is no speech and when the mother is at the hospital, the music is called opening from philip glass
The angst the yearning through three soul-touching bridges, by far the best interpretation of this old old song⚘ 🙏🏽 Thank you Bob Clark for passing this gem on to us.
Les deux interprétations celle de Marcelle Meyer et celle-ci sont convaincantes et elles donnent à cette oeuvre un caractère différent mais authentique à chaque fois . Couperin n'avait pas donné d'indication particulière ... Donc
This should forever put to rest the unjust criticism of Cziffra as a fire-breathing virtuoso without any true musicality who wrings the beauty out of any piece he plays by taking it as the fastest possible speed. The truth is that in certain show pieces meant by the composer to be pyrotechnic displays--such as Liszt's "Grand Galop Chromatique"--Cziffra put his astonishing virtuosity to work, but his technique went well beyond that when a composition called for sensitivity.
Beautiful. I never would have believed it was composed by a French baroque composer though. I actually thought it was an American composition, and recent. I heard it many times on the radio and then it was used extensively on the soundtrack of "The Tree of Life", a recent film by the genius Terrance Malick.
Il y a un supplément gratuit, où l'on n'entend rien pendant environ 3 minutes ; trois minutes de silence qui paraissent longues mais qui sont gratuites ! 😅
Il est évident que nous sommes sur la même longueur d'onde. Si l'interprétation de Cziffra se justifiait à une époque où le renouveau du clavecin n'avait pas encore atteint sa pleine maturité alors que le piano était à son apogée, ce genre de conception de la musique baroque dérivait de la tradition "romantique" du piano. Les choses ayant énormément évoluées depuis cette époque, de telles interprétations semblent aujourd'hui surannées. S'y attacher encore relève d'un culte passéiste.
A very nice version indeed. Agree about the tempo. I could recommend a recent quite slow version played by Helge Antoni which you can find on RU-vid. Thed way it's played in the 2011 Cannes Palme d'Or winner "Tree of Life" is also in my mind very nice and fits so well with the positive moments of the film/
Bach n'a joué qu'une seule fois du piano dans sa vie. Un piano à simple échappement de son ami Gottfried Silbermann chez le roi de Prusse. Il l'a trouvé d'ailleurs très imparfait et Voltaire dit à la même époque que le piano produit un son de chaudron. Ce qui est vrai quand on écoute les pianos de cette époque. Alors prétendre que Bach a écrit des oeuvres pour Piano est de la pure fantaisie. Le Piano ne rentrera dans les moeurs qu'après 1770 (Schobert, Eckart, Mütthel, Balbastre, ...).
i am so happy to have finally found this piece! i have literally been searching for it for weeks. i heard it on the radio and really liked it so learned the first part by ear and showed it to my piano teacher and asked her what it was but she didn't know. showed it to my cello teacher and she didn't recognise it either i tried all the "find that piece of classical music" sites, no luck. i went on all the baroque piano music playlists and still could not find it. BUT THEN, i heard it on the radio again yesterday in the car and waited in silence as the piece finished and they said "that was the mysterious masks by Couperin". YEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!
Fast tempos: they just make you relate the musical content at a different processing speed! You hear it faster. It's easy, but ultimately a matter of not just ability but preference. I think of Heifetz similarly to Cziffra regarding all that.
I love it when an extremely outstanding performer with perfect technique plays technically simple music. That's where the difference really shows. I've listened to this music from countless performers, and this one is truly the best. Their technical abilities allow them to add so many micro nuances, subtle shades of tone to this simple piece that only this level of knowledge makes possible. Cziffra is among the few performers with the best technical skills. I read an analysis that showed, through an examination of each note of an exceptionally virtuosic piece, that they hit every single note while other great performers surprisingly missed many notes. Their virtuosity is exemplified by: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--O8WEF__Mu8.html
