Even Valentina Lisitsa unable to fix Beethoven’s Moonlight “Mistake”? 

I was really surprised how “slow” Joplin’s performance of the maple leaf rag was. It made me realize how fast we tend to play it.

Good point about Joplin. I guess it depends on the interpretation. AuthenticSound is so musical, no matter what speed he played stuff at, it would make sense. But I tend to think he is wrong in his idea of this half speed thing. I don't believe speeds were so slow in the early 19th century.

Christian Segura Absolutely right about Joplin’s performance. It almost makes you want to shout, “You’re playing it wrong!”

Because it's all about the groove. Not playing fast.

I had a CD of Jopins pionalo recordings. Always found the tempi insanely fast... Except on Mapple leaf rag, which is slower than what I would play. But what do you think of the Entertainer?

Omg is that really you!

OK, Ludwig, you heard the guy, now what are your considerations?

You the man Beets!

Your music sounds "very rehearsed".

@@rafaelveggi I suppose you mean "you reads his lips" ;) Ludwig was deaf.

that would be a cool video!

Funny thing is Gould played the third movement of this sonata even faster than the fast interpretations of this piece

Glenn Gould; "the chairman"

If it’s written like that play like that.

HAHA! Now are you familiar with the Op. 111 piano sonata? There is a notorious section in the theme and variations that is in something very much like swing time! It's fantastic!

yah, pretty much Cruise later in life.

Ha! Good one... it took me a moment to catch on🍸

Denian Arcoleo Tom cruise is already 57

I’m sure Ethan Hunt’s had to learn everything Beethoven overnight sometime in his life

Denian Arcoleo They’re the same age lol

@ICan’tPlayPiano INNteresting!!!

Sacreligious

Ling Ling practice 40 hours a day, he can play it perfectly.

Harry Xiang lang lang

dominik3bb Ohhhh you got no idea

And that's ok I think! Taste in music should not be discussed, and if you prefer the faster version, listen to it! That's the beauty of music, there's something for everyone. But I think the point of this guy is not to say that one interpretation is "better" than another in the artistic sense, but just to try to explain some illogism in some historical markings, and that slower than what we are used to tempi still make for listenable music.

Why can't you have both? Why can't you have the strengths of both fast and slow version in one interpretation? What if there was far more tempo manipulation historically than there is in either the modern conventional performances or the way Winters plays his WBMP perfromances? What if the WBMP was the starting, slowest tempo of the piece, but performers would routinely speed up throughout a section or passage, speeding up even to the speeds that most modern performers today would play at?

I like the slower version. It conveys something the faster version can't.

@@jonathanlamarre3579 I agree that it's perfectly fine to have different musical tastes, but this channel is constantly telling us that we've been playing everything incorrectly (TWICE as fast as intended, no less), and that he knows what Beethoven and other composers really meant for it to sound like. He states these things as fact. He also ignores any evidence that would discredit his stance and only looks for confirmation. It seems to me that he is completely uninterested in any sort of historical truth and instead has fixated on this bizarre tempo notion for the sake of having an audience.

@@freakytea2815 It is because the metronome numbers make impossible to play and un musical pieces. The slower version give a lot more opportunity for phrasing which unfortunately is not taken. Watch earlier videos where this stuff is explained.

He was a contradiction. He'd write nasty letters to his publisher if they missed a tie, but at the same time, he'd also write things in his music that are literally impossible to execute.

@@Discrimination_is_not_a_right I doubt that, since he did many testing of the stuff he wrote before actual publishing.

@@Discrimination_is_not_a_right I can play anything he wrote, so that's hardly 'literally impossible', don't you think.. 😏

@@NevilDouglas Please do play one note crescendos on piano. Please do

@@janne7263 I was about say that. And four note pianissimo chords on the violin.

Welcome aboard!

Is not the tempo that increases, is the speed what increases. That's what the score indicates, faster notes not tempo.

Yes, Valentina has done other recordings of the Moonlight but this is her most recent one which is also part of her Beethoven project. It's the closest you get to her "official" performance. When Wim says that the 32nds indicate a higher tempo, he does not mean absolute tempo. Rather, he means that our brains interpret it as faster because there are more notes every second because of the smaller note values. The pulse does not change between the 16th note section and the 32nd note section in Wim's recording while it does that in Lisitsa's. Wim keeps strictly in tempo which, imo, gives the passage an unmatched fury. It's not a little rit. that Wim is talking about. Wim is talking about suddenly lowering the pulse by almost half in the middle of a piece. Imagine doing that in Beethoven's 5th or the Hammerklavier sonata! Rits. are universally accepted at the end of pieces and AS often uses rubato and dramatic pauses in their playing. But never a sudden halving of the tempo.

@@teodorlontos3294 That part is clearly a cadenza, and it musically asks for an alteration of tempo. This is self-evident, Beethoven didn’t need to write it down. This is called good performing, especially in solo performances, if you never alter the tempo, it will sound robotic, this is also self-evident. Furthermore, his irrational assumption that Lisitza slowed the tempo because she couldn’t play that fast is ridiculous, these are just arppegiated chords. Furthermore, his version clearly does not sound Presto Agitato

@@johannpetersen3637 Halving the tempo is not "altering the tempo". That's altering the entire piece. Of course there is room for small tempo alterations, but they can't change the content of the music itself. I think Wim's interpretation is a great Presto Agitato, no need to be faster.

We have that machine, it's called a metronome!

Big B: Sorry I can't hear you.

@@da96103 LOL

@@AuthenticSound And if you take that into account your tempo is half the speed from the tempo notation on the score

"The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible"

ahahahhaahahahahah genius!!! I wonder how long it would take this guy to finish the first movement of the moonlight sonata as well :)))

seen the andrew schiff documentary about the moonlight grave being played much faster than recited today ? i mean this guys fallen down the wrong rabbit hole clearly

Let's not even think about Op. 111 2nd movement....

@@Alexagrigorieff jeeeez noooo ahahhaahh

HAHAHAHA, YEAH!

Agreed, add some darker thicker hair, could be twin..

I think you mean the villain from Rogue Nation😂

its there

Have you considered new glasses?

Yeah IIRC even Lisitsa herself didn't slow down nearly as much in her earlier and most famous recording of this piece (altho it still it's slower than following a strict tempo)

i like Arrau he plays it a little slower, the whole movement . one thing we must remember these pieces were written for students to build technique. we must play them at a speed that we are comfortable. some pianist cannot play this and other pieces at the editors tempo markings. we don't just play notes we play passages with expression. if just playing notes we could just let the computer play the piece. the slow down for 8 bars i think its good expression whether right or wrong let the pianist decide with expression.

@@roaschmo You may not like but it is what Beethoven intended

Thank you very much!

​@AuthenticSound interesting point, I love playing the moonlight sonata also, I enjoy playing the 1st and 2nd movements if the Moonlight Sonata learning the 3rd movement, can I ask please I also enjoy playing the sonata pathetique 3 movements, in the 1st movement I play a allegro pace but not too fast, would you say that is right please? also could you please give Me some tips with pedaling in the sonata pathetique, if able to reply that will be great, greetings from wales uk 😀

Ditto! ^..^~~

Glad you enjoyed!

Well he is if you like it at that tempo then that's fine but her tempo is wrong in terms of pure metronome speaking this is a fact

skyler mccloud first of all I‘m not sure, wether I understood your comment right, it is a strange sentence. But I also think, that „pure metronome speaking“ is not the basis to say someone is wrong. There are many more important things to consider, when you criticize someone than the question: did he play it exactly at the speed Beethoven wanted it. In his times the instruments sounded completely different. I think it is interesting to examine, how they played it back then, but to do so, jus to say: You are all wrong? That has nothing to do with music.

Epic, but mistaken. Still the double beat interpretation is proven correct, for not only humans, but the fortepianos themselves would not be able to cope, and nor would the ears of the listeners. In single beat, it would just sound like a total mess at the point where it goes to demisemiquavers, even if all the notes could be played correctly at such a ridiculous pace. The war is as good as won for the double beat metronome practice. The single beaters have been made to look proper fools.

Epic but it's just become music for the sake of fame and virtuosity, two things that true music shouldn't aspire to.

@ It really depends. There's no really correct or incorrect way concerning music, only taste.

@@jonathanlamarre3579 Well, yes, but surely the composer's intention as to tempo has great weight here, don't you think?

@@gfweis Oh of course! I'm not trying to dismiss the validity of the research of the composer intention, and the quality of thoughts needed to do so, and the attention a musical lover must give to it. But in doing so, one must be careful of not dismissing others, more different interpretations, in the fear of not sticking to the composer intention. And that's what my initial reply meant. Understanding the initial parameters given by the composer is important because it allows one to understand the intention of the interpreter that voluntarily stray away from them.

Two Cherries Instruments q

Or, we can also count on something way more reliable and precise such the metronome numbers left by him or Czerny, his best student, that give us an exact idea of the tempi the composer might have chosen when playing his works

So, what you say is that you actually don't care what it is written on the music sheet. Or do I understand that wrongly?

This piece was not in Beethoven's early life though, in fact it is nearly centered in his 2nd stylistic period and by this time he had extreme peril in his life and career which is shown in this composition as well as the Tempest Sonata.

@@albertosanna4539 Yes, but this guy's crackpot theory is that the metronome marking applies to a longer note than what is marked in the score. He's taking Beethoven's marking and reinterpreting it.

@@Tod_oMal You don't understand. AuthenticSound is taking the metronome marking and cutting it in half by a sort of sleight of hand, claiming that the BEAT is different from what is clearly printed.

You'd be amazed what people considered "fast" prior to the industrial revolution.

why is that a problem?

AuthenticSound Your version doesn’t sound Presto Agitato.

@@AuthenticSound it is hard to argue that your version is 'fast and restless'

@@AuthenticSound I know, right? I've studied Italian, and I know "presto agitato" means "dull and lifeless". Just use Google Translate and you'll see I'm right!

@@FernieCanto presto agitato means rápido y agitado or in english fast and agitated.

The "presto agitato" expresses Beethoven's desire of the tempo... For me, that contradicts the slow beat theory He was romantic, and understanding the meaning of the music is to go beyond the formality and bureaucracy... The forte many times became piano so that the fortissimo ahead explodes, for example Interpretation has a lot of weight in his work...

The way you worded your retort suggests a sort of smug musical nihilism. If the intent of the composer is not considered in the interpretation, it's more of a remix. He was far more polite than you, and far less hypocritical in his beliefs, in my opinion.

"Freedom of interpretation" is valid when the written score does not provide enough evidence for what the composer wants - even contemporary pieces that use extraordinarily wide dynamic ranges (Crumb's Makrokosmos Vol. II ranges from pppppp to ffff) have some flexibility in terms of how loud or how soft these extremes are played. However, if a composer writes an "accel.", you can't just "interpret" it as a ritenuto - this is just lack of maturity, and an extremely egocentric approach to music performance, where the performer needs to assert their "right to interpretation" to ridiculous lengths. Chopin's Ballade op. 23, for instance, ends with an accelerando, but the vast majority of pianists nowadays slow down the final passage in octaves (the very last line of the piece), just because they have been imitating recordings in which the pianist plays it that way. Seeing an accelerando and slowing down is flat out wrong - there's no excuse for "interpretation" in a case like this. As I've said, it's virtually impossible for composers to convey every single detail of how they want their pieces to be performed (even in Contemporary music, in which composers have been able to write instructions in much greater detail), and interpretation comes to fill these gaps left by limitations of notation. Using this word (interpretation) to justify one's lack of attention to the instructions given by the composer is just stupid and stubborn. If you look at Chopin's Prelude op. 28 no. 16, for instance, he doesn't put the tempo indication on the first measure (as one would expect), but rather on the second measure. As there's no clear clue on how to play these measures, one could think that 1. the tempo indication was just mistakenly placed at the second measure, and therefore the "presto con fuoco" applies to the first measure; or 2. the tempo for the first measure should actually be taken from the previous prelude (no. 15), which is marked "Sostenuto" (if you recall, it's a rather slow prelude). This is where notation leaves a gap, and neither interpretation can be considered wrong - I myself prefer, in this case, taking the tempo from prelude no. 15 and apply it to the first measure of no. 16, but again, just my opinion - I can't come here and say that you would be wrong if you wanted to play this measure in the "presto con fuoco" tempo. Back to Beethoven, in case you're wondering, neither the original manuscript nor the first editions have an indication for a "recitative" or something like that - this is a public document which you can readily access in about a minute of research. Beethoven knew about the existence of the word "recitativo", and he knew how to apply it (check op. 2 no. 3, op. 31 no. 2, op. 110, and the last movement of Symphony no. 9, for just a few examples), therefore there's no excuse to play this specific passage in a recitativo style if the composer himself didn't use this word (and the context surrounding it does not imply a recitativo writing either). Anyway, interpretation doesn't excuse recomposing a passage for one's own ego or because one can't play it the way it's written.

The fact that the 32nd note bars contain "too many beats" suggests they are to be taken freely, "recitativo" as you mention. The 32nds indicate that those arpeggios are simply not to sound like the 16th arpeggios from before, more like a cadenza or fantasia. He's over thinking this way too much and becoming pedantic.

Exactly, this is self evident

Actually, Moscheles says some numbers from Beethoven are mistakes.

🤣🤣🤣

I also agree with your logic. But I would be curious to know your answer to this question also.

Yes, the understanding of time was much more slowed down than today, and you don't seem to really grasp this concept at all

If you miss a note from your sheet it is pardonable. But what is not pardonable is if you miss passion in your notes.live and let live.

Opinion of speed has changed over the centuries. The "double whole note" is still called by its original Latin name in some languages: "brevis" or "breve", which means "short". I speculate there is a learning effect carried over the generations to deal with faster and faster: in sports, in travel and traffic, in movies. That doesn't mean however anything relative to Van Beethoven's required tempo here. Note: (a) if there are no tempo changes indicated then we have to make sure to read the tempo from the fastest part. Conductor Zander would say, play this here slower or else you get into problems later. Schiff would ask you to play as Van Beethoven wrote "it already has been composed." (b) Now we can go back to reports from Ludwig's days about the length of a concert. (c) I am not sure when in the history of measuring time, we started having fixed hours - every city had its local time and day and night were always divided into 12 hours each. I guess mechanical clocks used to determine location in ocean n sailing have standardized that. With metronomes, the discussion for some is what 1 means: 1 click or 2 - compare the up and down in a sine wave that give 1 Hertz. (d) or a measured time of way back in hours or minutes may be meaningless today. My grandparents still referenced the hours (50 degrees latitude) going slow in the summer. At least as long as you don't know date, latitude, time of day. Safest is the "let's work from the fastest section" approach. Easiest to defend. If you ever hated playing Czerny or Diabelli study pieces, you can play those technically perfect and very fast. But they can be phrased in a way that makes it "music". My prejudice of the Russian school is technical and fast and as little emotion as possible, then there is a race to be the fastest amongst the scantily clad female pianists internationally, making it worse. And some of them cannot play without their fingers stumbling over each other. To me, the analysis and proposed phrasing here make a lot of sense. If Franz Liszt had something about this, I could trust that but Rachmaninoff interpreted everything as if having recomposed it.

@@simonedeiana2696 this is a bold statement for having no evidences at all.

yeah, i think saying sth like "historically accurate" would be way better than just calling one version "right"

no agitato no chocolato

This is no problem at all. Most Bach's works, have no tempo mark at all. Some were titled as dance music, then these works should be play as a dancable tempo. To Beethoven, i don't remember he written any metronome mark, but regular tempo marks. The metronome marks were written by Carl Czerny, as the most famous pupil of Beethoven. And he made the marks more chaos because he did this twice, and most of them very differently. And some of them are totally not playable, in the meanwhile some still playable. May be back to that age, musicians don't take sheet music as seriously as we do now. Ornaments are very common.

@@mohongzhi Beethoven left metronome numbers for all his symphonies, the Hammerklavier and some of his string quartets. And they were meant as precise speed indication, as well as those that Czerny has left

@@albertosanna4539 Oh, yes, you reminded me. I researched Beethoven symphonies score long before I started to take these marks seriously. I totally forgot he did this. But, I am teaching my girls piano, and I cannot avoid myself to see the marks on Czerny's etudes, and even worse, i have Carl Czerny's version of Bach's Well-tempered. I will say lots of Czerny's mark is unplayable.

Maestro Maximianno Cobra has recorded both Mozart's requiem and Beethoven's 9th in whole beat. Check them out!

@@mohongzhi Look at B's metronome mark for Hammerklavier Sonata as well as his symphonies.

That 8 bars are playable even if you follow the metronome ... pianists slow them down because of interpretation, 1st movement has a lot of rubato and rit that aren’t on the sheet as well... Beethoven was in the middle of classicism and romanticism therefore you have freedom of changing tempo or dynamics to give it more “feeling” You can’t do that with baroque or classical music tho

Thank you

Wonderful!

What's strange is that after many, many years, I too have looked at this work again. I know it is well known and coincidence is not exceptional for this masterpiece, but for me to be drawn back to this work these days is interesting. Paul Lewis performed it yesterday at the Wigmore Hall lunchtime broadcast. So I guess this piece is in the air these days.

I dislike the extrem slow down of many interpretation. That said, you are simply wrong when you say there is no indication for change in tempo. It's not a clear marking, but it's tradition to slow down before a fermate. Just like you play double dotted instead of single dotted in a french overture. Some things used to be common practice and don't need explicit explanationa

In this presto?

Well, my 10 year old Roland HP305 can play Turkish March way faster than Lang Lang could on the greatest day of his life. And to me, it sounds like complete noise. So I'm not so impressed by that stuff anymore.

Beethoven was black ✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿

That was too long for me to read but I'm going to assume that it was great and I'll like it

Well I wouldn’t take someone’s opinion that uses rape as an adjective. So I think it’s good.

However incredible talented Lang Lang is, His interpretations stink in my opinion. His intonation is way off all the time.. But, as there is no style police. Whatever he is getting out of the big German composers, is alright, though it is not with any respect to heritage

It’s too late. We’ve arrived

Did you practice today?

that's a good point! underrated comment here

The first recordings would only give insight in how it was played then. Do we still play like in 1975, did they as in 1940, 1920, ... so did the first recording artists play like ... 100 years earlier?

@@AuthenticSound We don't hear with just our ears, but with the neural networks that that input is fed into. On the first level there's psychoacoustics and hearing the God notes in Gregorian chant that aren't actually sung. But -especially with music- the way you experience sound is also determined by your previous experiences. How people talk with accents because they "hear" the foreign sounds in terms of their native tongue. Or much like how you can talk about losing a parent and construct an empathic feeling based on what it must be like. But until you've lost your parent, it's just an approximation. And even then, your own experience colours it differently from anyone else's, because of the differences between previous experience. Or musically put, your life is the voice leading that can make the key of G half# sound "off" or have it make the E that has come before suddenly not appear as bright anymore. So when one does a historically informed performance, does one approach it as an audiophile - try to recreate the original auditory stimulus as closely as technically possible - knowing we can never recreate the same experience of the sound, or do we want to approach what the composers heard in their minds ears and tried to put to paper? In my humble opinion, neither approach is wrong. I just enjoy the passion with which they are pursued. Oh and I can draw on my experience of a stag party, when I say that a movement along 8 bars can have a profound effect on the way you feel that lasts beyond a night's sleep.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RV8yluxHXm4.html 1930s recording of Schnabel playing the sonata: it's fast

😂

Omg same!

Now i have a good excuse!😂

It is a cadenza - which should have been very easy for a pianist to recognize as such..

thank you

@@AuthenticSound Thank you for your understanding of these knowledge and speak it loudly. I like your performance op 13 on a clavichord by you. I studied around 5 Beethoven sonatas, and op 13 is one of them, i will try to play it on my roland and try to use clavichord. Let's see.

@@AuthenticSound And I especially agree your understanding of bar 163 of 3rd mov of Moonlight. Considering his tempest sonata, op31-2, the first 8 bars already have 5 tempo marks, it's not possible he will mark 'forgot' tempi change on bar 163 of 3rd of Moonlight.

"You can have breakfast and lunch and dinner and the poor pianist is still playing", That's what I recall from Schiff :D

Kust because Ludwig threw his metronome about and broke it, this means all music must change? Every clock from that period was accurate, plenty of metronomes too.

In fact the 'une fantasia', means it is not a strict sonata form, that's all

@@AuthenticSound I think you'll find a large number of musicologists who disagree with that. To say it means it's not in "strict sonata form" is, in my opinion, anachronistic: most theories of sonata form came after Beethoven and were often based largely on his music (e.g. A.B. Marx). Either way, a lot of ink has been spilled over those three words, so whatever their meaning, I don't think it's as simple as saying "it means x, y, or z; now let's move on."

And yet really good pianists make the impossible possible. Those one note crescendos might not be possible but can be shown with body language

@@janne7263 So we are to regard Beethoven's hairpins as theatrical directions rather than musical directions? That's not really any crazier than backstage choirs or offstage horn players, both of which are common enough to be memes.

@@janne7263 Well, if you're a deaf composer, impossible crescendos are quite possible when you have to imagine the chords in your head and are not bound by the limitations of your incapable instruments of your era.

@@mal2ksc Im not saying we should do anything. Im saying the best pianists do it. Somehow, using their body, they convey a sense of crescendo when the instrument cant.

@@DmM843 Eh, probably didnt have anything to do with him being deaf (its debated if he ever did go fully deaf and if he did it was during his very last years) and has more to do with him being lazy/making a mistake. He knew a piano cant do a crescendo on one note, and it has nothing to do with "the pianos of his time". A piano involves a hammer hitting a string, that can never do a crescendo

There's no right or wrong concerning taste, I think. I like both of them, they both give a different vibe, the one I would prefer listening would depend of my mood. Saying one is "alive" and the other "dry" is only really a question of what are _your_ tastes, and have little to no universal value, I would think ? However, knowing what is the "correct" historical interpretation is interesting by itself, academically speaking, and can give some insights on what was the mind of the composer, and maybe also gives new, unexplored ways for a modern interpreter to explore pieces that were played to death.

he is not trying to please you or anybody, he's just trying to be authentic, and he explains it very well, without criticising or bashing any interpretation.

Related to a notation or to the ability of the player that today has Rach-technique?

@@PassionPno Yes

@@PassionPno But also no, because Grave isnt only a tempo marking

Glad you enjoyed it!

Presto does not equal 160 bpm, that is a big oversimplification. Czerny (Beethoven's best student and one of the best pianists at the time) gives this piece the metronome mark of half note = 92 which is faster than your claim of 160 bpm. Yes, you can slow down in cadenza-like passages, but halving the tempo seems a bit much to me. Your perception of "Presto" and "Andante" are very much based on what you are used to hearing. I consider this movement to be a Presto. These italian tempo markings are by no means objective.

@@teodorlontos3294 okay, well whatever he plays in his version is not presto

@@joelmacinnes2391 I hear it as a presto. It's not an objective tempo indication

@@teodorlontos3294 ? "you hear it as presto"? that's ridiculous.

@@matswessling6600 why would it be? Tempo is a relative thing and is highly dependent on a listener's expectations and biases

nono, those indications were from Carl Czerny... not just a 'publisher'!

Beethoven has very few pieces listed with metronome and the ones that do are either too fast or slow for modern tastes. Hence thecontroversy.

Great observation.

These extremely subjective views are evidence that the entire planet doubled speeds without those living throughout the period and who at their time were responsible for the editing of metronome markings of giants saying a word or even noticing? What about Brahms editing Beethoven and perhaps Schubert (cant recall Schubert on metronome), Clara Schumann editing her husband - as well of their own music: did they not care to set the record straight? Does that sound remotely plausible to you?

I know that recording, it's worth a video

I disagree with Lisitsa's interpretations way more than not. She tends to play way too fast in a lot of pieces and throws musical tension out the window. Her playing is all over the place. Technically she's brilliant, but I think she misses the soul of the music. Having said that however, I do think she really shines in Liszt. Her early video of the solo version of 'Totentanz" is one of the greatest interpretations I've heard.

All planning fast got me was tendinitis.

It's called whole beat, see for the intro video in the description!

surrealofficial - you're not mistaken, it's a bogus theory ...

it's not about 'better' it's about what Beethoven could have had in mind!

@@AuthenticSound Yeah, given your evidence it si more plausible that his intention was as you said. But just as you say, you can't really ask him what he wanted. I agree with your point on historical accuracy. I simply didn't like your choosing of words saying that others play "wrong", which you clarified more in the follow up. PS. I really respect your work. It's nice to have great quality, historically accurate recordings. PPS. Thanks for actually answering. Jugding for the multitude of comments i suspected mine to disappear between them.