György Cziffra, piano ➧ 📌 Support my channel via PATREON ♫ / pjfaudiosheet or ➧ ☕ BUY ME A COFFEE ♫ www.buymeacoffee.com/pianojf or ➧ PAYPAL ♫ paypal.me/PianoJF
It's hard to explain but I have deep emotional connection to this piece. It was one of the first pieces of classical music that truly captured me and made me see why classical music is different. God knows how I stumbled upon it. Cziffras insane interpretation instills a kind of gypsy magic into music that is almost unheard of in classical recordings. I feel like Liszt is talking inside of his performance.
Acabo de encontrar esta pieza y es la que buscaba hace más de 20 años, es hermosa, de veras se oyen voces, me encantaría escuchar lo que dicen, es de una precisión y sensibilidad especial. No sé si decir Gracias, Gracias, Gracias... o como celebrar y agradecer está creación tan maravillosa.
Cziffra and Liszt would have been close friends. They both share a very rare form of genius coupled with passion -- Liszt looked into the future. Cziffra caught his glance.
pianosenzanima It’s probably because Liszt can just sound like a bunch of notes put together with some decent melodies here and there. I know this because I thought the same until recently I became more familiar with his s.139 etudes and then the s.137 set along with the s.136 set as well. Then his Hungarian rhapsodies etcetera. I became familiar by listening dozens of times over and over and eventually found that Liszt was a true musician making real music, so romantic and gorgeous when it needs to be but powerful most of the time. I still feel the same way about him I used to sometimes but then I just remind myself that I become familiar with his music it’ll be okay.
@@pianosenzanima1 it takes a while, my music taste and ear kind of gravitated towards Liszt's music but it took a long time for that to happen, when I was younger I didn't like his music it just sounded so jarring to me because I was used to Mozart, Beethoven etc. Now I like his music, his sonata especially
Nope, Liszt has many more beautiful pieces. Besides, you certainly shouldn’t say that to Andrei Christian Anghel, he has an entire channel with Liszt’s (largely forgotten) music 🙂 Have a listen!
Carlotta Don’t assume you know everything, Andrei is a very good friend of mine. I’m actually helping him with his channel and sourcing sheet music for Liszt’s Consolations S.171a. And it is a rarity because not a lot of people record it compared to his more popular pieces like his Etudes, Annees de Pilgrimage and Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Carlotta You’re quite different to most people on RU-vid then, like Andrei and I are, and so I appreciate that, thank you and sorry about my hasty response.
This sounds very Chopin-esque, there are certain Chopin influence in this composition. But nevertheless, we see Liszt's trait in the insane middle part. A severely underappreciated work of piano, this should be more famous.
I tend to overlook the obvious fact that the two influenced eachother because I am bias towards Liszt. Both obviously in a god tier league of musical ability and understanding but I don't think Chopin matched Liszt's compositional abilities. Pieces like this and sonata in B minor stand above absolutely everything piano composition related in my opinion.
@@Felix_Li_En Cziffra was 1000% better than Liszt. His transcriptions are so much more harder to play EXACTLY like him, with his nerve accuracy and everyhting, i doubt Liszt ever had the time to practice piano as much as Cziffra did, with the composing travelling wives etc...also the pianos on Liszts time were crap compared to modern pianos. He was definitely a schock for everyone who listened to him and his unique and new style composition for piano, but he was no match for Cziffras daemon and his out of this world technique. It was Cziffra, and the others. We have though somebody alive that could come close to Cziffras technique(not nerve though, unfortunately), and that is Arcadi Volodos. ;)
@@pianosenzanima1 in his jouger years as far as its written liszt practiced for up to 12h a day! And as far as difficulty goes his deuze grandes etudes and his 1838 paganini etudes are in the same boat as all of cziffras transcriptions if not even more fingerbreaking
5:39 The amount of tension in this moment all the way until 5:55 is so unbelievably high. It sounds like anger, panic, and a loud cry all at the same time, like someone reaching their boiling point and them holding back becomes a failed option.
Cziffra played and recorded on a Yamaha piano and I wonder whether this contributed to the sometimes bright metallic edge to some of his later recordings. The score is sometimes marked ppp but you wouldn't think so here. Perhaps the mikes were too close to the piano. Even so, Cziffra plays this rarely played Polonaise with great energy and passion and I am a devoted admirer of his playing.
piano345 I think you are correct that his Yamaha is too bright for recording purposes. I have heard other recordings in which he produced beautiful ppp treble tones played tres vif and they were so delicate.
Yes. The quality of the pianos on which he recorded is difficult to understand. It is not directly Yamaha's fault but maybe recording limitations. You see, Richter played Yamaha and I have never faulted his recordings. Yamaha had a "tame" engineer follow Richter around the world keeping his pianos up to spec. In 1970' s I complained to Yamaha about my 6'6" grand. They arranged for the same Japanese technician to visit my house and adjust the action on my piano FOC. It was like night and day the difference the fellow made. Hence I wonder whether Cziffra's pianos were getting the proper attention. For example, Steinway had people running around looking after Arrau; he was brilliant but not really in Cziffra's class. Cziffra also seems to have played some French pianos , none of which come over too well on RU-vid.
pianosenzanima Liszts last piano was a bosendorfer. I forgot where it was but there’s a video of an audio of someone playing some neglected piece by Liszt on it. It sounded deep and intricate
Very passionate and virtuosic performance from the legend that is Cziffra! Still...I guess we're just going to ignore the "sotto voce" in the opening? 😂 Ah well, it's still magnificant. Even for Liszt, I sure this piece was very well received. The dynamic markings are literally supposed to be from a soft whisper, to these towering, strong, and intense sections. This is a virtuosic piece, not only for the composer, but for the pianist, and Cziffra rises to the occasion!
A performance of such exhilarating and overwhelming passion that it makes you wonder how anyone else could possibly do justice to this piece. Although Cziffra does admittedly obliterate the “mélancolique” designation 😆
Ok, I‘m back (you didn’t expect that, did you? 😅) Sorry, guys... 😞 I‘ve forgotten that I‘d written this comment and today, I came back to listen to this amazing piece and I scrolled through the comments and... voilà: There, I found mine! 🤦🏻♂️ I hope you‘re still interested in getting to know my favourite piece 😁 So, it would be: Chopin‘s first piano concerto, the second movement (by the way, I‘m learning to play it 😄)!
Cziffra would often speed up the tempo when things got loud. I personally like it, I think it's exciting, but academic pianists would criticize him harshly for it. It's most noticeable in his Chopin etudes.
+Echoherb Similar, but not quite as good! I can't help but think of Liszt traveling about all over Europe in a wagon with his piano making the same bumpy journey in another wagon at 10-15 miles per hour (on a good road).
My opinion comes here now: Better than all of the not so well known Polonaises by Chopin, except his No. 16 in G-flat, Op. posth, that I like fine. This work is just as good. Dear master Liszt could write quality Polonaises.
I completely agree, I cannot understand the hate this piece receives. The 2:34 thematic material is absolutely gorgeous and the development of it onwards is terrific.
There's Chopin, there's false Chopin (people trying their hardest and failing to sound like Chopin), and then there's Liszt-Chopin. This. Liszt's Chopin-Esque works which I am deeply fascinated with. I wish I knew how to use this style.
this is what my teacher would call a very brilliant sound piano my piano had also abrilliant sound,not as much as this one but would have cost my parents a fortune to change the sound so i had to learn to play it more softly,Cziffra didnt have a teacher like me ,but he sure plays better than me
Although Chopins polonaise had more soul, this polonaise is strangely more similar sounding to the traditional original polish polonaise especially the opening theme
@Cringey Libtard You have probably forgotten that Liszt's longest (20+ years) relationship was with a Polish woman, Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein née Iwanowska. He had spent months at her estate in Woronince, where he composed pieces which use Polish (and Ukrainian) folk-songs. Liszt often mistook national music for folk-music, but many of his Polish works actually use folk material (not this one though:). Liszt's Polish connections go well beyond Chopin - the Princess is probably just as important in terms of inspiration. He dedicated a lot of his symphonic poems to her - including Festklänge, which contains a polonaise. She also inspired him to write an oratorio on the Polish saint Stanislaus - sadly unfinished but two polonaises were completed for it (one is fantastically unfolkish, the other uses actual Polish folk-tunes). She also no doubt inspired Liszt's Salve Polonia setting. But apart from her one of Liszt's earliest concertante works, "De Profundis" from the early 1830s also has a polonaise section. He was also very fond of Weber's Polonaise brillante - even transcribed it for piano and orchestra. With respect to Liszt's Polonaise No.1 in C-minor I tend to agree with you that it is not particularly Polish in character - there are some stereotypically Hungarian elements mixed in there, too, e.g. the occurrence of the "bokázó" cadence.
In terms of the original theme yes I'd agree, this polonaise main theme is actually more traditional polish sounding than a lot of Chopin's polonaises, which tend to have a more French/Salon waltz like influence. However, how Liszt develops the themes through the rest of the piece is anything but polish. Even Chopin's polonaises were more vehicles for pianistic expression and certainly not the type of music one would dance to.
@@nickjgunning I heard that he was suppressed by the community to produce more chopinesque "simple" Pieces rather than making complex pieces.In His late pieces however, he has broken through his shell and be like Liszt.
Hoy, estoy para penas solamente hoy no tengo amistad sólo tengo ansias ansias de arrancarme de cuajo el corazón ponerlo debajo de un hoy reverdece que ya espinas seca hoy es día de llanto descarga en mi pecho el desaliento no puedo con mi estrella y buscó y buscó la muerte por las manos mirando con cariño las navajas piensan los más altos campanarios para un salto mortal y llegará serenamente al fondo si no fuera porque porque mi corazón escribiría una carta con mi sangre de un tintero una fuente de sílabas de adioses yo nací en mala luna tengo la pena de una segunda pena que vale más que toda la alegría cuanto más me contemplo más me aflijo este dolor este dolor ayer mañana hoy yo en mascorazon nada de los hombres y por ende el más amargo no sé porque Y como me perdonó la vida cada día
Liszt was probably pretty jealous of Chopin as well, seeing as how so many of Liszt's pieces were criticized and basically called garbage. And as far as Lizst being a jerk, not sure, I can't imagine someone that genius not being an egomaniac, however Chopin? That's well documented... not just a racist but a total douchebag as person, he even admits it repeatedly lol.
Sorry the Liszt fans but I am really impressed that he adapted such a beautiful masterpiece like La Campanella. It seems he is a monster on piano but his compositions are not quite good or melodic compared to the intangible Chopin .
Please listen to his Benediction de la solitude. One of my favorite pieces and may change your mind on Liszt not writing good melodies. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-K03xMG7fdQ4.html
I think it is stupid to compare Chopin and Liszt. Both were fantastic and they complemented themselves. Liszt needed chopin's music style for being liszt. And chopin became famous at 19th century thanks to liszt's interpretations of his pieces, because chopin was ill for playing at concertos
Here we go again with that stupid comparison, "mUh mElOdiEs" first of all liszt's compositions are very melodical. it's so fucking stupid to compare both chopin and liszt because for one, chopin had died early and liszt lived older thus this gives liszt an advantage but chopin a disadvantage, second is that chopin went to a conservatory and liszt wasn't since the conservatory that his father tried to get him into didn't accept him because he was a foreigner and the conservatory only accepted french students(Paris conservatory) which lead to liszt only learning from his father where everyday liszt would practice the piano playing a bach fugue and changing it to a different key as strictly taught by his father, and he was also taught by various composers, most notable was czerny as he was where liszt gained his monstrous ability to sight read. And finally composers in the genre of classical music cannot be compared as a whole, each has their own style and there's no perfect nor garbage composer. Please stop it with that shit, it's so repetitive i don't even know why some of you people are so fixated at melody you think it's not even music when you think it has no melody when it does have it.
engjan By no means. I have heard everything Chopin and Liszt ever wrote. Although Chopin never fails to amaze me, I think Liszt actually was a greater composer genius. Liszt goes deeper in the music, and (far) longer than Chopin. But sure, both where genius in their own way.
Or maybe you're just a shit listener? That section sounds perfectly coherent, and is played by Cziffra stunningly, bringing pure unfettered passion and energy.
@@AndreiAnghelLiszt You are an angel from heaven, both for what you post on your channel (which concern the entire repertoire of Franz Liszt), and for what you have just said.
![Liszt - Polonaise No. 1 (Audio+Sheet) [Cziffra]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
