All respect to this pianist. The piece is very difficult to pull off and can come across as an endless ramble. But, this pianist has an advanced sense of musicianship and makes the whole thing make sense. Bravo, Fukuma San.
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This interpretation does great service to this tremendous work. I love it! I really am looking forward to see Lyapunov's complete set recorded, somehow Shcherbakov doesn't sit right with me.
Tokaro Fukuma is an excellent pianist. I could see his hands when I saw him performing... He's really astonishing... It is shame this video doesn't show that more often... I don't care about his face. What is important is his playing, what I feel when I hear the music...
I'm playing this piece right now, and I can honestly say that it's a real pain to perform. Some of the jumps are difficult to complete consistently, and many of the arpeggios are not normal scale or chord patterns.
I note the perpetual smiles and grins of hi-level athletes,or chess competitors... who no doubt,are performing contortions & groteskeries just for effect!All you've told us is that you cannot hear the music!Liberace had good reason to smile:he was looking forward to banking the millions he'd pocketed from dupes like yourself.
These "Etudes d'execution transcendante" of Lyapunov and Liszt are merely attempts by the composers to see what the human hand is capable of. These composers had no ability to create melodies and their works are just "noise". Note the agonized look on the pianist's face . Compare that with the smile on Liberace's face when he's playing real music.
1) Both wrote beautiful works (of course I want to make a Liszt joke, but I'll refrain) 2) Some will never be convinced, but I think there's something beautiful in the human condition that inspired them to push the piano to their own physiology. Whether or not technical intricacies resonate with the audience in performance depends on the opportunities made available by the composer (which is subjective unless you can ask the composer yourself), the conviction of the performer, and ultimately your own alignment with the music. Believe there are endless opportunities for sensitivity, desperation, and rapturous enthusiasm in a piece of music, but realizing it falls both to the conviction and communication of the performer AND the receptiveness of the audience. Competitions probably aren't the best laboratory for us to study this phenomenon, but I digress. Great performance to the pianist, btw.
