THIS CLASSICAL PIECE MADE ME THINK A LOT - REACTING TO LISZT SONATA IN B MINOR - ZIMMERMAN 

This recording took Zimerman 76 tries, super impressive dedication

Oh wow. I didn't expect the listz sonata, but the a very welcome surprise lol. The piece is MASSIVE. I mean not only in time. Technically speaking it's a monster. For this recording you just heard, Zimerman, yes, bloody Zimerman, needed 76 takes. 76. You have to be a god to play this thing in perfection and zimerman here is brialliant. One of the best liszt recordings ever made for sure. The piece is massive on other ways too. The contrast in moods and dynamics is wild. It's truly an amazing feat to be able to put together some of the stuff liszt has done here and make it make sense. The whole thing is actually based on 3 or 4 themes (melodies essentially) representing apparently the main characters from Goethes: Faust. So you were right, it's almost like a play. This sonata is easily one of the best piano pieces ever made by anyone. At times it's menacing like Rachmaninoff, harsh like Prokofiev, romantic like Chopin, mystical like Scriabin and theres a little fugue in it, looking back at Bach. And listz makes all of these styles connect with each other in some amazing fashion. Take for example that moment in 18:53. Easily one of the best transitions ever.

This is one of my favourite classical pieces ever. One of the reasons is because of how intricate it is, as a lot of it is just based off of three motifs. One of my favourite aspects of the piece is how the harsh motif at 4:36 is actually the same melody as the romantic cantando theme at 9:14. TRO Composition has a very in-depth analysis video on this piece if you want to check it out (though it is 1 hour and 14 minutes).

One of his hardest pieces musically and technically, if you understand this, then you are set for most of his other pieces!

fyi: those beautiful melodies are the same melodies that are so dramatic and aggressive which can be interpreted as this sonata being a autobiography of liszt, portraying his split personality

Interesting that you interpreted a bit of a story from it, since Liszt was known for writing programmatic music (music representing a story or some other meaning). A lot of scholars debate what it’s actual meaning could be since Liszt never said. But, if you noticed in the beginning, it starts with 2 descending scales, one in a Gregorian mode and the other in a gypsy mode. Liszt was a Catholic and a magyar, so many people use this to claim that the piece is autobiographical. No one really knows though.

There no obvious movements, but there are multiple ways to interpret the structure of the piece. The creator of the video did a great job explaining it in the original video's description.

What you are doing is hard work even when everything goes well. Totally understandable you would lose motivation when things go bad. If you ever need time off, that's ok. The most important thing is to recover and take care of you. Hopefully, you don't have to lose any more videos. I'm so sorry, man. 😯

At 16:05 you ask if this piece has movements as you have trouble hearing the boundaries of the movements. Well I have good news because musicologists also have no idea where the movements end/begin lmao. Liszt keeps the movement boundaries so vague here that you can´t really be sure where they are, some even suggest that this piece is one whole, 30 minute long movement.

Great video.

this piece is actually one of the first piano pieces I’ve really liked, since I’m not a pianist myself I didn’t listen to much repertoire but once I snuck out of a youth orchestra concert between dress rehearsal and the performance with some friends who wanted to see it, and it was life changingly good. We did also make it on stage for the performance just in time, but it’s a pretty special piece for me imo

This piece is on my (quite short) list of god-tier pieces. I could list down the reasons why, but that would take all day. It's just such a wonderful experience and I'm thankful I have the opportunity to witness music this beautiful. (also one of the only pieces that can make me cry) This also took me more than a few listens to fully grasp. The listening experience definitely improves once you're a bit more familiar with the structure and the different motifs (: (Some channels have done really interesting analyses on the piece if you wanna check those out) Thanks for the amazing reaction!

The Liszt Sonata doesn't have separate "movements", as such. Rather, it's a collection of different moods that run continuously. If you listen to it several times you'll realize that the different themes that are presented return, but they become transformed; some return almost intact (but maybe in a different key) and others seem to be completely different than the first time you heard them. Others are only presented as fragments. Then just to mix things up, he shows his admiration of Bach by throwing a fugue into the middle of everything! You'll also notice that the ending comes full circle, as it mirrors the beginning; in musical terms we say that it's "cyclical".

Another amazing sonata I think would be good to react to would Rachmaninoff’s second sonata, one of my favorite pieces of his!

Love this piece!

Epic

Very good piece! Thanks for the content.

Hello Gidi! One of the peaks of romantic era. Great, that you enjoyed listening it and chose an interpretation which does this sonata justice. Many people dont like it at first sight. The b minor sonata is about Goethes Faust (great tragedy, recommend to read!). Liszts Dante Sonata you should know, too. This is about Dantes Divine Comedy (about heaven and hell), in many aspect comparable and very intense music. Here is one good interpretation ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EeqfQCnMusE.html

Love the video as always gidi. This is one of my favourite pieces of all time with all the changes in emotion it truly shows everything I love about classical music. Watching you experience it for the first time made me feel like I was too and that was beautiful, thank you ❤️

Thank you for reacting to one of the best sonata ever compose and my all time favourite. The way Liszt transform a few motif into this whole piece is so genius. There are so many things to point out in this piece but I’m not good at explaining. And your interpretation that the piece is like a play is so spot on I’m getting goosebump, you might be a genius lol

The movements flowed seamlessly onto each other....(or it was one big first movement....lol)

A superb, honest, decent, and thoroughly sincere reaction to a great piece. Well done!

Very nice choice. Zimmerman nailed it!

this piece strictly doesnt have multiple movements, although u could divide it into multiple movements. a 4 movement division would be I: 3:30 II(slow movement): 15:48 III(recapitulation): 23:09 IV (epilogue): 31:44

This piece is through-composed, so it's just one long movement.

the diabolic sonata..this version is very " cool" but the martha argarich version..omg

36:15 Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht is about something along these lines. I recommend that piece, and I recommend the string sextet version over the string orchestra version. If you like this, it might be worth trying some Wagner, who took a lot of inspiration from Liszt. I hesitate to recommend an entire opera, but the prelude to Tristan und Isolde is a good sample.

yoo you must react to chopin piano concerto 1 is so romantic !

im pretty sure the sonata is one giant movement. otherwise its really vague telling when a "movement" starts or ends