7/6 Miami Int'l Piano Festival: A couple selections...

Musical Map of "Rage" by James Boyk

The Miami Int'l Piano Festival 's Youtube channel has almost 400 videos of complete performances of classical works on piano and other chamber instruments.  Here's a few Beethoven selections...I decided not to include any of the piano sonatas since I've got so many up here already from the previous piano competitions.

Rondo a capriccio in G Major, 'Rage over a Lost Penny' Op.129
Sijing from China is 15 here. She plays this so called "Rage Over a Lost Penny" as though it were a masterpiece. performed at Broward Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL at The Miami International Piano Festival Master Series 2006.

Link

6 Variations in F, Op.34
March 2008 performance at the Miami International Piano Festival. Kit Armstrong is 16 years old.

Link

Not Beethoven, but a pretty cool arrangement of Bartok's Roumanian Dances
GILLES APAP violin & arrangement
THE TRANSYLVANIA MOUNTAIN BOYS - Christopher Judge, guitar Brendon Statom, double bass
from a May 22, 2011 performance at the Colony Theatre Miami Beach Florida

Link

6/24 Paganini's Caprices and Bartok's Mikrokosmos on Guitar

Nicolo Paganini, by Richard James Lane (died 1872), published 1831

Thought I'd divert from Beethoven today to post some of my guitar sequences of Paganini and Bartok...fun stuff (if I do say so myself).

Paganini - All 24 Solo Violin Caprices on Guitar

Linklist (1 hour)

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Bartok on Guitar (and in various "rock-metal" arrangements)

• Scherzo (Arr. for Guitar)
• Allegro Barbaro (Rock Arrangement)
• Mikrokosmos (27 selections arranged for solo Guitar)
• Mikrokosmos 140 - Free Variations (arr. for Guitar & Drums)
• Mikrokosmos 122, 146, 113, 147 (Arr. for Guitar & Drums)
• 3 Piano Works (Arranged for guitar)
• Mikrokosmos 149 - Burgarian Dance 2 (arr. for Guitar & Drums)
• Mikrokosmos 148 - Bulgarian Dance 1 (Arr for Guitar & Drums)
• Mikrokosmos 153 - Burgarian Dance 6 (arr. for Guitar & Drums)

Linklist (1 hour)

2/28 A Turkish March for 16 Hands

Keyboards piled up at the Pearl River Piano factory (BBC)

Marches are good fun, at least musically.  Beethoven hated war of course, and his feelings about Napoleon are no secret, but he still composed quite a few marches, and one of them I covered here before.   While writing about the Liszt piano transcriptions last week, I was reminded of Beethoven's own variations of the Turkish March from his "Ruins of Athens" stage work. 

6 Variations in D major op.76 "Turkish March" (1809)
Sviatoslav Richter (Live 50's)

Sviatoslav Richter plays Beethoven Six Variations, Op. 76

But wait, what if Beethoven had 8 pianists at his house one day, all wanting to show him their performance of the Turkish March, but Ludwig only had 5 minutes?  Maybe it would sound something like this:
Turkish March from "Die Ruinen von Athen" (arr. for 8 pianos, Richard Blackford)
Piano: Gina Bachauer
Piano: Jorge Bolet
Piano: Jeanne-Marie Darré
Piano: Alicia De Larrocha
Piano: John Lill
Piano: Radu Lupu
Piano: Garrick Ohlsson
Piano: Bàlint Vàzsonzyi
Live recording, London - 1974
It gets interesting after the 2:24 mark...(note that I tagged this post with the "avant-garde" label)

Beethoven Turkish March (arranged for eight pianos)

There also happens to be a Turkish March in the finale of the 9th Symphony and probably some other works I can't recall right now... Robert Greenberg claims that "Turkish Marches" had more to do with exotic harmonies and melodies in any form, rather than melodies of a specifically Turkish nature. Frankly I don't know enough about the music of Hungary in the 1800's to agree with Prof. Greenberg or not, but I can see that easily being the case. It doesn't sound anything like Bartok tho...or does it?

Béla Bartók - Allegro Barbaro

2/4 Grayson's Bartok's Beethoven's Moonlight Impression

I think for Fridays I'm going to start featuring interesting covers/arrangements of Beethoven works.  Their might be some humor involved.  I'll be doing my best to avoid easy listening versions of Fur Elise tho....

So today we have Professor Richard Grayson's improvisation on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata in the style of Bela Bartok.  I actually featured Bartok playing the Kreutzer Violin Sonata with Szigeti a short while back, so this is perhaps a "rebuttal" of sorts....also this is a chance to add one more Bartok-factoid:  Pierre Boulez once remarked that Bartok "possessed a sense of form far closer to Beethoven than to Schoenberg."




Professor Grayson actually has a few Beethoven-themed videos on his Youtube channel but this one is by far my favorite.

(Top image from www.layoutsparks.com)

1/26 Bartok and Rachmaninoff play Beethoven

Bela Bartok

Besides being one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century (and a heck of a musicologist as well), Bela Bartok was also known to tinkle the ivories with his friend Joe Szigeti.  Szigeti was no stranger to Beethoven's music, and here we find a fascinating look at how one of the greatest modern composers of the last century interpreted our favorite piano virtuoso.

Violin Sonata No.9 in A, Op.47 'Kreutzer' (1803)
Piano: Bela Bartok
Violin: Joseph Szigeti
Live, 1940

Linklist

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Speaking of piano virtuosos, some say Sergei Rachmaninoff was the greatest pianist who ever lived (he also composed a few good tunes as well). Fortunately he was also a big Beethoven fan and recorded a few sides:

32 Variations (in C minor) on an Original Theme WoO.80 (1806)
Turkish March in B flat from The Ruins of Athens Op. 113 (Anton Rubinstein Arr.)
Piano: Sergei Rachmaninoff




Both Bartok and Rachmaninoff are fine composers as well as pianists, and it's well worth checking out the music of these young upstarts...
Bela Bartok Wiki
Sergei Rachmaninoff Wiki

I should probably add a mention to Dmitry Shostakovich's "Sonata for viola and piano, op.147" and the 3rd Movement:  "In Memory of the Great Beethoven: Adagio".
Not a Beethoven work obviously, but apparently he references the Moonlight Sonata in it.
Did "Shosty" play the Grosse Fuge to relax after work?