Sophie Menter and Liszt Un Sospiro

Sophie Menter (1846-1918) was an awesome pianist, and probably Liszt's favourite female piano pupil.
You can here her perform Liszt Un Sospiro here:

Interestingly she adds a few bars of music in the middle, and changes the timing at the end. The first time I heard it I thought "Ah yes these 19th century pianists were so free". But it turns out it was the composer himself who authorised the changes to his score, and Ms Menter was being a good student, embracing the changing, developing music. 

For more information, let's turn to Rachmaninoff's teacher and cousin, Alexander Siloti. Siloti like Sophie Menter was a pupil of Liszt. In Siloti's edition of this piece (publ Carl Fischer), Siloti notates many extra notes and tweaks which coincide with what Menter plays. Siloti writes p186 "Franz Liszt's playing of this Etude differed greatly from the published version. In fact he changed it so greatly and added so much that was new that I found it impossible to mark every individual change..."

We so often think that music must be a thing, like a statue, static, which we read on the music page and then try to interpret. But it's not like that. It's essence is liquid, like a flowing river. It takes alchemy to conjure up a living interpretation, and courage to depart from the block of ice which is the standard score.

Who was the greatest piano teacher of the 19th century?

The candidates for this prize must include Chopin, Liszt, Leschetizky, the lesser known Ludwig Deppe, and Rubinstein (Anton).
Form a teacher does one seek a cogent method, or the passing on of a bright flame, burning and hard to contain?
About Chopin we have many comments from pupils, collected in a wonderful book by Eigeldinger, which I came across quite by chance in the town where it was published when I was giving a recital in Neuchatel in 1989. Chopin book. Chopin's teaching methods were geared toward refined, musical, singing, supple playing. With his high prices and aristocratic manner, Chopin was the teacher of choice for the female Parisian aristocrat, as witness the dedicatees of the majority of his piano music (eg Madame la Baronne de Rothschild for Waltz Op 64). But he did not leave a strong team of publically performing disciples to carry the flame.
Liszt did attract many ambitious male pupils, including Sauer, Siloti, Rosenthal, da Motta; and with Liszt one has a stronger sense of a lineage of playing (via for example Siloti to Rachmaninoff, or d'Albert to Dohnanyi to Ervin Nyiregyházi) but descriptions of his classes, while inspiring, are not the sort of thing you can put in a bottle and replicate.
Likewise Leschetizky  and Anton Rubinstein - fine pianists both, but in an inspirational rather than a methodical style. Rubsinstein's star pupil Josef Hofmann asked him how he should play a certain note and got the reply 'play it with your nose for all I care - so long as it sounds right!" According to Artur Schnabel there was no such thing as  a Leschetizky method, but this did not stop some of Leschetizky's pupils attempted to cash in on his cachet! eg Leschetizky Method (?!)

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As of today I am awarding first prize to Ludwig Deppe, whose Deppe Method is EXCELLENT. It makes sense, and unifies disparate elements of the playing process, such as the needs for elegant movement, effortlessness, concentration on musical tone. Granted it was written over a hundred years ago; but the instrument of the piano has not changed, and his advice can be taken with a pinch of salt here and there. Having read probably 150 books on piano playing, I think his is the best.

Teresa Carreno

The mind of the performing artist must be as cultured as that of the composer. Culture comes from the observation of many things: nature, architecture, science, sculpture, history, men and women, poetry. I advise aspiring pianists to read a great deal of poetry!

Wise words from Teresa Carreno, one of the greatest lady pianists! As a child she met Liszt himself, who urged her to be true to her own individuality while pursuing her piano studies.

Should we play the piano strictly in time?

 

Liszt 'Au bord d'une source' played by Eugen d'Albert

Should we play the piano strictly in time? Not according to contemporaries of Beethoven and Liszt. This is what von Bulow writes. He was a concert pianist celebrated in USA and Europe; married to Liszt' s daughter, was considered one of the leading piano pupils of Liszt.

"The time (tempo) should not be a tyrannically restraining or driving mill-hammer, but should be to the musical composition what pulsation is to human life. There is no slow  tempo in which places do not occur requiring a more rapid movement, in order to avoid the feeling of dragging, just as there is no presto that does not, on the contrary, demand in many places a quiet delivery, in order not to take away, through over-haste, the means of expression. Both however, the accelerando as well as the ritardando, must never give the impression of being pushed, jerked or forced: it must always only be employed by the periods and phrases". [from Bulow's influential edition of  Beethoven Piano Sonata Op 110, movement 1.]

On a slightly different tack, William Blake writes: "Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius".  (Proverb of Hell).  

Why has so much piano playing become boring lately? Because students are trained to pass their exams and win competitions, which is different from playing the piano in order to express what the composer wants to express.  In order to pass an exam you can play correctly: in order to express deep emotions, you have to abandon yourself, to some extent, to the emotion, which results in slight distortions of pulse - playing 'between the notes'. 

Please enjoy listening to the fluid, flexible, outpouring of watery notes performed by another pupil of Liszt, d'Albert who shows us how to play the piano. If you as the listener are not breathing more deeply by the end of the performance, please ring your doctor!