PianoLady, it surprises me how well you handle a situation as such! Very respectful and to the point! Anyway, the main reason I am posting this is because, I watched the video, and it shocked me of how clear the recording it! Which piano do you use? It truly sounds better than my Steinway at home! Not to mention your very precise execution of the dynamics in this mazurka. One of my favorite mazurkas of Chopin, and such high in his character! I am new to the site, and do not know much about your playing, but from one recording, I can tell you are truly a professional!

Hello Chopaninoff and welcome to Piano Society. And I must say, you certainly know how to get in my good graces

Ok, seriously - thank you for the kind remarks. My piano is a Yamaha C2 grand. I like its sound too although I think it is the new editing program I am now using that makes my piano sound even better. It seems to be all in the reverb - that makes a huge difference in the audio. Also I use a little 'hiss' filtering.

YAMAHA C2? I would gladly trade in my Steinway "B" for that! WITH THE BENCH! haha. Just kidding. Thanks for the reply! Good luck and if there are any other recordings of yours please tell me! Do you have a youtube? Or should I private message you for details? Dont wanna spam the forum!

You are funny! Yes, I have a Youtube channel. The link for it is right here - on the bottom of all my posts! I also have a few recordings on the site. Not all of them are good, though, but I keep trying... You can see my list of recordings here: http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=859

p.s. My bench is already pretty nice. But if you have one of those new hydraulic benches, then I'll trade you that!

Ill have the bench made out of gold! Well...colored yellow, but you can tell your guests that its gold! Thats what I do! Anyway, thanks for the link, I will surely watch your videos, perhaps even comment on one or two Have a good night Monica!

I almost never watch TV or movies, but my roommate was watching a movie called Mother Knows Best the other day, and I heard the Chopin 27/2 nocturne in D-flat being used as background music, so I stopped to listen. They used the whole thing, and the reason I stopped to listen was that it was obviously an amateur recording. Not bad, but definitely not polished like a professional recording. I wonder if they stole it from here or another similar site.

Ohhh, our favorite nocturne (at least it's still mine). That's interesting. You don't normally hear an 'entire' piece in a movie. Is it a 'newer' movie? They could have stolen it from our site - we often get requests to use our recordings from people making films. But also lots of people don't ask.

I looked the movie up on IMDB, and it appears to be from 1997 (so, too old for it to be a PS recording). I couldn't find the excerpt on YouTube. I wonder if it was something like the music director playing it himself or something.

As to 27/2 being my favorite nocturne...it probably still is, though 48/1 competes. I'm re-working 55/1 right now to record, and I had forgotten how much I liked that one, but I don't think I like it as much as the other two.

Terez, the 3 nocturnes you mentioned ^^ are my top 3, along with Opus 62 no 2 in E major...When you record opus 55 no 1, could you send it to me? I also have a recording of it as well...I would like to compare if you are not against that. Can you play Op 48 no 1 as well?

I have never worked on 48/1. I remember trying to play through it as recently as when Sandro submitted it (which some of you might recall, as his interpretation sparked a few flames). I think that was about 2 years ago, and I might have tried it even more recently (like about a year ago). At that point, I still felt like it would be immensely difficult for me. I have read through it again recently after having worked on a good number of more difficult things (mostly Bach, but also recently Chopin 25/1 and 25/11), and I think that I might be able to do it with not too much work. It might be a little while, though, because I'm working on a recital (which will have etudes rather than nocturnes, and one of those etudes might be 25/10, which would be a nice prelude to working on 48/1).

55/1 has been more work than I anticipated. I played it when I was young, but now that I'm older I realize it requires a very mature pedal technique and also contrapuntal fingers. The actual fingerwork isn't so difficult (especially after playing Bach a lot), but getting the pedal just right has been a lot of work for me, partly because I'm using the sostenuto pedal a good bit, and partly because my pedal technique is weak to begin. I'm trying to research Chopin's pianos, and the pedals in particular, but part of me doesn't really care if he had a sostenuto pedal then or not (in the same way that I don't care that Bach didn't write for piano, or pedals at all). There are several opportunities in the piece to make something better by using it, so I shall.

In any case, the pianos as my school are all in bad shape right now because the AC was broken for over a week. I noticed earlier in the week that our piano technician seemed to have taken a vacation, as he wasn't around (I was looking for him because the good Steinway is horribly out of tune, and I won't record on any other piano while I have access to that one), and now I know why he was so angry the last time I saw him. He was working on the piano that I use most often to practice in my teacher's office and he did NOT look happy about it, and I apologized to him for banging on it all the time while practicing Chopin 25/11, and he said, "No, there's nothing you can do to hurt this piano." I was thinking at the time that I know that isn't exactly true, and wondering if he was implying that he thought I didn't practice very often. But now I know. So all the pianos have gone wonky due to the high humidity and heat, and when the piano technician comes back he will have a lot of work to do. I am hoping that I can convince him to start with the good Steinway so I can get some recording done, but we will see.

That brings to mind a question: how do you Euros keep a piano in tune in the summer with no AC? I know it gets hot there.

Terez,
I studied at the Central Music School in Moscow under Tatiana Petrovna Nikolayeva...Being that it is a wealthy school we had fair AC...I always played on a Steinway in the practice rooms. When giving recitals we had a nice Bosendorfor to perform on. In the Moscow Conservatory I didn't need to worry about it either...But in some music schools that I gave recitals in, they do not maintain their pianos as well...Or maybe I was in a "not so good" school. The finest piano I have ever played on was indeed a Fazioli...That was when I was giving my farewell recital from the Central School of Music. I have not encountered a piano that had such a singing tone. Steinway is good, but nothing can beat a Fazioli.
I noticed you wanted to research Chopin's piano...I have visited the Pleyel Museum a few years ago and had a chance to play on a Pleyel. Very different of course...The keys are much more narrower and the pedal is very sensitive along with the touch of the keys... I agree with you on the finger work and the pedaling.
I use the Paderewski edition and the pedal is very strange...He uses the pedal on the bass note and tell us to lift on the chord in the left hand...yet this does not sound right...Well at least to me it does not..so what I do is use the late pedal technique ( I do not know how it is called in English) For example... i will take the F in the left hand, than play the chord (A, C, F) and change the pedal quickly right after I play the chord...Etc. Do you have another way?

Sorry to interrupt - I just want to say that last week for the first time I played on a Fazioli piano. Actually, I played on two Faziolis! The smooth tone, the weight of the keys, the una corda pedal - so gorgeous! I really love Fazioli - now my favorite piano!!

How could such a talented pianist like yourself dare to apologize for interrupting? Monica, Did you happen to play on the 4 pedal piano? And yes the smooth touch of the keys cannot be beaten, let alone the sound! you must have played at a big venue! Faziolis are quite a price...

yes, I know about the price! And no - 'my' pianos had only three pedals. I forgot the model number - think they were around 7 1/2 feet. Here is one of them (sorry about my foot - lol)



And here is the other one:



Please tell me - what is a fourth pedal, what does it do? I have never seen that!

I find the 'late pedal' technique to be useful only in the stretto section after the return, and then only sometimes...and it is useful in the way you describe only if there is some reason not to sustain the bass note over the 2nd and 4th beats. In the beginning, I mostly use just damper pedal for each half note (which is how it's marked in Mikuli), but in the place where the melody has dissonance (C-B-C-Db-C), I use the sostenuto pedal to sustain the bass note. Most pianists either allow the dissonance to blur or drop the bass note to change pedal, and I probably would too (likely the former) if not for the other places in the piece that inspire the use of the sostenuto pedal. It seems like a lot of effort for such a simple effect, but I think that we are simply too unaccustomed to using the sostenuto pedal in general.