This statement is absurd. I guess men can admit when they're wrong (I certainly can), not so for little hair-pulling girls.

As for Jana, yes very much a lady. Very courteous, professional behavior, as I suspected she would be.

Wow. Joe, maybe you missed my post 12 above. Let me be clear: I'm sorry I offended you. Regarding the thread of your Chopin/Scriabin Preludes, will you be responding to my critique of your Sciabin works? (One day I'll be submitting more recordings and you can flay me then if you wish).

Regards,
Eddy

As I have pointed out, I have no desire to flay anybody. Only to be honest and call it as I see it. In this case, Jana's recording happened to be near the top of the list at the time; hence I reviewed it. Since you ask about the Scriabin preludes, the reason I didn't respond is I really didn't find your comments that helpful (Chris talked much more about the actual performance, so his comments were much more helpful to me). In other words, I felt you wasted a lot of verbiage analyzing rhythms and trying to appear authoritative rather than talking about the actual musical/technical aspects. Just my take on it, of course.

Then I shall waste no more verbage regarding your future performance submissions, but I do hope perhaps others may have gained a modicum of benefit in considering what I wrote (one of my artist-professors had me pegged when he said that my basic approach to music was an Intellectual one: Apollo and Dionysus don't mix very well). I used the word "flayed" because I suspected that you felt that you had been flayed by some of the critical remarks regarding your recordings; it was never my intention to attack you (or flay you) personally ... but music is so personal to us all. Regarding my superfluous "analyzing rhythm," it is curious that you find objection to that given that it is unquestionably the most fundamental element of music (see Chris' sigiture block for von Bulow's take on same) and that this matter is what not just myself but others too have taken as an important issue with some of your submitted recordings. As you show no signs of molification (even with an olive branch extended), I will excuse myself from further irritating you. Good luck on your revisiting of the Preludes and future completion of this admirable project.

Not in the least...I couldn't care less. But the issue is quite otherwise. You're more than welcome to say anything you like, whether I agree with it or not. But then...so am I, and when I did you felt the need to come in and try to negate that when it was none of your business (i.e., Jana is quite able to defend herself if she sees fit, as we saw). Apparently, no one else really sees that as highly inappropriate behavior, but I do.



I completely agree with you that rhythm is the most important element of music. Being "in time," this is what distinguishes it from the other arts and enables one to even play an instrument. Where I disagree is what seems to be your presumption that intellectualizing it can assist one with realizing it in a performance. This is hogwash. It's analogous to saying that because someone can analyze geometric proportions in painting, one can paint like Raphael. Those who can do, do, and those who can't tend to turn to musicology or Schenkerian analysis. Nothing wrong with that, and sometimes one can do both, but they are distinct musical pursuits. Both my parents being professionally trained pianists, and being around professional musicians my whole life, I've seen this difference time and again.

Regarding others taking rhythms as an important issue with my "submitted recordings," I assume you must mean just this one, since you weren't even on the site beforehand. The issue with "rubato" on this particular recording, yes; otherwise, this statement is completely false. Rhythm has never even come up before in the many recordings I have submitted on this site. I expected it would on this particular recording (given the beliefs regarding rubato in Chopin) as I alluded to in my initial post and that's just fine. But I still fail to see how a generalizing statement like this: "Though the meter is 2/2 and there are 10 8th notes and/or 6 quarter notes to the bar, we really see that in a measure's worth of time what he writes is two 5-note irregular groups per 1/2 note," is helpful. And of course that went on and on. I knew it already anyway, and it has nothing to do with my performance. "Pseudoscience," as another member termed the quasi-scientific parsing of rubato, is a bore when it comes to describing a performance.

Of course.

Curious that a medical person should speculate on what it might feel like to be flayed... It doesn't even bear thinking of what that might feel like. It must be the most enormous agony ever possible, except maybe for being burnt alive or torn apart on the rack. I'd rather have my playing criticized, thank you

Just rhetoric, hyperbole to be sure.

What fantastic playing! I am now crazed with jealousy