Topic: Szymanowski four studies
This has been a long time coming. I learned number 3 last century, but the others in the set are a bit more challenging!
- Gaston
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
hanysz wrote:
This has been a long time coming. I learned number 3 last century, but the others in the set are a bit more challenging!
Thanks Alexander for sharing this true marvel !
What software do you run to make the visuals with drops, stars and circles ? (a marvel for the eyes too!)
- hanysz
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
Thanks Gaston, glad you liked it!
The visuals are all home-made using the Python programming language. I'm afraid I haven't put much effort into making it easy to use for non-programmers, but if you're interested you can find my code at https://github.com/hanysz/midi_python_animations
- budo
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
beautiful performance! i wasn't familiar with this composer, but these sound great. i should check him out. ps i cloned your repo but i think my python setup is deficient. maybe it would help if pehaps you could add a sample invocation to the repo somewhere. i really like the cleanness of your visualizations.
- hanysz
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
OK, repo updated and PM sent. (Trying to avoid turning this page into a programming forum!)
budo wrote:
i wasn't familiar with this composer, but these sound great. i should check him out.
https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Szymanowski,_Karol
The 9 preludes, opus 1 are probably the best place to start if you want to have a go at playing something. Or look for recordings of the orchestral music. The violin concertos are amazing!
- budo
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
i didn't see any PM (not sure whey they get sent) but probably they won't mind a few more words about this topic, since this forum doesn't get a huge amount of traffic and your tool certainly has the possibility of helping plenty of people share music made with PTQ.
thanks to your sample program i was able to run the example and to generate an mp4. i did have some problem with getting the titles in the movie (there was a complaint about ImageMagick and convert not found, although certainly i have it and use it all the time), but that's not a big deal, the animation is the main point. thank you for sharing your work and time.
- hanysz
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
Glad you've got it kind of working! Re ImageMagick, see the final comment at https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8346
- moshuajusic
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
I like the visuals too
- 1MuddyDog
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
Hey Alexander,
These were very nicely played . Your piano sounds nice and clear, and your "tops" are nice and focussed, so each chord had a nice bright, crunchy sound. I liked also your orchestration of the different lines and textures in each one. They must have taken quite an effort to learn! I heard these once a few years ago on the radio, played by Martin Roscoe, and I especially liked No 3 in the set (which seems to be the most well-known of the 4). How do they compare e.g. to the etudes by Rachmaninov and Scriabin? And how do they feel "under the hands"?
Anyhow, keep well!
- hanysz
- Member
- Offline
Re: Szymanowski four studies
Thanks 1MuddyDog, it's nice of you to go browsing through my old work! Yes, I had a teacher who was very big on voicing chords. How to project without just being loud.
Yes, no. 3: during Szymanowski's lifetime, it became a little bit too popular, and he grew to hate it, a little bit like the moonlight sonata for Beethoven.
In terms of difficulty, I'm not the best person to ask, because I get everything out of proportion. What's comfortable for me might be less so for you, and vice versa. For me, composers such as Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin are very challenging (although I love their music). I find Brahms, Debussy, Szymanowski, Sorabji much more natural, even though other people tell me those composers are considered "difficult". I've only played a couple of etudes each from Rachmaninoff and Scriabin (although lots of other Rachmaninoff that's not piano solo, e.g. the song accompaniments, cello sonata, two-piano versions of concerti).
For me, Szymanowski falls under the hands very well; the technical challenges are more in the direction of sorting out the layers, voicing and pedalling rather than power and agility. Opus 4 is towards the easier end of the scale; there is some much more difficult (and spectacular and rewarding) piano writing in the Masques, the Metopes, and the third sonata.