Hello, guys!
Piano gang! Piano gang!
Welcome, welcome...
To another episode of TwoSet Violin.
Featuring...
Recently, we did a video with Sophie where she...
Showed us six of her favorite piano recording or
performances that she thinks everyone should listen to.
A lot of you guys liked it...
And so...
We're doing a second follow-up episode.
- Yeah. - For the piano gang.
Sophie's prepared... Is it another six today?
Yes.
Yes. Another six...
Recording/performances.
Just to clarify, they're not in any particular order.
So it's not like the first six are better than these six.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
But I have to say, it's really hard to pick 12,
cause there are so many great pianists and...
It's like a personalized...
List. It's not like I'm gonna stick with this list
for the rest of my life and...
I think that makes it more interesting too.
Personalized...
- Yeah. - Reflect the current times...
And current feelings.
- All right. - Let's get started.
Sophie...
Okay, the first one is Daniil Trifonov.
Playing the Schumann Piano Concerto.
Yeah, I mean, I love Schumann as a composer.
I've played a lot of Schumann and I love the concerto.
I'm actually...
Gonna be playing next year, I think.
Ooo...
Yeah.
So I better start learning it, I guess.
But I love Daniil Trifonov.
He is actually one of my favorite pianists.
I think his playing is so delicate and and I love...
The way he produces sound and actually...
I had the opportunity to play in a master class
with him last year.
- Uh-huh. - It was the first one he has ever given.
- Ooo! - And I don't think he has given one ever since.
- Ooo! - Ooo!
Damn, Sophie Oui Oui! Flexing so hard right now!
He's so imaginative and he has so many ideas...
And the things he said sometimes are really crazy.
I played - I actually played Schumann the second Sonata
which the tempo marking is as fast as possible.
And then at the end is faster and even faster.
- Oh, really? - And...
He was talking about pedaling...
And he was like, yeah, you have to pedal on like
the third sixteenth note and the fifth sixteenth note.
Which is like rhythmically really odd...
But when he did it it was like wow,
it really changed...
The sound and it really made a difference.
Why do you think pianist...
So many pianists like love Trifonov so much?
For me...
Like when he sits on the piano, he...
He makes magic somehow. It's like every note...
Is something special.
And then, he's trying to create something special.
And I also felt that during the master class.
Yeah.
You really have to...
Make everything speak and sing and...
Yeah, make magic.
So the next one is...
Seong-Jin Cho.
I hope I pronounced this right.
With the first Etude of Chopin.
At the Chopin competition actually.
Ohh.
- High-pressure. - Yeah.
Whoa.
- I love it. - Dude, that was just like...
Wave after wave, music just kept coming.
Yeah, so I recently...
Listened to this recording because...
I'm playing this etude right now and I wanted to see
how do other people play it.
I really love this because
a lot of people they play this etude,
you know, like an etude.
Just like, every note like, hammered out.
But it's actually like, it's a big chorale like, the harmonies.
I think are really beautiful and...
They're more like waves up and down and
I thought he did that really well.
And also changing the articulations,
sometimes lighter sometimes...
More sometimes less.
- Yeah. - Yeah, he controlled that really well.
And he's one of my favorite young pianists right now.
Like I have listened to many other of his
Chopin interpretations and...
Yeah, I really like the way he plays.
He somehow manages to make it sound...
Very kind of majestic.
With like the kind of singing bass lines.
Bringing out the little leading notes even in the waves.
So you get this really...
Feeling of like this...
- Grandiose. - Grandiose, rather than like...
- Holy s***. Arpeggios, you know... - Here we go.
There are arpeggios, but they're not like small.
They're like wide...
Arpeggios and sometimes they're really tricky
because they're in between black keys and
really easy to miss.
- Cool. I like that. - Nice one.
Okay, next one.
We have something...
Beautiful and slow.
Mozart.
Ooo...
Yeah, this is Friedrich Gulda, an Austrian pianist.
One of the...
Greatest...
Musician genius as I find.
He loved Mozart, he was his favorite composer.
Mhm.
And he did a lot of jazz too. He was...
A little bit off-the-wall crazy person, but...
- He remind me of, um... - Like a genius.
- What's the violin guy? - Oh, oh!
Yeah. Yeah.
You know the one that plays Chaconne like... Bah-dah~
Yeah!
- Gitlis, Gitlis! - Gitlis, Gitlis!
- I don't know, he just gives off the same vibe, like... - Vibe, yeah.
Okay.
That's all right, let's keep going.
Yes, this is one of the most iconic slow movements
and one of my favorite moments where...
Basically nothing happens, but yeah.
Now.
He had to lick his lips there.
- He's like, that was good. That was tasty phrasing. - Yeah, I got it.
That was tasteful. Hahaha.
Did you hear that?
So...
The most simple thing in the world, it's just a cadenza.
Or you know just these single notes.
Yeah.
But it's like...
Everything there... I don't know.
A lot of pianists they like to...
You know, put runs in between
which I personally don't like so much...
Cause I like it when it's just the pure...
Just what Mozart wrote, you know.
And that's also quite hard to do.
Because, again like, piano you can't sustain notes.
So the fact that it's a single note that...
Goes for so long...
The relationship of the volume of each note
has to be just right.
- So it sounds like a phrase. - Bam~
Rather than...
A bunch of single notes, right?
What's that quote by like Einstein? Like...
Any fool can make things more complicated.
- It takes a genius to simplify or something like that. - To simplify, yeah.
Unfortunately, never could hear him live cause he died.
But I work with his son Paul Gulda a lot. He's...
Here in Vienna and he is also an amazing pianist.
I love how...
You've been choosing excerpts that's so different.
And each one...
I feel like can...
Showcase to both the piano gang,
but also non-piano gang people out there.
And soon-to-be piano gang.
Just how...
Versatile and rich the repertoire is for piano.
You guys have the best repertoire, I gotta say.
I get kind of jealous.
Yeah, but it's too much.
Yeah.
- That's true, you guys have too many notes to learn. - You can't play everything.
That's true.
But that's also good,
so not everyone's always playing the same piece.
Anyway, let's keep going.
- Oh, I love Prokofiev. - Ooo.
Yeah, me too.
- Did she... - She just went woah with her hand.
Did she use uh...
- Like... - She used her knuckle, hey.
- Dude... - Dude, that got really intense.
I don't know, wouldn't that hurt?
Maybe...
It's hard to tell.
Or maybe because it's so loose that it looks like it.
I love about her playing that she's so loose, you know.
And there's just so much power, it's just like...
Dude, she's so young in here too.
Yeah, it's 1977, I think.
- Woah... - With Previn.
But I love her interpretations of Prokofiev concertos.
And I love Prokofiev as well.
I mean, I've always liked Prokofiev, but I feel like now...
Once I started playing more Prokofiev,
I really love his music, it's so fun to listen to.
Yeah.
I loved it.
I was - I was feeling the vibe.
Yeah.
She had a good energy, yeah.
What do you think about Argerich as a player?
I'm just curious.
I really lover her playing, I mean,
especially Prokofiev I think.
But I do respect her a lot.
She actually once came to our university
to talk a little bit.
She didn't play anything for us, but...
But it was really interesting what she had to say...
About her life and...
To me, like as a...
Outsider because my sister's a pianist
and she loved Argerich.
- In my mind, she's like the Beyonce of the piano world. - Yeah, she's like the...
- Queen. Yeah. - Just like the queen.
- The queen of. - Yeah, that's true.
True, yeah.
Oh and fun fact, actually she was...
One of the only students of Friedrich Gulda,
the one we heard right before her.
- Oh! - Really?
Okay, this next one Michelangeli..
With Chopin Mazurka.
Nice.
What do you think, why did you pick this one?
Well, Michelangeli is...
For insiders, he's really well known.
Have you guys ever heard of him?
- Uh... - For non-pianists...
- We're outsiders. - We're outsiders now,
it's gone beyond our scope of knowledge.
I really like his interpretation of mazurkas.
Cause mazurkas somehow, my teacher told me...
They're sort of the king discipline of Chopin.
Like it's basically harder to play mazurka well than
an etude or a concerto
- or all these hard things. - Really?
Why?
It's so simple, but it's so hard.
It's a little bit like Mozart.
I thought like, "really?"
But then I learned some and it's true.
It's hard to...
Present them well and to...
- That's why I quit piano, cause I hit a mazurka. - Play them...
And I gave up.
When you have something like this...
Your storytelling musically really has to be on point.
Well, what do you think...
Michelangeli was doing...
Break it down from a...
What a pianist might see or hear
from this particular recording.
I mean the hard thing about mazurkas is...
They kind of have to sound like you're just...
Playing in the moment, like very spontaneous.
But if you do that...
Like if you don't have any kind of plan...
It might not come out the way you wanted to or
it should...
But yeah, I like how he...
How he produces the sound and with the articulation
and how he takes time.
It's very natural.
But it's not all the same.
Every phrase is different somehow and you know,
you want to keep listening.
It's not like, okay, now comes the same thing again.
Cool, cool.
All right.
Lucky last.
Okay, the last one.
Something totally different.
Somebody everybody knows.
Mmm.
Hahahahahaha.
- What? - Can we just stop there?
- Everything is totally different. - Yeah.
- That was so different from everything before. - So different. - That's right.
He's the one everybody knows, you know,
for non-musicians, he's sort of the piano star.
I heard him live with Liszt Sonata in the Konzerthaus.
And that was one of the most...
exciting performances I've...
Ever heard.
Like this sonata is really hard too.
And I felt that everything was happening like with
his face or his movements was...
Part of what he was doing.
It wasn't like he was trying to...
Show things, so I was really impressed
with that performance.
This piece is a very technical flashy piece.
Yeah, I've played this piece and the ending is like
it's six pages of only octaves.
But the problem is...
It starts out not so hard but it gets harder and harder
and then the left hand also gets harder.
And I remember when I played this and...
I listened to him just out of curiosity and I was like,
oh, okay...
I have to practice.
What is this?
Okay, so this is still okay, that's the beginning.
But then, like a few pages later.
- Dude... - "I did it!"
Pretty impressive.
He popped off at the end.
You know the left hand starts jumping too and...
It's terrible cause if you start getting tired
somewhere in the middle like you have no chance.
How are you gonna get to the end?
No matter if you like him or not, you have to...
Admit that, you know, he can play.
But he's also...
Very smart, I think, cause he knows like exactly
where he needs to take time and...
Where he can do what.
It's not just that he plows through the whole thing.
- I agree. - Yeah.
We played with him both, right?
Yeah, yeah. Orchestra.
I remember he was doing the Prokofiev 3.
or 2, I can't remember, one of the Prokofiev concertos.
And he was just like...
It was so easy for him.
Literally like he's chilling,
but like playing the most ridiculously hard things.
I have heard like...
- Yeah. - Piano students being like, "oh, blah, blah, blah."
But then I remember we were in that
master class that he did...
Oh yeah.
- And it's like, he knows musical stuff. - He knows.
- Everything about music. - Yeah.
It's like yes,
he decides to do whatever he wants cause he can.
- Because he can. But he also can, cause... - But it's not like he's stupid.
- He's not stupid. He knows. - He knows.
He's not just doing it cause he doesn't know.
Yeah.
It's also he can show off, cause he can.
He's earned it.
- He earned the rights to do this at the end. - Yeah, he was like...
- "Yeah! Uh!" - Cause he just freaking did that.
He's like, "who else can do that in a jacket," like...
"That's right."
- So many amazing musicians everywhere. - And also different.
I need to practice.
I know.
Thank you so much, Sophie oui oui.
For...
Thank you.
Showing us six more amazing performances.
Oui oui enjoyed it a lot.
I did too.
Is there anything you want to add?
Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys.
And go practice.
Yeah!
Well, there you have it guys.
Another six amazing pieces from six amazing pianists.
And of course, Sophie oui oui...
Telling you to go practice.
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