András Schiff about Bartók's style of playing

* Discover Bartók’s piano music in interactive scores: explorethescore.org/pgs/barto...
* You can find this video in the interactive score of Burlesque No. 2 (“Kontext” section): explorethescore.org/pgs/barto...
In EXPLORE THE SCORE, world class pianists take you on an exciting journey of discovery. Delve into the world of twentieth-century music by exploring interactive scores. Watch masterclasses, learn about the composers and their music and discover award-winning education projects. EXPLORE THE SCORE is an education project developed by the Klavier-Festival Ruhr.
EXPLORE THE SCORE ermöglicht eine faszinierende Entdeckungsreise in die Welt der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts mit herausragenden Pianisten der Gegenwart. Die Internetplattform des Klavier-Festivals Ruhr umfasst multimedial aufbereitete Partituren, Meisterkurse, Dokumentationen praxiserprobter Vermittlungsprojekte, Lehrmaterialien sowie vielfältige Hintergrundinformationen zu den Komponisten und ihrer Musik.
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[@fiandrhi]

I love the gentle and very clear way Schiff speaks. He's a wonderful teacher.

[@bikemike1118]

He‘s Hungarian…although his surname is actually German

[@oooodaxteroooo]

Schiffs style of speech is impressive. Its like he talks musically. Natural rhythm, sound and almost melody when speaking. Its a real pleasure to hear him talk AND play :) Thank you!

[@morrigan236]

Listening to Andras Schiff speak is just as beautiful as listening to him play. (And sing folk tunes haha!)

[@tanianotte8919]

Schiff is such an inspiration. He looks always in another world deeply connected with music!

[@lucindasloan7631]

So wonderful to hear Andras Schaffer sing a folk song in his native tongue to explain parlance playing.

[@lubosschelepak7032]

Andras Schiff

[@cjanebell]

Just listened to Bartok, and then found this - by one of the most distinguished, intelligent, extra-ordinary musicians ever born. Wonderful!

[@wadeworkman7283]

Master Schiff. A true scholar and fine pianist. His Bach pieces are exemplary.

[@MrInterestingthings]

I think everything he does is wonderful .His Bartok, Beethoven and Schubert . His Bach I have trouble with -too watery . I need a dryer piano sound . I think the music is from a harsh time that saw beauty in a more honest way not as a pretty thing but the Natural ! Americans don't get this about European art and that's why contemporary aesthetics are not s popular here as in Europe . Americans believe in comfort and entertainment : dross !

[@isabellesimon7101]

merci Monsieur pour tout ce merveilleux enseignement et votre infinie richesse musicale et humaine!

[@johnmorrisrussell4680]

Lovely to hear Mr Schiff singing folksongs. Thanks for posting

[@adrianocastaldini]

A FUNDAMENTAL master-class... in just 6'... in spite of the fact that he speaks slower that any other!

[@falstaff63]

What a Master Class. Maestro Schiff give us much more in 6 minutes that some other in several hours. Thank you!!

[@dorotheasluik3578]

Thank you so much for your heartfelt way of speaking about music and playing.

[@Iam-mad]

András Schiff thank You for sharing Your wonderful art.

[@someassembly2730]

Thank you for taking the time to explain more about Bartok's music. I could listen to this for hours. I am trying to learn the 44 Duos and this really helped. Especially grateful for explanation of rubato and parlando. Also, the German subtitles are a tremendous way to help one learn the language better. Thank you maestro Schiff.

[@ProfDrislane]

The reason Bartok breaks chords is that it was part of the old technique of piano playing to play left before right, and arpeggiate even chords which could be easily played solid for rhetorical reasons. This is heard in countless historical piano recordings, and of course remains a standard technique in harpsichord playing. One fascinating example of the technique's use on the piano is in Debussy's piano roll of the "La Cathédrale Engloutie." He arpeggiates several of the chords in a "water colouring" manner which is completely lost in modern performances..

[@79pants]

Style brisé

[@MrInterestingthings]

Very interesting here what you say about Debussy's piano roll . I hope it wasn't doctored . I must try to find some recordings of Debussy . I've heard Ravel's not so fantastic recordings that some say were made by Casadesus or Perlemuter . I know Bartok in Scarlatti . I must find out what his Chopin and Beethoven sound like . I want to disagree with your stance that Bartok was a Depachmann sort . He was born late enough like Hofmann and Lhevinne to not break chords even in music where it should be correct . I'm no academic but this issue is worth investigating .

[@ProfDrislane]

@@MrInterestingthings Bartok did break chords quite frequently. Have a listen to his "Kreutzer Sonata" with Szigeti!

[@MrInterestingthings]

@@ProfDrislane Ijust heard he and Szigeti as well as he and his wife Ditta in Brahms Quintet rescored . The recordings are old and much is difficult to hear but it does not seem that one hand plays before another . But thankyou for this . I've known about the Szigeti recordinds since I was a child they came out on Columbia if im not mistaken just like the Benny Goodman . Only recently made aware of the Scarlatti and recordings with his wife . Hope I can find much that his exacting mind left us . I see op.14 is here I'll listen toit again . I really think his generation didn't arpeggiate or play one hand before the other .Pianists born after 1860 one does not find this Paderewski and DePachmann were over a generation earlier than Lhevinne,Godowsky ,Moisewitsch .I'm going to hear again the Leschetitzky students .

[@ProfDrislane]

@@MrInterestingthings Regarding the use of "a-synchronization" or the playing of chords, etc., with the hands not together, it's important to notice that it's a matter of degree. Bartok, Godowsky, Horowitz, Moiseiwitsch all use the technique in subtle ways. Of later pianists, Glenn Gould used it frequently; not only in Bach, but also Brahms, and Schoenberg. What's interesting about the pianists listed is that they played "contrapuntally," bringing put inner voices, etc. Perhaps it's not surprising that arpeggiation is used. Historically we can trace these tendencies all the way back to the organ and the harpsichord. On the organ, chords are struck together, on the harpsichord, broken. Composers who were trained on the organ as well as the piano most likely played with little arpeggiation. Surely Beethoven and Mendelssohn fall into this category. Chopin and Schumann would be a different case. With Liszt, his stated goal was to turn the piano into and orchestra, so he certainly availed himself of the chance to create widely spaced chords requiring arpeggiation. A wide survey of recordings by pupils of Liszt and his contemporaries reveals that their approach to rubato, articulation, arpeggiation and "rhetoric" is rather different from later approaches. So sometimes I feel that we want things to sound "modern" for psychological reasons..

[@ukaszk.8305]

Wow - a thought for the day! Thank you for this great lesson.

[@gardenvariety9957]

I have an LP of Bartok playing pieces from Mikrocosmos. A treasured item.

[@JannisSicker]

wow, with the songs that are on youtube too?

[@gardenvariety9957]

@@JannisSicker many of them I think...lots of Bulgarian rhythm

[@dornyjunior]

I always love to listen to pianists talk about composers

[@johngreenhalgh3097]

What a gift, thanks for posting, grateful thanks too to the Maestro for the accumulated acumen delivered so beautifully

[@roberth7921]

how wonderful it would be if one could study with Schiff...

[@MrInterestingthings]

One has to have had the beat training and been very adept to get inside those halls . Many do study with him but they're above normal types of intelligences . Each generation the new standard is so high it makes old recordings seem deranged to me ears . I used to listen to Hofmann like he was a gawd - no more .

[@thinkOfMeAsAClassicalMusician]

I always love When these great international figures like schiff speak a bit in their own language, especially when they are not from the very common countries

[@RModillo]

About the timings, I heard from a scholar in Budapest that he didn't prepare those in tandem with the metronome marks. If you add up the bars that way, you usually don't get the published time at the end. What he meant, rather, was to write down the actual time of a performance that wasn't awful, and write it down so radio stations or record companies might have a notion of what to plan for.

[@quaver1239]

Thank you!

[@ericwilhelm2941]

András Schiff is so beautiful

[@anthonydecarvalho652]

Marvelous

[@lyolevrich]

Maestro!

[@pianoredux7516]

Schiff does not comment on the paradox of Bartok's extremely specific notation in the published scores with the composer's own flagrant non-observance of his very own notations in his recorded performances, where Bartok often practically deforms the meter with extraordinarily free agogic accents and rank flouting of his printed metronome markings.

[@jeremylarez]

Genius

[@jcharwag]

Wunderbar behilflich. Tatasaechlich faszinierend. Besonders ueber "parlando" Stil. Danke tausend mal, Maestro Schiff.

[@pandiatonizm]

Bartok is still for me to this day a composer enigma, all other modern composers have a life line they throw at you, but not Bartok

[@paulschumann4137]

Start with the 3rd Piano Concerto and work back. It took MANY listens to wrap my head around his music.

[@fido652]

@@paulschumann4137 Thankyou. I will try what you suggest !

[@nicholasschroeder3678]

@@paulschumann4137 That's exactly what I'd recommend. Finish with the string quartets.....actually, start with the 3rd Concerto and the Romanian Dances. You get beautiful melodies with that haunted folk music. Try the 4th String Quartet. It's rhythmically wild. Crazy. If that finally grabs you, I think you "get" him. I know nothing about music. Can't play. But Bartok is just a turn on. He takes you to different worlds.

[@MrInterestingthings]

Disagree totally ! Marvelous Mandarin . The Romanian and folk music for Piano . Bartok has enriched my composing . Hindemith's Concerto for Orchestra gives me life . Bartok's same has awoken thousands of composers to how to compose !

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

In other words, do not play like a machine, but rather like an actor reciting poetry.

[@laurentgrynszpan3715]

Andreas est tres sympa de nous faire l economie de somniferes

[@truBador2]

Ah, the "Good" Schiff. Not the Evil one. Bravo.

[@bogdansofei1299]

Thank you for this; how about Beethoven's music? Is he the exception? Does his music come from sung music? Thank you again..

[@Robert…Schrey]

From counting ?

[@pablobear4241]

Not an expert but I’d assume so. I think one of the most pure forms of instrumentation Is your voice. Back then there was tons of singing in churches and stuff, Bach was known for his chorales and beethoven learned music from them etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if singing wasn’t huge for them. For Rachmaninoff it was for sure, both him and Horowitz as well idolized a singer named Feodor Chaliapin.

[@choirguy100]

There’s so many vernacular influences to all classical composers that are lost to us because we’re removed from the times and places where they lived, so to us their music just sound “classical”. But if one studies the vernacular musics of where all these composers lived, one can begin to hear hints of them now and again, even in Beethoven.

[@nicholasschroeder3678]

Beethoven did use folk song motifs. He probably knew just about all there was to know about what was out there. Writing for the voice was what he struggled with most. He agonized over his opera, and his masses don't really sound masslike--more symphonic, just like the singing in the 9th. Even the best aren't the best at everything

[@MrInterestingthings]

Wonderful to hear him . I'm sure Schiff has heard dePachmann and all the rest . I think he is onto something totally unrelated to old-fashioned piano playing . It makes no sense an arbiter of the new resorting to old methods . Hofmann and Lhevinne never? do it and Bartok in his recordings too shows us how fastidious and dedicated to the new style he was . His Scarlatti is a new thing metrically and shows the Baroque severity in alignment with 20th century concerns ..

[@morrigan236]

Anyone knows the title of the folk song here: 2:50 ?

[@morrigan236]

Found it myself! Fehér László lovat lopott A fekete halom alatt: Fehér Lászlót ott megfogták Tömlöc fenekire zárták

[@wcucomneuroscience258]

@@morrigan236 Here is my translation: Laszlo Feher stole a horse underneath the black hill Laszlo Feher was captured there and locked into the bottom of a dungeon

[@morrigan236]

@@wcucomneuroscience258 Thanks!

[@hazemnajjar9401]

What piece is this at 2:25 ?

[@ExploreTheScore]

Hi Hazem. The piece is No. 25 from Béla Bartók's 'For Children'. You can find more details here: explorethescore.org/pgs/bartok/die_musik_entdecken/fur_kinder_nr_25.html (An English version of the Bartôk site is coming in the next days...)

[@hazemnajjar9401]

@@ExploreTheScore Thank you very much

[@MarcoInchingolo83]

[@rozalinapiano]

Familiarity with Bartok should have informed interpretations of Bach by this pianist…. But, some blind spot must have prevented for this opportunity, and thus, EMOTIONAL REPRESSION, FORE TO BACH had been allowed to prevail over genius music of polyphony master, sadly

[@leecherlarry]

the best bartok recordings are by kocsis on philips. kocsis is a lion. schiff more like a rabbit.

[@denise2169]

I took a full course devoted to Bartok’s music in my graduate studies with scholar Halsey Stevens in the early 1970s, and while Barton’s music has a wonderful, unique energy and flavour to it, I never once thought of it as being played by a ‘lion’, nor that it needed to be. Schiff gives a lovely perspective here.

[@leecherlarry]

@@denise2169 Halsey Stevens composed good piano music! hi Denise, i was just mildly trolling haha. I can't imagine Schiff persuasively in the virtuosic Bartok pieces like op.1 (or was it op.2) or the Etudes. David Dubal writes that Schiff is like a Marshmallow 🍧🎹

[@papagen00]

"freedom doesn't mean anarchy"... something the U.S. citizens have yet to learn.

[@johnelsworth2556]

I believe Sir András meant chaos.

[@tonylogan4092]

Really? And what makes you such a specialist in regards to US politics, CVA?

[@janbonsema5888]

you don't have to be jewish, but it helps....

[@laurentgrynszpan3715]

Pianiste tres ennuyeux qui peut faire l economie de bien des somniferes. C est deja beaucoup

[@EllieMcEla]

0:20 Schiff: "Not to imitate, it's impossible to imitate" Jazz musicians (aka superior musicians): Hold my beer

[@donprudenzio]

The point Schiff was making, went over your head. Also, “aka superior musicians”, what a silly inherently subjective generalization.

[@specialperson335]

@@donprudenzio he was just trying to bait you

[@donprudenzio]

@@specialperson335 Perhaps. That's one of the issues with written text, isn't it? Irony, sarcasm et cetera is much more easy to "read" between the lines when taken into account someone's intonation or other aspects of context. Whatever though.

[@danielgloverpiano7693]

Jazz musicians can’t even read music. Would you respect an actor who couldn’t read words? I have never seen a point to jazz. It rambles on, has no climaxes, lacks clear cut structure and is predictably lacking in dynamic shadings and nuances. Rhythmically it is very limited and tends to sound annoyingly repetitive and lacking in variety of beats and meters. As a classical performer, jazz bores me to tears. I can’t stand it for more then two minutes. My mind wanders and it just seems like endless notes without any logic or structure, let alone any emotional message. Believe me, I have tried to listen and I just can’t. It is like comparing a stand up improvisational comic rather than a trained actor. To my mind, what makes classical music head and shoulders superior to jazz is that we all play the same notes and find something different. To each his own. Incidentally, I have a masters’ from Juilliard in piano. I’m no slouch musician. I worked hard to be able to play 70 concertos from memory. When I was at Juilliard, anyone playing jazz would be thrown out of a practice room, as the guards would think they weren’t a serious student. They have sadly lowered the school’s respectability by including a jazz program. This is sad. To top it off, they gave Paul McCartney an honorary degree. This hack couldn’t read a note of music. It’s an insult to the hard work we put in to ‘earn’ our degrees. I hope they don’t continue down this path of cheapening the school’s reputation. It’s not an encouraging sign.

[@danielgloverpiano7693]

PS I noticed you are Norwegian with a clearly Finnish name. I find it interesting that Europeans like jazz so much. We trained classical American musicians really look down on jazz because we know it came from people who were not trained musicians, most of whom could not read music. There is an inherent prejudice against jazz in the US and you will not find many people who like it. It has a very small following in the USA. Just an observation. We consider it a sort of “low class” or “ghetto” music. It may also have a racial bias element. But that aside, I can’t sit through it. I just can’t stand it. So pointless. Incidentally, Wynton Marsalis was my contemporary at Juilliard. It seems that he was one of the people who pushed the school down the road to accepting jazz as a serious area of study. He has now taught jazz at the school. I may have been there just as they started opening up to taking jazz seriously.