Iannis Xenakis: Mists (1980)

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
Mists (1980)
Jonas Olsson, piano

[@Scriabinfan593]

What a beautiful performance of a beautiful piece. I hate that I can't play this stuff yet. All I can do is watch for now.

[@Jimmy.Williams]

That is just madness playing that with all of those compound divisions of the beat...lol. Bravo!!!

[@mcbainst]

Great, Guess what I'll be whistling all day now?

[@Telluride7324]

I know!! It’s so catchy! I find myself mindlessly humming it without noticing all the time.

[@print-helloworld-8977]

I hope this is sarcasm

[@davidcooper8241]

There's something incredibly sadistic about writing this kind of music and expecting a pianist to learn how to play it. It is amazing that people exist who are willing to go through it. I'm very glad they do exist, because i really love the result. Serious question though for any knowledgable musicky types out there - does this achieve anything that excellent improvised atonal music with much more 'random' note choices doesn't? Maybe it sounds more mechanistic and structured... but couldn't an improviser improvise mechanistic structured sounding stuff... Surely whatever the clever complicated generative patterns underlying the note choices are, are more or less impossible to actually perceive as a listener? I like improv, I like this, its all super

[@tomaszkaminski6495]

Your dilemma is natural and legitimate. But let's look at it from the other side: why should a contemporary composer deny himself from creating music that is "equal" in this sense to improvised music? Why should it not be the most tightly composed music? Let's even call it a form of experimentation or exploration of the limits of composition and performance. Cheers :D

[@PalumboComposer]

amazing performance and piece, of course!

[@christophedevos3760]

Stunning, congratulations.

[@pmarq32]

Wow -- amazing performance!

[@ukdavepianoman]

Firstly bravo for playing this. The rhythms are fiendishly difficult; I wonder if it's even possible to play them exactly as notated (7 in the space of 5, etc.). What I like about Xenakis is his music is very structured and he creates wonderful "sound worlds"...could be spikey/aggressive, soft/mysterious or even jazzy/funky. So although there may be "apparent randomness" to SOME of the notes, there is a very definite mood.

[@lovaaaa2451]

Wow, sensationellt och enormt vackert spelat, har aldrig hört någon så musikalisk tolkning tidigare. Kan inte föreställa mig hur lång tid detta måste ta att lära sig.

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Tack! Svårt att säga eftersom jag studerade in Eonta samtidigt, och det slukade all min tid, men jag skulle gissa på åtminstone 100 timmar för Mists

[@flautobasso]

Superb performance! Congratulations

[@Berliozboy]

incredible performance!

[@Alix777.]

Unbelievable. Beautiful piece. Very impressive...

[@AndreyRubtsovRU]

Beautiful indeed. LOL

[@davidwright8432]

Wow! Sort of birdsong, but not ... a resonant, spiky smoothness, if that makes any sense. As with Messiaen, an entirely original composer whose work stands by itself, unique. Thanks for uploading; a marvellous performance.

[@MrInterestingthings]

So wonderful to finally see xenakis mists score. I wish it was played more often.

[@vaadhsiao8645]

wow !! bravo!

[@ethanchambers02]

Gorgeous score and playing

[@yeetthebeet]

wowww

[@timothyhoft]

Bravo! Very impressive.

[@rize118]

Only seen this until now. You're an insane pianist!

[@danb2622]

Amazing skill at the keyboard, Jonas!

[@SamuelRHoward]

Great.

[@allegoricalstatue]

Thanks so much for this

[@avkoskinenarchive]

This is incredible.

[@benjamin9901]

Lovely. I need all the Xenakis I can get

[@nosegrindv4951]

good song.

[@uijinoh]

I really hope you play Evryali someday...

[@jonasolssonpianist]

There are so many excellent Evryalis out there already, I don't think my contribution is really needed

[@XeniaZubkova9121]

Я тоже так играла,правда,имповизируя без нот в потоке сознания

[@jonasolssonpianist]

thanks for the tip, will try that next time

[@stvp68]

I’m wondering if you memorized it, had a page turner, or used an escore for this recording. Impressive playing!

[@jonasolssonpianist]

I use a pedal for page turns. No point in memorizing things like that, I'd rather spend the time on actual practising

[@kamint2258]

難しいと万人が心地よい曲とはまた別である。 😂 もちろんこの超難曲を作ったクセナキスの才能と、演奏されたピアニストは素晴らしいが！！😉❤️✨

[@user-qb3ru2ee7w]

何となく、音楽の一種ではあるとしても、音響デザイン＋演奏技術への讃嘆、である(に過ぎない)ような気がする。

[@adamgharmonica4659]

This is amazing ... is there any discussion by the pianist about how to approach learning to play such a piece. How long did it take? What were the processes that s/he needed to go through to get it to this performance standard? What lessons are the for piano students learning challenging pieces? Hugely impressive composition and performance - thanks for posting this.

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Hello Adam, thanks for your comments! I do have some answers scattered among the comments, but to summarise (and expand): 1) roughly 100 hours, although that's after almost 20 years of constantly playing big complex contemporary pieces, without that experience it takes much longer; 3) lessons for piano students - apart from the boring, necessary stuff (practise every note slowly with metronome, be patient, play the right notes in the right order, be patient again etc), I think it's very important to learn how to break down the difficulties into manageable chunks, develop a large repertoire of specific practice strategies, and to think hard about the priorities specific to each particular piece; 2) learning processes - I can't really go into much detail here (that'd be a book), but for Mists specifically, there are three texture types that are the main challenges: - four-part polyphony (0:43 and similar places) - first it's useful to observe that all four parts use exactly the same pitches, meaning that playing the right notes is actually important! Second, figuring out the right order of the notes, and identifying those meant to be played together (marked by Xenakis in the score). Then it just becomes a matter of successive approximations, with the goal of four smooth lines, moving at different speeds. The polyrhythms look frightening but don't actually add anything to the real difficulties. It's still really hard though. - fast arpeggios in both hands (2:50) - this is classical, but also really hard. - "clouds" (most of the piece from 3:31 on, 3:58 is a good example of maximum density and range) - this is mostly about finding good fingerings, grouping notes together and working out the position changes. Dynamics and pedalling instructions are also very important here. These pages are also (unsurprisingly) very hard. The good news is that the rest is easy!

[@adamgharmonica4659]

Greetings Jonas! thank you so much for your prompt and generous answer - really fascinating and of great interest to musicians of all types more modest and mainstream. Although my area is jazz and SA township music, my father the composer Stanley Glasser was very engaged with 20th century serious music and I remember being to be taken to concerts as a teenager at the QEH and RFH on London’s South Bank where I first heard Boulez conducting ‘Pli Selon Pli’ and works by Iannis Xenakis. You have inspired me to return ( as a listener ) to this marvellous sound world thank you again

[@runner0075]

It sounds like cool jazz in a washing machine

[@UtsyoChakraborty]

Impressive!

[@tylers9006]

That’s crazy! Next Lemma Icon Epigram lol. Then soon you can replace the player pianos for Nancarrows studies. Aside from the joking- this is insane and crazy. What a feat

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Haha, thanks, actually I just recorded the Ferneyhough, but I should make a proper recording soon. No Nancarrow planned, but thinking of Boulez 2nd and Sciarrino 3rd sonatas.

[@jppitman1]

Gee, an ambitious one you !@@jonasolssonpianist

[@markglynn4713]

Extremely impressive playing, although I'm still unsure about the music. I'd be fascinated to know how one practises such complex music and to see your fingerings! Is it really possible to accurately play some of the polyrhythms, or is it just approximations? How about a KZbin tutorial?🙂

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Thanks! I'm afraid that would be the most boring KZbin tutorial ever - I'd just say things like practise every note slowly with a metronome and be prepared to spend hundreds of hours. As for accuracy of polyrhythms (0:43 and similar places), it depends a lot on what you mean (isn't everything an approximation?) - I mostly play the right notes in the right order, but it's not really humanly possible to play four slightly different speeds in a mathematically exact way. An efficient approximation strategy would be to figure out the right order, including identifying those notes meant to be played together (the dotted vertical lines in the score), then tweaking the spacing so we end up with four smooth lines. Easier said than done.

[@markglynn4713]

I appreciate your detailed answer:-)@@jonasolssonpianist

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Thanks, I very much appreciate relevant comments and interesting questions!

[@handledav]

misty

[@karllieck9064]

Mom! The cats are on the piano again!

[@jonasolssonpianist]

Congratulations, 15000 viewers have tried and failed to come up with a cat joke 😉

[@janiskristofersvitols9413]

detta var väldigt njutbart. påminner något om Ligeti

[@imagod4796]

Could you explain how to read passages like 04:00 or tell me where to find an instruction?

[@jonasolssonpianist]

It's basically a frequency/time graph, like all musical notation. Play all the notes in the right order, respect the horizontal spacing, the vertical lines are semiquavers. This is much easier said than done, especially around 4:00 - that's really a horribly difficult place. Sorry about the wrong notes at 3:59 and 4:04.

[@johnzielinski9951]

@@jonasolssonpianist Yes, they were quite jarring. 😛

[@jonasolssonpianist]

​indeed 😛

[@ukdavepianoman]

@@jonasolssonpianist Horovitz hit wrong notes. You are allowed to, too!

[@jonasolssonpianist]

but Horowitz only played romantic repertoire - complex contemporary pieces like Mists require a bit more precision, otherwise the music will just sound bad

[@webkahmik]

It's a Xenakisian Rumba! Feroz!

[@CalebDickinsonMusic]

The part starting around 3:32 has echoes of late Scriabin

[@victorsethy]

It's fun. If it's improvised after half bottle of whisky. ... I still don't understand, how came, that improvisation is almost forbidden... at least not taken serious, basically only allowed in jazz. I love jazz, but I'd love to play... just what I hear. What I want. What I feel. If I'd write it down, and someone else would play it, people would be amazed. This way they just don't give a shit. Interesting planet... but not for an other incarnation.

[@ellenrosenblatt5463]

what would Mozart think of this?

[@jonasolssonpianist]

applying 18th century beauty standards to late 20th century art? sure, it's possible

[@alwhitaker1925]

He would think that monarchy is gone and therefore tonality is gone as well

[@ethanbrownpiano]

Great technique and playing but the score is pretty awful imo.

[@sssnacksss]

the score? the piece?