Malcolm Bilson: Knowing The Score

[@desreves2676]

Thank you, Cornell, for taking the time to re-mix the recorded excerpts in on top of the lecture audio instead of simply letting the room recording of the playback fly alone.

[@Kris9kris]

Beethoven: Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 1 No. 3 3:42 Mozart: Piano Sonata in C major K. 279 III. Allegro 5:40 Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C minor Op. 111 9:58 Schubert: Piano Sonata in B major, D. 575 II: Andante 17:02 Schubert: Piano Sonata in D major “Gasteiner”, D. 850 19:13 Mozart: Piano Sonata in F major K. 332 I. Allegro 20:30 God Save The Queen 37:03 Mozart: Piano Sonata in B-flat major K. 333 37:26 Johann Christian Bach: Piano Sonata in G major Op. 5/3 37:43 Mozart: Piano Sonata in C major K. 545 39:00 Beethoven: Piano Sonata in A flat Op. 26 I. 48:37 Prokofiev: Gavotta Op. 32 no. 3 57:00 Schubert: Moment Musical in F minor Op. 94 1:01:08 Bartók: Este a Székelyeknél 1:01:40 Chopin: Nocturne in E-flat major Op. 9 1:04:09 Chopin: Nocturne in D-flat major Op. 27 1:04:50 Bach: Concerto for two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 II. 1:07:45 Schubert: Das Lied im Grünen 1:08:30 Beethoven: Sonata in C-sharp minor Op. 27 I. 1:13:05 Beethoven: Sonata in D major Op. 10 No. 2 II. 1:16:07 Beethoven: Sonata in B-flat major Op. 22 II. 1:22:14 Wow, Bilson ripped the smartass guy in the audience a new one. “Would you do it?” LOL. Of course, the loudest ones are always those who can’t. What he said about other well-established pianists’ nomenclature of back-handed insults towards HIP is nothing short of flabbergasting. I know the feeling because I was one of the idiots who hated the fortepiano. Luckily, since this presentation came out, a lot of elite pianists changed their opinions (at least publicly), like András Schiff who referenced the fortepiano in several of his lectures.

[@rooneyjosuehernandezvillan4213]

Thank you very much!

[@coppellpianoshop3812]

Listening to this entire presentation is one of the best investments of my time I have made on the internet.

[@dittacello]

Coppell Piano Shop agreed

[@larsfrandsen2501]

Yes!

[@_PROCLUS]

Brilliant lecturer...Thank you for the upload

[@gonzaloherrera2181]

Amazing Masterclass!👏

[@jackgallagher9949]

Wonderfully thought-provoking. Thank you for posting!

[@brandonmacey964]

Bravo Maestro! Such a moving lecture!

[@alexmantua]

Very interesting! Thanks for uploading.

[@danteminutillo]

Very interesting and informative presentation!

[@carrottoponcrak]

This lecture was fantastic but it ruined some of my favorite recordings for me. It also introduced me to some new recordings, but I'll never hear my old favorites the same way again. This talk really opens your eyes to some essential musical elements hiding in plain sight.

[@karlakor]

This lecture should be required viewing for all music students, especially those in conservatories and university schools of music. This is a revelation to me, and I have been a practicing pianist for nearly sixty years. Anyone's playing can be transformed by learning what Bilson has to offer here.

[@FlowEckurt]

...I took several courses with him. He is at the highest level of both music and music theory. And a very loving person 🍀

[@jackasszerorodney]

I had the great opportunity to play with this great master in Brazil, He asked me "you seem nervous", i said that i was experiencing some fear of the stage and to play, simply said "never be afraid to play", it sticked into my mind so intensevely that i will always remember. Thanks Malcon for that great concert!

[@Ekvitarius]

A transcript of this lecture must be mandated as required reading in every music school

[@AntKneeLeafEllipse]

meh

[@Renshen1957]

@@AntKneeLeafEllipse double meh on you...(The points made are very well taken, as are the examples, care to provide counter arguments from literature of the 18th and 19th century???

[@anthonywritesfantasy]

I'm grateful that he has shared his personal theory of music. But anyone who says, "this is the correct way to play music; this is incorrect" or "idiotic" or whatever terrible word he used has forgotten the reasons we make music at all.

[@Renshen1957]

@@anthonywritesfantasy The reason we make music is as an emotional expression. That is the basis of art. To recreate music for the masses or the general public as an interpretor serving the composer's intent is different matter, in which there are incorrect, idiotic, or illogical (playing the piece too fast, and the wrong volume, or out of proper context). Most concert pianist do not "know the score,' but rather play what a public expects from a viewpoint of "a conservatory tradition" (bad habits that became engrained then beatified).

[@rinforzato]

Quantz, L. Mozart and C.P.E Bach and much more should be available in every music university's library. - What was studying again? Getting taught how to play the right way by a lecturing professor! Oh, wait, no! - Doing your own research under the guidance of a teacher who is willing to learn always together with his students... - right? Well. (No doubt though, Malcolm Bilson's presentation is very inspiring and encouraging. Also, to look up for example, what daddy Mozart actually wrote about the slur/legato...;)

[@victorhugotoledocofre1366]

Do I see Kristian Bezuidenhout in the audience? (17:11)

[@Ekvitarius]

Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parallels between what Kristian says and what Malcolm says

[@Ekvitarius]

He left a good review of this on Amazon.

[@sebastian9445]

Probably changed my way of seeing scores and music, especially since I am getting more into Schubert and Mozart, I find a new way of reading music, and try to find new ways of playing it, a truly moving speech, as most would say, but more of a new, or old, perspective to music

[@steffenfahlklassik-resampl7125]

"He who have a truely understanding will make this clear through his playing" that exactly is the right dependence. It is not as it even in Malcolm Bilsons Lecture it sometimes appears to be (from his attempt to understand the composer from the way their score are able to be realised), that through the "playing" of the instrument one would achieve anything like the "truely understanding" of the music, but you need the truely understanding before (!!!) you start to play, in short you simply have to know what you want to do, before you do it. Yes it is kind of instructive to imagine the problems which a musician might have had with playing. But even if the composer integrated thoses problems in the way he intended a music to be played, he never made any technical problem it self to the proper sens of the music. It always remains nothing less and nothing more than the mean to express what is intended. The sequence of Emotions a good played music might evoke as Quantz put are of course not the anger, or fear about the risc for a difficult passage. (Otherwise, the best "interprets" would be those with the most technical problems demonstrating the most fear and anger about them.) Different to Mr. Bilson I dont think that "the Soul of music" could ever be anywhere else than in the soul of the creating, playing and listening musician and of course not in any kind of instrument no matter if it would be made by Walther, Broadweood, Graf, Erard, Steinway, Bechstein, Fazioli or Synthogy. And since all of those Instrumentbuilders have done their work quite well their instruments are able to let a musical soul shine through their instruments. But for me "the Soul of music" is not in the Instrument. But of course it is inspiring to rediscover with the historic instruments the conditions under which music was realised in earlier times. It is inspiring and this is only possible as far it never pretends to become something normative, but something what might make more attentive for musical details. So it is of course right to draw the attention on the fact, that the articulation of musical thought depend the more of the variability of tempo and the inequality of each certain note-intensioty the more it comes near to any talk-like musical expression. But to pretend "never play even" as a kind of Law of course completly omits the fact, that the talk-like character of music is only one of the two major perspective in which music was understood. The likewise important other side is the dance character, and this depend in opposit to the talk-like irregular individualised expression, on the possibility to figure out regular "even" structures. Of course none of those aspects allone is the only thing what music is about. The Jazz-theorists for a long time thought Jazz would have it's very own more or less enigmatic or even magic understanding ot the beat and rhythm until musicologist just measured the relation of certain Jazz-musicians to the tempostability. The results was, that the most succesful and most popular musicians were those who kept the tempo the most straight at all. The exsample with the Schubertlied im Grünen seems to me most instructive for the possible weakness of Bilsons tendency. He tends to overstress the expressive inequality. He does not take in account, how expressive individualisation might also depend on a resaonable conjunction with a unifying even and only subtle varied tempo. This is what is making Schwartzkopf and Fischers interpretation in my understanding so much more intimate than the perhaps simply a bit more extroverted arbitrary tempo of Elisabeth Schumann. To sum up. I like Malcolm Bilson and also this lecture full of musical inspiring details, but I do not consent completly in all aspects. Of course every really good academic musical instrumental education touches exactly those aspects he talks about every day. Of course there is and will never be any absolute normative Law which will decide, what is allowed or in any "objective" way right or wrong, simply because the inner subject of music is a matter of personal taste, which will never work, unless it has the freedom to find it very own decision.

[@masoudhosseinzade9621]

he is really cool, i love the way he talks

[@DrJones88keys]

Thank you so much for adding this valuable resource to KZbin!

[@Hjominbonrun]

i've been playing so so badly for so many years, and only now do I know how badly.

[@carrottoponcrak]

The lady at 5:56 made me stutter too

[@alirezaghader5872]

I can't believe I found this in youtube...so helpful for me...thank you for sharing

[@rinforzato]

Please help me to find the actual place, where Leopold Mozart says that a legato slur means diminuendo. (?)

[@brutusalwaysminded]

Much of this is common sense. If you understand the “gestalt” of a piece then it will go a long way in terms of interpreting a score (not simply giving a transcribed performance). Great talk. Thanks!

[@Renshen1957]

With all do respect to Malcolm Bilson, Steinway wasthe first to Patent cross strung pianos, but two separate French piano manufacturers invented cross-stringing in the 1820s (variously credited to eiether Alpheus Babcock or Jean-Henri Pape) and manufactured cross strung pianos decades before Steinway's 1859 Patent.

[@hjo4104]

When was this filmed?

[@Ekvitarius]

I think it’s from 2005 or 2006

[@larsfrandsen2501]

Oh, how I miss my many Eastman seminars with Malcolm Bilson!

[@euclid1618]

He's saying it all out loud....!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@jeremytingle6404]

Bilson's strawman of any performer who does not chop the phrase into miniscule parts as "not playing with articulation" is astonishing. For someone who supposedly talks about subtlety in interpretation to ignore obvious agogic and dynamic influences in favour of "there must be silence" is quite the blind spot. His examples of "imitating" the fortepiano on the modern Steinway are similarly unconvincing because he fails to take advantage of those musical features, doing everything with silence alone and coming across as both pedantic and caricaturing. Of course nobody would accept his "correct" playing on the Steinway - it is objectively bad, and the nuance which these instruments permit is squandered behind the shallow point he tries to make. It's unfortunate that someone who is clearly quite experienced and knowledgeable would resort to this kind of tomfoolery to prove an otherwise valid point about certain early-twentieth-century excesses, and his rebuttal of the gentleman in the audience re: Beethoven Op. 26 was extremely unconvincing. Any pianist worth his/her salt could give the impression of the upbeat solely through loudness; the difficulty one encounters trying to do the same on a period instrument does not make the technique invalid. What matters is the composer's intent in notating a particular passage (what I believe Bilson's actual point was supposed to be), and his diatribe against others taking different but equally legitimate technical routes to the same end (and often keeping the overall hierarchy of phrasing and structure in mind rather than just the surface) seems oddly misplaced.

[@Kris9kris]

What are you on about? Bilson’s exact point is that when the piano of today began to evolve in the early 19th century, the sensibilities regarding how you approach certain passages followed suit. And he’s exactly right, you can’t do certain things on a modern piano that you can on a period one and vice versa. That’s why Czerny revised his metronome markings in his subsequent editions of Beethoven sonatas because as the action of the piano became heavier and the sustain longer, you needed to slow down in order to be comprehensible. But that's a limitation of the instrument, and certainly not how Beethoven heard it when he composed them. You can’t do every little legato arch and dynamic detail on an instrument that’s designed to “sing”, so to speak, because it would sound choppy and awkward. That’s why the modern Steinway is simply not the ideal instrument to interpret Beethoven/Mozart etc. on, because they didn't design their pieces around it, if they did, they would be bad composers. There is nothing contradictory about what Bilson’s saying, and some of the recordings he played are indeed jarring in terms of dynamic awareness. We know from Leopold Mozart that the last note under a slur should be softer. What does this person do? 24:39 It sounds like a bull in a china shop, honestly.

[@jeremytingle6404]

@@Kris9kris The sensibilities didn't evolve with the instrument, they evolved with the tastes of the era. It's absolutely possible to follow the composer's intentions on a modern instrument, and to juxtapose "literalist" readings on the period instrument with Bilson's opinions of how they should be played on the modern concert grand (which are absolutely ridiculous) is simply disingenuous. There is adaptation of the treatises of the day (which I give very little weight, for the record) to the reality of whichever instrument is being played, which includes several period instruments which do not behave the same way - and then there is trying to use the exact same technique on both instruments, which is absolutely insane. You can achieve far more dynamic range on a modern grand and do far more shaping purely with that, while giving articulation its place nonetheless. "That’s why the modern Steinway is simply not the ideal instrument to interpret Beethoven/Mozart etc. on, because they didn't design their pieces around it, if they did, they would be bad composers. These composers didn't intend their pieces to be played on any piano in particular - this is a Romantic/20th-century idea applied to an era when the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart were freely performed on harpsichord or fortepiano, pieces were continuously re-arranged for various ensembles, and Beethoven only felt the need to mark his piano sonatas as being specifically for the "Hammerklavier" as late as Op. 101. They also would not have approved of every legato slur being chopped to bits, as it completely destroys the deeper levels of structure and harmonic progression in favour of focusing too much on surface details - something Bilson seems to champion above all else, but which I find relatively unimportant. "We know from Leopold Mozart that the last note under a slur should be softer." We know a lot of dumb things from treatises of the day, including voice treatises that tell the singer to raise the larynx. These stylistic prescriptions have to be taken into broader consideration and not blindly followed as if they were the word of God; they also have to be accepted as the taste of a few individuals of the period, rather than binding prescriptions. My favourite recording of the Mozart sonatas is by Lubimov on a period fortepiano, so I am not opposed to the use of those instruments if they can be used to achieve a convincing all-around artistic vision. Bilson's approach of deriding modern players for not accepting the use of period instruments, and then criticizing performances by those same artists based on an extremely narrow, dogmatic interpretative approach to what is ultimately just taste, is what is contradictory. He claims to be a gadfly, but is merely as narrow-minded as those he criticizes for acting the same way.

[@Kris9kris]

@@jeremytingle6404 Let me preface this by saying that it’s not every day you come across an intelligent reply on social media, so thank you. I have several contentions about what you wrote, so I’ll share my thoughts on it. “The sensibilities didn't evolve with the instrument, they evolved with the tastes of the era.” Wouldn’t that reinforce what I’ve just said because the instruments themselves evolved to accommodate the stylistic evolvement of art music in general? And it’s not so much the taste of the era as it is the demands of composers, who wanted extra range and extra notes to expand the scope of their compositions and experiment. “far more dynamic range on a modern grand”. This may be anecdotal, but I both own a modern grand and an 1800 Walter, and I found that the registers old Viennese classical masters used are indisputably more suited to a parallel-stringed period piano. For instance the 4th movement’s beginning of the Op. 27 No. 1 Sonata, or the Op. 10 No. 3’s 2nd movement can sound muddy on a Steinway while perfectly clear on a Stein/Walter etc. Also, my argument about tempo remains the same. You can’t adhere to those fast metronomes Czerny and Moscheles indicate on those early editions on a Steinway, because your arms would break off from exhaustion before you could finish the damned thing. When I talk about how composers designed their pieces around a given instrument, I’m talking about the point of conception - what they heard in their heads when they’ve written them. I’ve read an article about why Brahms used the middle register so often in his piano compositions, and it made the exact point I’m making. “This is a Romantic/20th-century idea” No, the romantic idea was that - as espoused by Sigmund Lebert - that the instruments of Mozart/Beethoven’s time were limited and crude, and we need to revise certain passages dynamically because that’s *obviously* how they’ve envisioned it originally - aka. making ridiculous conjectures. It’s a complete reversal from what you’re saying. “pieces were continuously re-arranged for various ensembles.” Yes, but those arrangements served a different purpose. When Beethoven arranged his symphonies for four-hand piano, they were conceived so that the daughters/sons of the bourgeoisie could enjoy these compositions without having to go to a - once in a lifetime - concert where they could hear it played by an orchestra. We today enjoy the luxury of Spotify and KZbin, it’s easy to forget putting these facts in historical context. And more often than not, passages were extensively rewritten (either by a composer or a third party) to suit that particular instrument. “completely destroys the deeper levels of structure and harmonic progression “ How so? If anything, slow, dragging tempos are much more detrimental to the delineation of structures, and I find that most modern pianists are ostensibly guilty of that. “They also would not have approved of every legato slur being chopped to bits” You would be surprised. When Beethoven heard Mozart play the piano, he complained in one of his letters that Mozart’s playing was “choppy”. If I recall correctly, Mozart likewise wrote about one of his female students (or acquaintances) something along the lines of: “she’s very musical, but she chops everything up!”. You see, perceptions changed gradually as we approach the 19th-century norm of playing everything under a big slur. “We know a lot of dumb things from treatises of the day” When you speak casually, would you raise your voice suddenly in the middle of a sentence or at the end of it? No, everyone would think you’re a raving lunatic. Nobody is saying - not even Bilson I think - that you should adhere to those old texts religiously, and I’ll concede that theory can be wrong as it often is. This again is anecdotal, but I found that certain period instructions helped me to adapt to compositions efficiently, get in the mindset, connect with the pieces on a deeper emotional and physical level and make progress with my interpretations. Principles were there for a reason, you lose nothing if you learn them, but you don’t know what you *could* lose if you remain ignorant.

[@kekikyavuz]

“These instruments were designed for halls of different sizes” Puts them in the same hall and compares. The instruments aren’t even separately microphoned. There’s the first crack in your argument.

[@julianyuan4411]

Such a pedantic statement when he shows how to play four random notes. He didn’t mention that according to CPE Bach, ‘all notes under a slur must be kept full length’.- contrary to what he said. It’s even more misleading to talk about music in this way than those ‘bad’ editions.

[@Renshen1957]

That's only one quote out of Perfromance in the first part of example 167, while immediately following example 168 has the first and second of three quarter notes each held as half notes and the third note played as a quarter.