Sometimes even great interpretations don’t reveal or highlight many details present in the original score.
Liszt’s masterpiece begins with some muffled tollings (Gs), in the lower part of the instrument, indicated by the composer with the symbol "staccatissimo", meaning that a drier and a more incisive than normal staccato is required.
Furthermore, these tollings are evidently on the upbeat, because of the pauses on the downbeat and on the third crotchet of …
Chopin prescribes the pedal very precisely.
In addition to the information present in detail in his manuscripts, there are also testimonies, collected among others by musicologist Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger in his book "Chopin seen by his students", which shows the indications that Chopin gave to his students also on the use of the pedal in his music.
From these indications it is evident that Chopin changed the use of …
One of the technical discoveries of romantic pianism is the so-called "Cantabile with both hands". This means that the main melodic line, being played in the central part of the keyboard, is obtained by alternating the two hands, and often by alternating the thumbs.
A typical example of this procedure, which will be intensely exploited, is Liszt's famous Liebestraum N. 3.
The difficulty of correctly performing this type of cantabile is that the …
Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 N. 3 in B major is one of the most complex. Its greatest peculiarity is the harmonic ambiguity that derives from the continuous oscillation between the tonality of B major and B minor.
From the very first bar, this continuous oscillation between these two distant tonality does not allow us to clearly focus on the mood of the piece.
A piece that, if it had …
The title of this very famous piece refers to something special, magical. It is something that you may experience not during sleep, but when you are awake, like an apparition, a vision.
Even the choice of the key of F major is certainly not accidental. Mozart used this key very often in situations where he wanted to create a particular atmosphere, for example the second movement of the K 330 piano …