Dear MCML members: A few of the older generations of pianists were
being criticized and were labelled "machines" and not musicians.  You put
the music down in from of them and they could play anything, but they all
sounded alike.  The flip side of the record is always the interpretation or
more specifically do they have a "soul" to add life into those little black
dots on the page into something more than a progression of notes or sounds?

I personally subscribe to the notion that some artists maybe more
qualified or maybe bettered suited for certain schools of music or
individual composers.  The music is in their head rather than in just
their fingers.  This observation is not limited to only piano music.

The other comment that I remember in my early readings of the great
pianists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the
often complaint that some composers did not write music for people with
normal sized hands.  Chopin and Listz, I believe were often included in
this criticism.  Godowsky and a few others of his generation also ring
a bell.  They wrote music for themselves that only they could play with
their large hands, so the criticism went.  The other criticism is that
some contemporary composers write music for the piano that no one can play,
the "needs six hands piano school".

I would also like to voice a small purist prejudice concerning the
Goldberg Variations as an example for the case of piano transcriptions
of other keyboard music.  I have the same observation for Dame Myra Hess
and her excellent transcriptions of Bach's organ music.  I do enjoy the
transcriptions, and have played some as piano works or as other keyboard
works My comments is only that we are discussing apples and oranges.

Another interesting comment was that many of the great keyboard artists
of the late nineteenth century would only perform is small private
performances.  They did not or could not perform at large gatherings.
Are there any examples of this today? I understand that some modern
pianists would prefer to only record only rather than to concretize nine
months a year.

Best regards,

Lowell D. Herbrandson