Klarinet Archive - Posting 000925.txt from 1998/12

From: avrahm galper <agalper@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Berlioz as a critic
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 04:19:06 -0500

Berlioz, the composer, was also a critic for some Parisian newspapers.
He made a little living this way.
On 15 December 1833 he wrote the following interesting account of Liszt
and Chopin:

The enthusiasm aroused by Liszt at the Theatre Italien several weeks ago
has not yet cooled down; wherever the conversation is about music,
Liszt is cited as a miracle of verve,audacity, and inspiration.
His qualities are so overwhelming, his climaxes so terrifying in their
force and precision, his ornamentation as delicate and so novel in style
that truly sometimes one is incapable of applause, he so petrifies you.

Chopin has quite a different talent
To appreciate it thoroughly I believe it is necessary to hear him at no
great distance, rather in a salon than in a theatre and to set aside
every customary idea, because one cannot apply them to him or his music.
Chopin as an executant and as a composer is an artist apart; he has no
point of resemblance with any other musician of my acqaintance.
His melodies impregnated with Polish forms, have something naively wild
which charms and captivates even by its strangeness; in his Etudes one
finds harmonic combinations of astounding profundity; he has imagined a
sort of chromatic embroidery, reproduced in several of his composition,
whose effect is indescribable;
It is so piquant and bizarre
Unfortunately it is almost only Chopin himself who can play his music
and give it it's original turn, this unexpectedness which is one of its
principal charms.
His playing is marbled with a thousand nuances of which he alone has
the secret and which could not be indicated.
There are incredible touches in his mazurkas; further he has made them
doubly interesting by playing them with the last degree of delicacy, a
superlative piano, the hammers skimming the strings so that one is
tempted to go close to the instrument and bend an ear as one would to a
concert of sylphs and will-'-the wisps.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Avrahm Galper
TONE TECHNIQUE AND STACCATO
THE UPBEAT BAERMANN MELODIC SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS
http://www.sneezy.org/avrahm_galper/index.html

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