Well played but there is unfortunately always a dimension missing when a piece written for 2 pianos like the Ravel gets "improvised" with 4 hands.

@tudorconducta1929

3 күн бұрын

This is by no means ‘improvised’ at all. This is the original two-piano version which can, with the need of some acrobatics, be performed on one piano only. Every single note is there.

@MweelRea7425

3 күн бұрын

​@@tudorconducta1929 Thank you for your reply. Evidently the one-piano version is a constraint of this small church venue and you are to be congratulated for brilliantly presenting the extremely difficult Ravel Rhapsodie Espagnole to an audience that might not otherwise hear it. In a more general sense, I was referring to the acoustic dimension. With full recognition of your achievement, why then would two-piano recitals be given at all when four hands on one instrument are equivalent? The necessary contortions also sometimes make 4-hand pieces look to me rather like a party game at a local music teacher's concert afternoon and I never liked playing them myself for that reason. I suspect the reality is that professional piano duos have to cope with the fact that few venues outside large concert halls and renowned music conservatoires can afford to have 2 Steinway D or similar-quality grands tuned to each other, and of necessity have to give most concerts on one instrument. The Yamaha in this church is not really built for many of the large-scale works performed on it (for example Liszt), but presumably the hall is too small for a larger grand. From the video, the instrument appears to be a model C3, length 186 cm, serial number 5967515 - for which one website returns a manufacture date of 2001 in Hamamatsu, Japan. This is just my view, which is probably highly shocking to, and in a tiny minority amongst, the mass of concert-goers, so you are welcome to dismiss it as irrelevant or delete the comment. All the best...

@tudorconducta1929

3 күн бұрын

@@MweelRea7425 To answer your question, some pieces are two-pianos only due to their nature. Very few ones, like this one, could be done on both. I did not mean at all that two piano recitals are equivalent to four hands ones. I was merely referring to this particular concert, where this Ravel was performed as written, and your comment about it being ‘improvised’ for four hands was a bit unjustified. The Rhapsodie was intended as both a duet and a duo. The title page mentions ‘for two pianos or piano duet’. You are at one level, right that with two pianos, you get two sets of pedals, allowing for more refined layering, more clarity of texture, and so on. It’s also, easier to play on two pianos. At the same time, however, there is so much literature for piano-4 hands which I don’t think can be dismissed as the ‘local music teacher’s afternoon concert’... What about the glorious Schubert’s Fantasy as well as so many other works by him, Mozart’s original Sonatas, Rachmaninov’s op. 11, Schumann’s the late opuses…? There’s a wealth of repertoire that is worth exploring on the concert platform.

@MweelRea7425

3 күн бұрын

@@tudorconducta1929 Apologies. You're right! I checked again on IMSLP and on one score edition on the cover it does indeed say "Piano à 4 mains ou à 2 Pianos ad lib". I guess I didn't look carefullly enough and was just too accustomed to the 2-piano version.