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Alfred Jaell Rapsodie sur un motif de La Traviata

Discussion in 'Submission Room' started by andrew, Mar 4, 2015.

  1. andrew

    andrew Administrator Staff Member Piano Society Artist

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    It's been a while since I've submitted anything, so here's a small piece recorded in a recent session on a nice but slightly elderly grand. I know Monica's going to say something about the pedal mechanism noise; if it's really obtrusive I'll speak to someone better technologically-equipped who may be able to remove it.

    A little info about the composer and piece:
    Alfred Jaell is probably one of the few composers whose wife (Marie Trautmann/Jaell) is more famous than him! He was an Austrian pianist-composer associated with the Liszt/Weimar circle but to what extent he studied with Liszt seems unclear. Certainly the shadow of Liszt's virtuoso composition style hangs heavily over his paraphrases. This particular one falls perhaps more into the "morceau de salon" style than a full-blooded virtuoso piece. I think it's rather charming.

    The score for this piece is not available through IMSLP etc; I've received it privately and have been asked that it remains so. However honesty compels me to admit I have two or three small misreadings (annoyingly one of them wasn't there when I test-recorded it on my phone!).

    Jaell - Rapsodie sur un motif de La Traviata (3:58)


    Link to the recording on my Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/andrew-wright-35 ... a-traviata
     
    andrew, Mar 4, 2015
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  2. verqueue

    verqueue New Member

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    It's a shame that the score is not public, it could be nice encore in my repertoire... Beatiful music. It seems to be quite hard, especially those light passages in about second minute. About performance I can say only that your feeling of this music is great. I can't really say anything more about your performance without score or more extensive knowledge of this piece. How long have you been learning this?

    Thank you very much for sharing!
     
    verqueue, Mar 4, 2015
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  3. techneut

    techneut Active Member Piano Society Artist Trusted Member

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    It's charming indeed, as is the mellow sound of the piano. Definitely more like salon music than a virtuoso glitter piece. I did not spot the read errors :)

    Now for the ubiquitous question of where to put this ! I don't feel like PS needs a composer page for either Verdi or Jaell so I guess this will once more go into the _Various section where many of your fine recordings are lurking. It again makes me hate the design of the site where everything needs to be categorized, and you cannot have one artists's recordings (and one composer's works) on one page.
     
    techneut, Mar 4, 2015
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  4. andrew

    andrew Administrator Staff Member Piano Society Artist

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    The gentleman who scanned it is a significant contributor to IMSLP, so if he wishes to keep this private I assume there is a good reason, but agreed, it would make a good encore. I've had the score for six weeks, played it through the day I got it but only started looking at it properly two or three weeks ago. I'm glad you liked it!

    Yes, the piano suits the music. The read errors pain me. I think my memorisation wasn't as accurate as I imagined!

    Agreed that there is little merit in a page for either. I would be perfectly happy to write up a bio of Thalberg sometime in the next week, which would by my reckoning take five recordings out of the Various section. (I do indeed seem to have a large number of recordings there!) However ultimately it's only tinkering with the problem you mentioning, and I don't know if Thalberg merits a page of his own - almost nobody at all plays his original compositions even if a few people play his transcriptions.
     
    andrew, Mar 5, 2015
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  5. techneut

    techneut Active Member Piano Society Artist Trusted Member

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    This one is on the site. Please check.
    Let's not bother about Thalberg, we should not put someone on the composer pages just because of a couple of transcriptions. Even though that was done in the past for Hess and Kempff and maybe others, and I incongruously created a Stevenson page for my Peter Grimes Fantasy (feeling that he is a more significant and original piano composer than the others). I can't really be bothered to change things around, inconsistent as they may (and always will) be.
     
    techneut, Mar 9, 2015
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  6. andrew

    andrew Administrator Staff Member Piano Society Artist

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    Yes, super, that's up ok.

    I agree with you about creating a separate page for Stevenson, that seems perfectly reasonable. There are always going to be inconsistencies within the classifications and labelling on a site which has evolved over time and contains such a large number of recordings.
     
    andrew, Mar 10, 2015
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