Recorded on June 28th and July 2nd, 2024. If I recall correctly, it took me about 22 hours in 2020 to learn through this movement and I was mostly just imitating an existing interpretation at the time (I just wanted to be able to play it at the time). It took me around 8 hours this time to relearn it and build a novel interpretation.
[CONTEXT]
This 16-minute movement of the whole 45-minute composition is nicknamed after Ralph Waldo Emerson, a transcendentalist writer who promoted the philosophical movement of subjective intuition, spiritualism, and the inherent goodness of people and nature over intellectualism. Ives describes Emerson as follows and intends to depict him as so in the movement:
"We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite where many men do not dare to climb, peering into the mysteries of life, contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he discovers there,-now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can, and translate-now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands, things that we may see with effort-if we won't see them, so much the worse for us..."
You can read the full Cambridge paper on the piano sonata here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15m816THx02U4V3YHKBvcVoow7Ytp_rtr/view?usp=sharing
The annotations I made in the score are based off of the paper, but I tweaked a few of classifications the way I see better fit. The shorthand labels I gave for each of the motifs/themes are from the paper as well.
[COMMENTARY]
So, I didn't actually intend on posting this recording since it doesn't quite meet my standards and it's a bit pasted together, but I thought it's worth sharing anyway for the time being. The exposition, the development, and a bit of the recapitulation are on different pianos because:
1. I couldn't precisely replicate the exposition from my previous post when doing the higher quality recording. (More on this below.)
2. During the higher quality recording, the audio got corrupted a little at the recap and I didn't have any audio to replace it.
However, I did try to match the equalization as much as I could by ear during editing so the transitions are not too jarring.
Regarding not being able to replicate the exposition from my previous post, after some thought, I came to the realization that it's likely impossible for me to replicate at the moment because:
1. When I first recorded it, I was still somewhat unfamiliar with the score and my muscle memory wasn't quite there yet, which made me hesitate slightly at every moment. This actually worked in my benefit as it helped genuinely convey the feeling of climbing, summiting, and struggling. It gave the performance much more weight and impact and is something I cannot do now since I'm much more familiar and technically comfortable with the score. This is also a trait I see with other performances: it sounds too rehearsed and easy.
2. Due to the prose-like nature of the music and the vast number of specific emphases, voicing, dynamic subtleties that I subconsciously incorporated the first time, imitating the first recording is extremely tedious and inconsistent and I find that missing a small detail a few times is enough to dispel the tension entirely. Even though I "know" what to do and why to do it, the result just doesn't sound quite right. This is actually quite a frequent thing I experience when sight-reading or freshly learning a piece of music: I'm able to synchronize my emotions, mind, and body almost perfectly to sometimes produce extraordinary results (e.g. my sightread recording of the 3rd movement of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" piano sonata).
Another side note is the emotion I was projecting the first time was "angst" apparently and because I just don't have anymore, my performance just isn't as great.
Anyway, hopefully someday I'll perform this entire piano sonata by Ives for a public recital. With the right piano, it's quite an experience and certainly was for me while recording this! Like I said in the previous post, it feels like reaching for the stars ✨ and speaking my soul through music. And, I think other people can feel that as well since I posted my first recording on Reddit a few weeks ago and lots of people were vibing with it: https://shorturl.at/HMm8b
[DISCLAIMER] If you're unfamiliar with this style of music, it is suggested that you go through the description of this previous video for the necessary background: https://youtu.be/CjZe5I2dJKc
All movements from Opus Clavicembalisticum I've recorded: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIDZcmE0XODCfwXtlHvJ3-fZSYVOf5MMR
All works by Sorabji I've recorded: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIDZcmE0XODBZjc2ISVcJB9--pTWaWRME
At time of recording, Eric is a full-time software engineer working in Big Tech and AI, graduated from the University of Waterloo, Computer Science major.
@musicforever60_official on IG: https://www.instagram.com/musicforever60_official/
#piano #music #ives