Open Lecture-Recitals, Tuesday 24th of March, 19.30, Firth Hall

International Conference on the Multimodal Experience of Music Inja Davidovic, piano (University of Sheffield)

F. Chopin: Nocturne Op.27 No.2 Historically-informed performance practice is inherently complex; not only are instruments and playing styles relative to specific cultural, social and historical contexts, literary sources are often highly subjective and, as with the performances that they describe, a product of their own time. Fortunately, practice may be informed by the existence of early recordings, which serve to illuminate stylistic conventions of past eras; through their examination, the principles of previous performances and interpretations can be systematically studied and understood. Crucially, early recordings do not merely offer a window into the sound-world of past performances, they also offer a wealth of information about the physical nature of performance, which may ultimately serve as a model, or exemplar, for contemporary performances of the same works. Despite this, contemporary performers should not merely copy and paste what they hear through recordings but strive to grasp broader stylistic conventions common to performance traditions of the past. To demonstrate this point, this paper examines and compares series of early recordings of Chopin's Nocturne Op.27 No.2. It starts by identifying a range of similarities and differences that hold between them, before considering some of the ways in which such recordings may inform contemporary practice. It goes on to explain how certain physical, haptic and proprioceptive cues may be abstracted from the recorded medium, before demonstrating some of the various ways in which these may be applied in a performance of the same piece.

Reading the Style: the use of auditory and visual texts in historically-informed performance practice  

Mine Doğantan-Dack, piano (Oxford University)

C. Czerny: Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op.33 ‘La Ricordanza’ Much of Czerny’s (1791-1857) reputation today is based on his pedagogical exercises for the piano, aimed at developing finger velocity and dexterity, and the rest of his artistic output, which number over a thousand and range from symphonies, concertos, chamber works, masses and piano pieces in all forms, is little remembered. During the twentieth century, one piece from this large repertoire has been revived, particularly following Vladimir Horowitz’s (1903-1989) recording of it in 1946, although it still is not heard frequently in concert: Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op.33 “La Ricordanza”. Czerny composed this set of variations sometime around 1822-23, possibly after hearing the famous Italian soprano Angelica Catalani (1780-1849) perform, in Vienna, a vocal arrangement of the French composer and violinist Pierre Rode’s (1774-1830) Air varié Op. 10 for string quartet. My first encounter with Czerny’s brilliant set of variations, which has been called ‘a pianistic gem’, was through a 1950 recording of it by Alexis Weissenberg (1929-2012) issued as part of the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series. The long-lasting impression made by the beauty and variety of this wonderful musician’s touch in this particular recording has, to this day, remained one of the motivating factors behind my research on pianistic touch.  

Hearing through touch: correspondences between tactile and aural sensations in artistic pianism