Jazz for aficionados

Horowitz is able to play everything more than well.... But Scriabin music ask for a magician dedicated to him in a total devotion ( like Wagner and Beethoven ask for total devotion)...

He is not my favorite in Scriabin, for example Igor Zhukov is better for Scriabin but who know him ?

Physical time has nothing to do with musical time, physical time is measured metronomically or with an hour glass or a watch...

Musical time cannot be measured by a metronome, there is a "beat" in it that swing for some heart  as another heart and cannot be measured... Musical time result from the encounter of the heart of a musician with the heart of another musician ( a collegue, a meastro, a composer ) then cannot be measured, it surge one moment to the next imprevisible...

It is like that Scriabin must be played... Scriabin ask for another musician because his goal was awaking humanity... On this he differ from Bach who serve God, and resemble Beethoven more than Wagner ( Wagner use an ideology on which and from which his music is born).

I discovered also that Liszt also like Scriabin is almost impossible to play for the same reason ...

I begin suddenly to be moved by Liszt now who became one of my God thanks to very few pianist able to play it...

Scriabin is born not only from Chopin  but from Liszt like a blacksmith in his forge, scuplting iron in the form of blooming flower.

 Here what Debussy has to say about his contemporary Scriabin:

«This is a recording from one of Debussy’s concerts. He performed this piece after traveling to the Gobi Desert. Debussy remarked once during his tour: "Even composers like Liszt, Beethoven, and Chopin could not reach the complexity brought by Alexander Scriabin." "I have never seen such genius in a piece."»

listen to Debussy  playing Scriabin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wZkA-HvPUU

I must add about Debussy that i discovred him with Ivan Moravec, a god pianist also who put me to ecstasy able to play the "cathédrale engloutie" so well i see the cathédrale before me appearing... Since i bought all albums of Moravec...He is my third God pianist.

 Even with the bad recording we can hear that Debussy get scriabin right. it is incredibly moving ..His playing is delicately chiseled with a timing sense extraordinary which prove out of any doubt that he understood Scriabin and not only loved him.

Compare to Sofronitsky interpretation the God pianist of Scriabin in his daughter opinion and in the mind of all Russians : 

Sofronitsky and his volcanic playing :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RwdHs756l4&list=RD1RwdHs756l4&start_radio=1

Now listen Scriabin himself as "recorded" by mechanical method  : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfYMFNjSMnU&list=RDVfYMFNjSMnU&start_radio=1

 Scriabin is the greatest pianist  with Liszt ( i discovered Liszt with Ervin Nyiregyházi my second interpreter with Sofronitsky/Scriabin)

Is this extrapolation close to what you were getting at?

BTW, I will be listening to Scriabin this week. I have a feeling that Horowitz is not on your list of people who play him well.

@mahgister, what I am hearing from you, while listening to Scriabin played by Richter, is about how a musician can translate the composer's passion, and a large aspect of that is in the understanding of timing, or perhaps the composer's magical heartbeat. I was talking about the listener getting so involved in the music that she loses a sense of time. I think that is what passionate moments are about.

@stuartk, I will post a poem below about jazz. It might help in the understanding of the poem to know how I work. I was taught, and I have taught others, to write in images. As one of the most influential American poets, William Carlos Williams, said: "There are no ideas but in things." So poems are not about ideas, they are more about dreams and the translation of images. That approach to poetry is difficult to accomplish but also freeing. Perhaps it might free you?

Max Beckman was a pre-Hitlerian German painter who sensed what was coming and captured the distortions of Germany to come under Hitler. In Germany, as in America, jazz was considered "decadent" music. It was played in speakeasys here and in clubs in Germany shunned by conservative society. 

As @maghister said, rhythm is a very integral part of poems. And I worked carefully on the lines and the way the rhythm works.

MAX BECKMAN'S FACES

they were all caught

looking over

their shoulders stunned

by how easy young bodies

glide into jazz

&

the way cigarette

smoke

from a vamp

aging before our

eyes crawls

up the cheek

of an idle dandy

& disappears

in his hair

Listening to Lee Morgan,  Here’s Lee Morgan. (1960-2025 Remaster)

Qobuz directed me to Alan Broadbent, Threads of time. Recorded in ‘24 and released in ‘25.

A new recording with a very old feel.

An old recording with an old feel. Django Reinhardt with perhaps the greatest jazz violinist of all time Stephan Grapelli. They played in the 1920s and 1930s in the Paris Hot Club. I was lucky enough to see Stephan Grapelli live playing with David Grisman and his "Dawg Music."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTH_Nn_TtDI