Josef Hofmann plays Beethoven "Moonlight" Sonata (complete -- live, 1936)
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), one of the greatest pianists of all time, plays Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", opus 27 no. 2, aka "Moonlight Sonata".
1. Adagio sostenuto 0:05
2. Allegretto 5:27
3. Presto agitato 7:02
Live recording, 1936
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Question: Is there any justification for the swaying of the body, the nodding of the head, the exaggerated motion of the arms, and all grotesque actions in general while playing the piano, so frequently exhibited not only by amateurs but by concert players, too?
Answer: All such actions as you describe reveal a lack of the player's proper self-control when they are unconsciously indulged in. When they are consciously committed, which is not infrequently the case, they betray the pianist's effort to deflect the auditors' attention from the composition to himself, feeling probably unable to satisfy his auditors with the result of his playing and, therefore, resorting to illustration by more or less exaggerated gesture. General well-manneredness, or its absence, has a good deal to do with the matter.
(Josef Hofmann, "Piano playing, with piano questions answered", 1920, Dover) 
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Several have mentioned Hofmann's rejection of swaying and other gesticulations. That apparently came from none other than Rubinstein! According to Hoffman, 'Under the influence of Rubinstein, I was made to feel myself less an individual genius than a mere medium for the interpretation of the works of the masters. He always insisted that the first duty of the artist was to smother self; that his personality should never be inflicted upon his listeners, who are before him to hear and feel, and nothing else. He sternly forbade any such movements as throwing back the head, or dreamful swaying of the body, or gymnastics with the arms. "These things," he said, "may make money and excite the worship of the foolish, but they do not become the real artist and great musician. Work toward your ideals only, young man, and success must surely come'."
Interesting. Good..
I disagree with Hoffamn , respectfully of course because he was a genius and I am not. If suchswaying and gesticualtions are natural responses to the music then what is wrong with them?
Josh Hill Anton Rubinstein?
@@sergios.gentil8863That's what i'm wondering. Arthur really came to prominence in the 20th century after Joseph's hey day. Anton was the predecessor, and major influence in his day. However Anton was known for his performances and super flourish… So this "quote" baffles me...
Josh Hill refers to Anton Rubenstein, a fabulous pianist who was roughly a contemporary of Johannes Brahms. Hofmann was Anton Rubenstein's only pupil.
How utterly refreshing it is to hear a version of this sonata so different from most other pianists. I'm now beginning to understand why Rachmaninoff considered Hofmann the greatest pianist of his generation. Thank you for the post.
and like Rachmaninoff Hofmann plays as if the only composer's style applicable is Hofmann . Great Golden age of piano really seems a scary thing like teeRump's moniker. In my teens and before I learned to listen carefully HaroldSchonbeg and Chasins and others had me fooled . I now know the finest minds and science is to be found in today's artists . The teaching has anatomy and the science of the pedal has been studied . Most of us have no idea about how to produce a big tone and how breathing and posture relate to that. Before 1970 intuition is what taught a great many artists .Interpretation has a longer history but the mechanics of the instrument how to build a piano is only recently a requireent of many performance degrees .
It's so different because it's about as far away from Beethoven as one can get. Rachmaninoff was probably just being nice to his former classmate; the pianist he _really_ loved and adored was Moiseiwitsch.
Magic!
I don't think it's about "the pianist coming first" then and "the composer coming first now", as so many people (below) imply; I think it's about "expression above all" then and " 'correctness' above all now"; and I know which I'd rather hear! Thanks for posting.
Wow ... this performance is a revelation ... incredible rubato: it never takes you out of the piece, just keeps inviting you onwards.
Great rubato and amazing tone color in the first movement. The first movement is a great example of why Hofmann should be considered one of the greatest musical minds ever - not just one of the most technical ones.
Yes!
The first movement is so stylistically incorrect Beethoven playing that I'm amazed Hofmann let this recording be distributed.His in concert Waldstein is much finer but it too could learn from Radu Lupu !
@@MrInterestingthings define incorrect
You didnt hear liszt playing stuff like that, luckey you.
Musics no dead museun piece.
He solves the problem of how fast to play the first movement by an incredible feat of flextime (it goes far beyond rubato). The 2nd movement shows Beethoven's playfulness-often missed by other. I laughed out loud. Then the last movement bursts out like a dammed waterfall. Yes. Jawohl.
What would Hofmann think of some of today's younger pianists, e.g. LL? It would most likely be unprintable. Hofmann's little book should be required reading for all concert pianists under 40 (and a few over). Unfortunately the era of "aristocratic" playing so exemplified by Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Friedman, Moiseiwitsch, Rosenthal, Arrau, Novaes, Hess, Rubinstein, Horowitz, and others seems to be long over. Instead, it's orgasmic facial grimaces, gyrations of every kind, and even singing or humming while playing that we're more likely to experience from today's performers. Such vulgarities as these debase the concert experience, showing a lack of respect for the music and the composer who wrote it and are insulting to the audience. Is this symptomatic of a "dumbing down" of high art today, or a misguided attempt to appear "relevant" to attract younger audiences? Or just plain sloppiness and bad manners?
This aphorism by Goethe is something for LL : When a person who has a bad taste gains skills, that will be a strongest enemy of art.
what agreat tribute to Beethoven.MY RH hand is numb I can t pick things up properly.This is my dads favourite piece for piano
James Vaughan: I agree with your sentiment. Nevertheless there are some great pianists still around. If you go to Europe, go to a Sokolov's concert. Also there is a young guy Daniil Trifonov, who is very good. Glen Gould singing... Gilels' Beethoven is spectacular, since we are on Moonlight.
you're comparing Paderewski to Hoffman?
Gregory Rodin sokolov is probably the greatest living pianist.
Such a unique and amazing performance. Anything Hofmann touches turns to magic
As many times as I have heard the first movement of this sonata, Hofmann makes me feel as thought I had never heard it before. Such imagination has seldom visited this sonata
His dynamics and articulations are very unique
I didn't hear a better version of moonlight sonata 1st movement anywhere yet. Josef Hofmann's performance is absolutely amazing.
However, for the 3rd movement I like Emil Gilels performance.
I agree on everything you said. Gilels 3rd is majestic.
Este pianista me encanta , tiene un sonido sublime, hofmann , uno de los mejores pianistas de todos los tiempos,,,gracias por compartir este video.
The greatest rendition of this Sonata I've ever heard, pianopera… pure magic. Any chance you could upload the Marston re-release? The re-release quality is vastly superior.
Hello Greg,
I made a score video using the re-release recording
(the 9th volume of the collection) :
ruclips.net/video/a4L9hI0hRSY/видео.html
I also recommend purchasing the ninth volume.
There are wonderful recondings in it and the booklet is well-made.
www.marstonrecords.com/products/hofmann9?_pos=3&_sid=113a50c05&_ss=r
Have a good listening :) !
I probably should back off and amend that by saying "the greatest pianist of the recording era".
What an amazing , unforgettable performance! What a titanic presence!
Too bad that so many whose ears are perverted by the Lang Lang’s and Pollini’s will not hear this magnificence!
I agree that this is amazing, but could you explain what's wrong with Pollini's playing?
@@filippolizzeri3354 Yes, I think a person can have a very broad scope of appreciation. I happen to listen to everything from heavy metal to classical and jazz and ethnic music and choir music and the 50's too. It's so much fun to enjoy it all!!!!!
@@filippolizzeri3354 yes Filippo, completely absurd
What a gorgeous and soothing performance of MOONLIGHT performed by the marvelous Josef Hofmann. It is so tenderly played and the legato is perfect as is the beautiful expression. Thank you for posting, this starts my day perfectly!
SUPERB!
..con alcune licenze!!!
Hammerklavier's quote
Ganz recht, zu Beginn der Doppelfuge: 'Fuga a tre voci, con alcune licenze.' [Satz 4]
There's another nice story about Hofmann: after a concert a woman came up to him and asked him how he could play so wonderfully with such small hands. He replied, "Madam, what makes you think that I play with my hands?"
True, the ease and speed and willfulness which Hofmann's titanic mind and technique afforded him can make his playing appear glib. But how can anyone call Hofman's beautifully singing line and limpid polyphonic textures unmusical? His miraculous voicings and myriad tone colors are always applied to give meaning to the phrases and gestures. In the second movement, his rushed feeling and rather personal rubato may sound jarring to modern ears. But his melody is perfectly accented and shaped with swinging rhythm and tunefulness. He never forgets to make MUSIC. If you merely reproduce the notes on the page without making mistakes, as many modern listeners seem to demand, I feel you've only done half your job as a musician, and none at all as an artist. You must imbue the music with life, breath, fire, personality, excitement, repose, light, shade, tenderness, pain, and beauty. And Hofmann always does so spectacularly.
Yes, as Beethoven himself said, "To play a wrong note is excusable; but to play without passion is unforgivable."
Alien
wow, wow and wow. No other words
this is the best rendition on youtube. I p;lay it on my channel, too...
Excellent upload. Thank you.
Singing the blues... with your fingers...
Thanks for sharing this!
Any pianist who played the piece this way today would probably be denounced by the critics. They’d complain about all the rubato and unevenness of tempo. I can’t say I’m convinced by his interpretation but at least it’s different from what we hear today.
absolutely true
Also a lot of people complaining about the speed.
I have gotten used to the Brendel version of this.
I much prefer the suppressed smouldering rhythmic performance to this one.
grazie
Grazie
8:31 😮
grazie
Fascinating and controversial interpreter. Love it. Thanks.
"One of the greatest pianists of all time"? How about the greatest pianist of all time?
+Gerry Rains I believe, Rachmaninov was at least the same level.
+Gerry R a-hem ... Liszt???
+Charles Blanchard We don't know what Liszt sounded like. Chopin probably was better than Liszt. At least pianists who heard both said so. But we have no recording of either.
+bach5861 When Hofmann was 7 years old the composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein wanted to take him on an international tour. His father refused. But at nine years of age he took that tour. It ended in the United States where child labor laws barred him from playing. Unfortunately because he was born in 1875 his best recordings were by acoustic recording, a simply horrible method of recording. By the time the first magnetic recordings, which were pretty bad because of the quality of the microphones and the tape decks he was fifty and an alcoholic. His wife was dying slowly of a horrible disease and after he put her to bed he'd hit the bottle for consolation. Along with concert pianists from Russia, France, the Netherlands, and Japan, I picked the top five pianists of all time, although we agreed that this was really impossible. Three made all five lists - Josef Hofmann, Sviatoslav Richter, and Walter Gieseking. The Russian picked Rachmaninoff and Sofronitsky to go with those three. I picked Benno Moisewitsch and Rachmaninoff, both of whom made three of the five lists.
Then we went for THE BEST. Remember these were concert pianists, the piano was not my instrument. Hofmann was the unanimous choice. When I first heard Hofmann play Chopin on my ultra-audiophile system I quickly wrote my French friend that now I knew who was the greatest interpreter of Chopin - Hofmann. He immediately wrote back and said not only was I right but he wondered if even Chopin could play Chopin as well as Hofmann.
Ward Marston has done a wonderful job of cleaning up old recordings without losing the music. See if you can get Hofmann playing Chopin on one of those. Mine are more than a decade old - purchased at Amazon. I'm sure that the audience is limited but if you can do it without having to pay a fortune for a CD, do it.
+Gerry R Hello Gerry, thanks for the response. No recordings, true, but in the case of Liszt we have eye-witness testimony that Liszt was supreme as both technician and interpreter - there exist testimonials from Moscheles, Chopin, Robert and Clara Schumann, Anton Rubinstein, Carl Tausig, Brahms, Wagner, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Camille St Saens, Adolph Henselt, and many others - also Debussy heard Liszt play and (even at an advanced age) considered him the finest artist of all time ...something to think about, All quoted extensively in my new book Positive Piano - History's Greatest Pianists On How To Succeed Wildly In Life. Please take a look, if you love the piano you will like the book. Much about Hofmann, Godowsky etc included too.Thanks, all the best
www.amazon.com/Positive-Piano-Historys-Greatest-Pianists/dp/1944294007
Magnifica interpretación
hey thats pretty good!
Innit???!!
@@gnatluo y'all is on the money; non fa schifo ;)
It's very interesting reading Hofmann's comments on how to sit at the piano considering that his idol, Anton Rubinstein, apparently moved around a great deal while playing. Hofmann also stipulated that you should keep the left foot over the soft pedal at all times and that any other manner of sitting was "bad manners". If that's true, then Richter, Gilels, Horowitz, Arrau, Pollini, Gulda, Gould, Brendel, Argerich and countless others have "bad manners". Terrific performance of the Moonlight.
"Anton Rubinstein, apparently moved around a great deal while playing" says clueless Steve Hendrix.
Just the opposite is true.
I find the second movement a little too fast, although marvelously executed. first and 3rd movement are very good.
I'm reluctant to argue with a Master like Josef Hoffman but how do we know the moving around , the swaying, the nodding is not simply an effective way of channeling the pianist 'senergy into the piece.
Here you are again. Of course not, just stay there on the bench with a stick up your ass.
Ever thought that everyone's personality is maybe, different?
And what do you think, while he was playing this Sonata, did he dared to dream a little bit and and lift his eyes from the keyboard or you imagine him playing it with the stick up his ass?
What about the first note, did you liked that? Ahahah, I'm being ironic, ofc
I'm not hearing what others are hearing. It's interesting; it's not boring at least. A lot of rubato in the first movement; most try to keep even tempo. Second movement I don't care for at all. I definitely like his gusto in the third movement. Rubinstein, Ashkenazy and Gould had that in the third movement, too. Maybe I've just heard too many dozens of performances to be easily impressed. Rubinstein's rca victor gold seal performance, and Demus, (not his period piano performance, but his rca red seal one). Those are the best I have heard.
Much though I admire Hofmann, I find the rubato too erratic here. Beethoven needs a longer line, to my ear. However, the control of tone and the concentration are quite extraordinary.
I often find Hofmann a formidable pianist but a less impressive musician.
Massimiliano di Mario True to a degree, but compare him with Schnabel, who was born only six years later. Schnabel's rubato is much more disciplined, though he has lots of it.
Of course my ears have been affected by changing centres of gravity in performance practice. That can't be helped. If I had been born, say, six decades earlier, Hofmann's erratic application of rubato would have bothered me much less. That said, I like his rubato in composers whose style invites a great deal of it -- in Chopin, for example. In Beethoven, not so much.
Massimiliano di Mario We will have to disagree. I have never heard anyone suggest that rubato in Beethoven should be more marked than in Chopin -- and certainly when I am playing, my instinctive impulse is entirely the other way.
I am listening to Hofmann's Moonlight as I type ... and I find irritating and distracting the many ways in which he pulls the rhythm about. Hearing his Fourth Ballade by Chopin is quite another thing -- altogether more 'right,' although still probably a bit more pulled around than my 21st century self quite likes.
He was one of the very greatest of pianists; on this I'm sure we can agree.
As for the rest, as I suggested at the outset, I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
Chas Rosenthal and Massimiliano di Mario
My friends, one of the greatest pianists of the past is called Josef HOFMANN...
pianopera Pwned by pianopera. ;-)
Chas Rosenthal Well, you can always edit your comments! ;-)
First part is too rushed, it's not Andante sostenuto as Beethoven indicated. Fazil Say's interpretation is much better.
The first part isn't Andante Sostenuto, it's Adagio Sostenuto which is even slower. However, the time of the first part is also cut, which basically means you gotta double the tempo. So if anything, Hoffman is playing at a very conservative tempo.
artist dont need to serve the composer but should serve the listener
8:28 always this same rage by Hofmann .... if I love it or not is worthless, but the point is that man gave to his audience such quantities of violence and tremendous frustration that I can only be stunned of how he was admired.
The people of that time needed violence and brutality. It's obvious.
(and I do not say that I dislike it)
Mhm aha, yea pianists and artists like polish composer Hoffmann were the violent ones of that era, yes
@@zorrderschnitter2
Thank you for your kind answer.
And, following, I have to confess : I love this rage.
This is a kind of therapy to me, to participate to someone's frustration .....
quand meme trop de rubatos nuit a la grande ligne mélodique.
c'est pas vrai .
I'm reluctant to argue with a great mind like Josef Hoffman but doesn't he realize that the actions discussed above if "unconsciously indulged in" could simply be channeling the energy one feels in playing the music? Why should it be discouraged ?
+Dana Franchitto -- These unnecessary theatrical movements and histrionics (as exhibited by many *professional* pianists these days) don't "channel" anything, they only distract from the actual musical interpretation. I agree with this great mind, whose name is spelled HOFMANN by the way.
+Dana Franchitto - NO
+pianopera EXACTLY. thank you
You're welcome :)
I'd prefer such "theatrical movements" to a straight-laced uptight performance.
Pianistically superb! but I'll probably get shot down for saying the following - I find the first mvt of the Moonlight over romanticised with too many tempo fluctuations. The Allegretto is too fast and lacking poise.
The finale however is wonderfully exciting and stunningly well executed.
A magnificent pianist, but not a Beethovenian.
a little bit too "romantic", but convinceable.
These [Hofmann's] recordings are, from historical perspective, immensly interesting and inspiring. However, I prefer modern playing represented by the newest and immensely interesting genius, Kate Liu.
I see, you prefer boring unimaginative playing... we do not need to go back to Hoffmann to hear much better piano playing than today.... Bolet, Novaes, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Samson François, GIlels, Richter, Michelangeli and so many others! These ones certainly reached the peak of piano playing... nowadays it just gets worse and worse, I'm afraid...
@@luizfernandgif by worse you mean empty and lacking any will to communicate the inner spirit of a piece.