Funny what victorian era englishmen considered "brillante". That's not exactly my idea of how this style goes after listening to Thalberg and Liszt. ;)
The word "brillante," when preceding fantaisies like this at least, is usually synonymous with "grand." It is typically used to point to the scale or grandness of a work rather than its musical value, and was used mainly as a marketing technique. It was certainly not confined to England. Though all compositions had to sell, this breed of work, no doubt poorly representative of its composer's compositional skill, was published generally for that sole purpose. Think of them as the Marvel film equivalent of music: flashy, bombastic, easy to pump out, extraordinarily profitable, and occasionally memorable. Thalberg and Liszt were not exceptions to this general rule, but it is true that they did not allow the financial element of this ilk of composition to entirely consume their ouevre (see, by way of example, Czerny, Herz, Kalkbrenner, etc, whose "serious" works, though comparatively few in number, warrant much greater consideration).
@@wrrichardson You misunderstood the direction of my remark. The "brillante" is a technical style, you see it in the score near the end, it's a way of playing. But in this fantasy the pianistic fireworks are of such mediocre brilliance, with easy execution that I was making fun of the kind of stifled and held back englishness of it all. Other composers set the keyboard on fire when they do figurations and this guy writes figurations that sound constipated instead of flashy. ;)
Thank you. I appreciate opera fantasies
One of Verdi’s great operas, of which there are many 😁
I bet London Music hall is an under-explored area for scores
The intro reminds me of the Philippine anthem 😅
Funny what victorian era englishmen considered "brillante". That's not exactly my idea of how this style goes after listening to Thalberg and Liszt. ;)
The word "brillante," when preceding fantaisies like this at least, is usually synonymous with "grand." It is typically used to point to the scale or grandness of a work rather than its musical value, and was used mainly as a marketing technique. It was certainly not confined to England. Though all compositions had to sell, this breed of work, no doubt poorly representative of its composer's compositional skill, was published generally for that sole purpose. Think of them as the Marvel film equivalent of music: flashy, bombastic, easy to pump out, extraordinarily profitable, and occasionally memorable. Thalberg and Liszt were not exceptions to this general rule, but it is true that they did not allow the financial element of this ilk of composition to entirely consume their ouevre (see, by way of example, Czerny, Herz, Kalkbrenner, etc, whose "serious" works, though comparatively few in number, warrant much greater consideration).
@@wrrichardson You misunderstood the direction of my remark.
The "brillante" is a technical style, you see it in the score near the end, it's a way of playing.
But in this fantasy the pianistic fireworks are of such mediocre brilliance, with easy execution that I was making fun of the kind of stifled and held back englishness of it all.
Other composers set the keyboard on fire when they do figurations and this guy writes figurations that sound constipated instead of flashy. ;)