Schubert Impromptu D899.4, played by Don Betts
This is a very familiar piece (to piano aficionados, anyway) — but you’ll find Don’s performance a little refreshingly unfamiliar. It’s not a wild departure from custom, but there’s just a subtle tip in the balance in his performance that makes the feeling of the piece quite different.
In the last entry I mentioned the question of foreground and background. When most pianists play this piece, they put the right hand squarely in the foreground: what you hear is a series of speedy cascades down, a fun bit of finger gymnastics. But when Don plays it, he balances foreground between the left and the right, and what emerges is the slower underlying chord progression. Instead of a nervously flitting thing, it becomes a smoothly unfolding one. That reading brings us to what is to me the essential nature of Schubert: a tiny thing with a vast interior, a world opening from a single moment.
Impromptu D899 No 4 (a.k.a. Op 90 No 4, in A flat minor)Donald Betts, pianoDownload (8:39 / 10.4 M)
There is one more recording from Don’s living room I’ll post. After that, he recently made two more in the concert hall that are quite special that I’d like to share with you.
Comments
Your text regularly helps this nonmusician listen better. A rare ability.
This one benefits even more than usual, I think, from the special strengths of your recording technique: extreme closeness to the piano and sensitivity to the left hand. I can hear lots of mechanical sounds (pedal?), but they don’t detract at all from the flow of the music; they are, rather, easily understood as a necessary complement to recording fidelity.
I discovered this site while studying the Chopin Ballads, and immediately fell in love with it. I like the text you add to the pieces, as it indeed helps to hear what’s special about it.
This Schubert Impromptu caught my attention as I’ve played it myself for quite some time now. I’m an amateur, no professional piano studies for me, but still I study a lot.
At first I thought this version of it was quite weird, but then I started to like it. The balance between the right and the left hand is indeed quite remarkable and I haven’t heard it like this before. I now wonder whether it’s harder this way… I’ll have to try I suppose. Thanks for sharing this with us.
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