Tuesday 21 January 2014
at 5.15 pm, SR 15.17 (Resowi F1)
All welcome!
Why performances by Béla Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi – the two most important pianists of the Hungarian Liszt school – are so appealing even for today’s listeners? What kind of features of their playing are likely to stem from a common source? Where does the “force” and “magnetism” (features that were most frequently remarked in the reviews and recollections on Bartók’s piano playing, and salient to the majority of today’s listeners as well) reside in Bartók’s piano playing? How does the influence of the tonal and melodic structure on the repre-sentation of the metrical and grouping structure create the liveliness and the “charm” of Dohányi’s playing? I attempt to answer these questions on the basis of microtiming analyses of archive recordings of these pianists.
The author
László Stachó (b. 1977, Szeged, Hungary) is a musicologist and psychologist working as a senior lecturer at the Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest) and at the Faculty of Music of the University of Szeged. His academic activity involves the teaching of music theory, psychology of music, chamber music, and 20th-century perform-ing practice history, as well as recently introduced subjects in Hungary such as the psychology of musical per-formance and practice methodology. His scholarly field of research embraces issues in Bartók analysis, 20th-century performing practice (especially the performing style of the composer–pianists Bartók and Dohnányi), emotional communication in musical performance, and music pedagogy (effective and creative working and practice methods and enhancement of attentional skills in music performance). As a pianist, he regularly per-forms chamber music and conducts practice methodology workshops and chamber music coaching sessions at masterclasses.
