This is by far your best video, side-splitting. I can’t believe the hairsplitting editing you did …kudos, but do me a favor throw away that horrid green stained T-shirt that color comes with a jail sentence. it is against the law to wear that color in public Ew. Now, if you would only spend as much time at the keyboard, as you do, doodling with your videos …aw, good luck at your concert break a leg!

It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, it does matter if you don't keep going on with the performance. ❤

This video reminded of what my piano teacher taught me years ago which was "don't bumble around trying to fix mistakes, act all natural and move on".

Professional pianists hit wrong notes. It's okay to hit wrong notes. What matters is how you respond to that. Thank you for talking openly about that. I feel a sense of relief.

This is why I'm a jazz musician, there are no wrong notes as long as you play with confidence lol

The number of notes in only one of Rachmaninoff's piano concertos is larger than the number of atoms in the visible universe.

As someone with anxiety issues, this video made it sky rocket! My deepest admiration to those who pull through playing live

I LOVE your channel. For an aging physician who formerly studied piano at the DMA level at a distinguished US conservatory, who has so little opportunity to even maintain my playing ability and repertoire, let alone advance either, your posts are such a lifeline to me both musically and pianistically. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and may success follow you wherever you go! Your ANALYSIS was excellent and is the key to correct performance in my opinion.

I have played this concerto several times and never messed up this passage - but I am impressed by your ability to play the trill so fast with the 3th and 5th fingers haha

babe wake up new tonebase video dropped

This video was a lot of fun--more of this kind of content, please. Experienced pianists thoroughly enjoy comparative analysis of the "greats" and learn much from it.

16:38 Love the connection with hypnosis, since this concerto was dedicated to Rachmaninoff’s psychiatrist who hypnotized him

I had a chance to watch Mikhail Pletnev rehearse this concerto last year in Jūrmala. He would repeat this passage again and again and again during the breaks, and I remember thinking "wow this is so weird, why would he be so obsessed with these few notes". Makes so much more sense now 😂

Man... I had a memory lapse in this precise place while performing this live... I never realized it was such a common phenomenon :D

I loved this vídeo, as tonebase channel, very nice aspects treated with humour and excellent analysis👏👏👏I hope your rendition can be fine!❤

Very informative and interesting video! Good luck on Rach. 2, we believe in you 🥰

The last movement of Schumann's piano concerto would also be a suitable case for treatment, lots of memory lapses have occurred there, including Adelina de Lara, who fled from the stage in tears in a performance with Landon Ronald, when she messed up the repeat of the third subject. It probably didn't help that the day before in rehearsal the conductor told her that the last three times he had conducted the Schumann concerto, the pianist's memory has failed during the performance. Also the film "Madam Sousatzka" (where Shirley Maclaine plays an eccentric piano teacher) features a scene where her pupil has a memory lapse in the third movement.

the editing is sublime

Also, it is a very contemplative moment in which it is easy to get lost in the beauty of the sound. Keeping a warm heart and a cold mind is not so easy sometimes. Loved the video, BTW.

Dude, spot on as usual 👏 I also think that when the passage returns in Gb the fact it's not an exact transposition can confuse an already-overtaxed memory at this point in the piece...good luck with it!!

Mega-kudos to Ohlsson for discussing his mistakes in public. My admiration for that man is still soaring.

Great subject. Yes, I have heard pianists screw this section. It’s so easy to switch train tracks between the 2 occurrences. I got it right when I played the concerto a couple of weeks ago, but I fluffed the 5th chord of the opening, which was a bit of a surprise. I went into a short holding pattern and nobody noticed! My head was still in the previous piece where I was faking harp on keyboard.

Great content. Who knew those illusive few measure caused so much chaos.

Playing note-perfect is overrated. The greatest recording artist of all time, Alfred Cortot, made mistakes in every recording but they're musically brilliant. Spontaneity = more important than note-perfection. Same for his contemporary, Mark Hambourg. And virtually every pianist from their generation. Striving for note-perfection has robbed the world of many brilliant performances: almost no one dares to take on the Henselt piano concerto, which is purely because almost no one is capable of playing it without making mistakes, hence only super virtuosos like Michael Ponti, Raymond Lewenthal and Marc-André Hamelin have or had it in their repertoire. It was part and parcel of the standard repertoire until the dawn of recording technology ensured that any performer would be unmasked making mistakes or simplifying passages. A wonderful piece of music was lost to obscurity in the process and all we have are a few recordings. If pianists all had the mindset of Cortot they'd just play such a work, knowing that a few wrong notes here and there are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The standard repertoire would be a lot bigger and the music world would greatly benefit from this. I don't want to hear 25 recordings of the Rach 3 for example. I'd much rather hear 25 recordings from a dozen piano concertos from not only Rachmaninoff but also Henselt, Scharwenka, Litolff and the Rubinstein brothers to choose from and only occasionally hear several renditions of the same piece. Even if some of them have mistakes in them. It's interesting to see that people care at all. I have heard several of these performances and it never even occurred to me to go and look for imperfect rendition of specific parts of the score because I just don't care. What matters is the grand scheme of things, not details. Doesn't make this video any less interesting though because we can still take valuable information from analysing something trivial.

I can relate. I'm trying to get through Czerny Opus 599, No 2. I hesitated between describing the feeling of failure and getting the passage wrong as either vertigo, constipation or diaper rash. I usually just belch and carry on. The only one that noticed a mistake is my teacher, and the neighbour's dog.

I played Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no 2 a couple weeks ago on cello during our community orchestra concert! The cello part is very difficult as well, but I love listening to the piano part in this piece, and it was my first concert I’ve ever played on cello! Definitely will never forget playing this piece, it is so magical and difficult!

i really really enjoyed listening to Ushida Tomoharu's playing of the concerto 2 during the 10th Annual hamamatsu tournament he played very nicely

Like so many of your videos... interesting, entertaining and refreshingly unexpected.

I love how I don't even play piano but I'm always fascinated by discussions like these.

amazing video! Super entertaining and informative. Thanks!

Your hairsplitting is entertaining! Thank you! I love all the erroneous versions that don't sound wrong at all!

If my memory serves me well, Cortot also botched the passage and played instead of the E-flat a Chopin Prelude by mistake…alas

Fascinating. I wonder if the opening of Rach 3, also a baby-simple passage, ever creates similar problems.

Love it, more Rach content please

Coming from a jazz improvisational perspective, my favorite sounding "error" is Garrick Ohlsson´s :).

This is just superb!

Amazingly fun video! Yet another approach to "solve" memorization issues is to use tools such as grouping, in and out, alignment, and more using the Taubman Approach that I'm studying. It's more about the movement of the body (and some neuroscience) than music theory. I'd like to try this section. I'm impressed how the college student did!

Fantastic video. Very interesting. Thank you

What a little gem!!!

Interesting and fun. Thank you!

The way I recognized my school’s hall in your first example 😅. The first pianist is my classmate and I was able to be at this performance, she’s an amazing pianist!

We'll see you in January for this, Mr Ohlsson! 😉

Ironically, I’ve never had issues here but now I might because I’ll overthink it….

Confession: I sometimes just REWRITE those irregularities into more regular and memorizable versions. For example in his Sonata no.2, 1st mvt when the 2nd theme comes back in Gb maj near the end of the piece, it is not a literal transposition of its previous instance in Db maj, for no apparent musical benefit. So I just say screw this, I'm playing it as a literal transposition. The composer is not the one who's gonna look like a fool on stage, I am! So I'd rather look like a fool this way than by completely fumbling the passage!

The first bars of his 3rd piano concerto's first movement are utterly easy as well ! Hiding the upcoming nightmare...

I’d love to see an analysis of the eight repetitions of the main theme of the slow movement from Mozart C minor Concerto, K 491. Each time has a different rhythmic/melodic variation and drove me to insanity. Mozart played with the score and improvised in any case. Brendel does his own thing each time, and I think that’s totally in the spirit of the style. Make it up as you go along. To play exactly as the score says each time is enough to put you in an asylum. The same goes for the various repetitions of the Promenade in Pictures at an Exhibition. I had to write out the differences in words to be able to retain it. Anyone else relate to that? This video uses exactly the correct way to solve this issue- analytic approach is the only dependable way to approach it. My ears aren’t good enough to depend on for this. I have to know each note and how it fits in the chord. Visual memory also helps me.

I have never seen a music video so humorous and still educating. Victor Borge meets Leonard Bernstein!

So when/where’s the concert? I love this piece!

Great video and logical explanations. Regarding memorizing fingering, Georg Solti commented on this problem on his autobiography. I read it years ago, but I think he relates that when he was in exile in Switzerland during World War II, before becoming a conductor he aspired to a career as concert pianist. And during a performance he made some mistakes which he put down to muscular memory rather than actually memorizing the score and the harmonic development.

So awesome!😎 This channel is awesome!😎 Rach is awesome! (However I wish there were more vids on the 4th concerto, my favorite of his concertos.)😎 Ben is awesome!😎 Ohlsson Is awesome!😎 And all the people on here are awesome! 😎 Thank you!

This is just the type of thing that we pianists obsess over. 😊. Gotta go practice now.

Great video

I love the hypnotic interpretation discussed. My understanding is that Rachmaninoff composed this piece after receiving treatment from Dr. Dull, who used hypnosis. Tonebase is a fantastic resource.😄

4:08 Sokolov 5:20 5:58 Gavrilov 7:01 7:12 7:25 7:37 Melnikov 7:47 Bunin 8:00 Howard 8:10 Zimerman 8:19 Kissin 9:03 Kocsis 9:17 Ohlsson 11:23 Rachmaninoff

The inserts of movie are so fun! Thank you

Actually the vertigo feeling happened to me while playing the first movement of one of Bach's Tiro Sonatas for organ.

That's a great point right there at the end "it's a beautiful metaphor, it doesn't matter if its true." It just works

When it comes down to triples, it might help to accentuate always the first note of the triplet, so you know always exactly where you are - and the listener also does.

I'm laughing, not at the pianists but at Rach for making this deceivingly simple passage

Things like this happen as one gets older (I speak here from personal experience). Its one reason why many pianists of a certain age will use sheet music in public performance.

My only strategy for passages like that is playing it always with the exact same fingering and getting it into the finger memory until I don't have to think about it anymore.

hope this blows up!!! i loved it and it really deserves more attention

I'll never forget a recital I heard in the 1970's performed on a new 3-manual German-built pipe organ in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The guest organist was performing the entire recital from memory. During one piece, he suddenly stopped due to a complete memory block. He tried to backtrack a little but couldn't get past that point. The church's resident organist took him out of the balcony and talked him out of just ending the recital by encouraging him to finish the recital using the sheet music. He knew that if the recitalist didn't do this, he might never be able to bring himself to play another recital. Thankfully, the recital continued, including that particular piece.

I never forgot it or had a problem remembering it because every time I play it or practice it, I would sing it in my head using solfege (fixed do) like I do with all melodies: do si do, si la si, la sol la etc. I was not taught music using the ABCDEFG system and I think that only benefited me. I think every pianist at one point should try memorizing the melodic line by singing it in their head every time they practice it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to play that melody without singing every note in your head. Works like a charm! ❤

It doesn’t matter if it’s true was really nice to hear ❤❤❤

The real lesson is this: theory isn't just for nerds, it makes you a better performer

Very similar issue we can get playing the transition on Chopin's Barcarolle... Very hard to keep that "balancing" touch...

What an interesting and funny phenomenon!

Had this same experience with the 4 d minor bars on the first page of "the snow is dancing" from Debussy's Children's Corner.

Did he really just say that all the notes in his concert is more than all the grains of sand on every beach combined

I really wish maestro Elizondo would record Rach 2 😢

I think the reason this passage is fumbled so often is because, since pianists have heard the piece so many times and the melody is fairly simple, it's really easy to slip into playing by ear instead of playing from memory. They probably didn't spend much time practicing it, so they don't have strong muscle memory to fall back to. No muscle memory + playing half by ear, half from memory = high probability of making a mistake.

Such a great video for us pianists! First, it is teassuring to see the best level pianists screw up! Makes us schlubs feel better. Second, I loved watching the different fingerings on thos nadty, exposed trills! Your 3-5 is very impressive, 2-4 works better for me, buy even the 135-2-35 works! Thank God. Lastly, Garrick Ohlsen is such a real charmer! Totally loveable! ps I played #1 and 3, but never 2. Too tricky! Even Rubindtein fakes the last movement! 🤣

Really interesting video.... Just as a side note, I've heard that some pianist miss out a note or two in the 1st movement chords because they are so hard to play without resorting to splitting or rolling the chords. I find it impossible to play the 2nd and 8th bar chords without breaking them. Thanks for a really absorbing episode. Cheers Ian. Leicester UK.

I don't know if anyone already said this but this gets even worse knowing that there was a printing error in the Pavel Lamm score. The first arpeggio had an e-flat followed by a d-sharp in the score, which is the same tone. Maybe this was what Rachmaninoff himself might have tripped over.

I want that T-shirt..... Is that in your merch Sir?

You guys need more views.

I've played the Rach 2 in concert at least eight-times. I can't remember ever playing every-single-note correctly. Vladimir Horowitz, appearing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in 1975, missed one entire bar in the third movement. He laughed as he corrected himself and drove-on to the finish of the movement. The crowd gave Horowitz his usual standing ovation. On our way to the car, my wife asked me, "did you catch Horowitz's mistake in the first movement?"

As a fellow Rach 2 player, the hardest but easiest section for me are clearly the two piano buildups to the climaxes in the development of the 2nd Movement. Very hard to remember.

I never knew this passage is tricky! I'll have to play some of this excellent video at Rach's grave and see if anything happens. How did Gunkle Lenny fare with this hypnotic moment? I can play some over his grave at my next visit.

WITH A GOOD PIANIST, EVEN THE MISTAKES SOUND GOOD.

Watched this for a long time and quit. He’d never get to the actual mistake. Maddening.

it's so interesting how professional pianists think; they seem to memorize "groups", or I guess the musical term would be phrases and think about the harmony and music theory behind it... so when they make a mistake, its on the whole phrase where as for amateurs, we just fumble and "misclick" because we are memorizing individual notes, not seeing it as a cohesive block and thinking about why those particular notes are chosen

Richter execution of this passage is unreal ❤

I feel like I just practiced this passage for hours just by watching this video.

I deffinetly need that t-shirt!

YO I messed up on this same part during a concerto competition!

You forgot the real way to remember how to play this passage, and that's by producing a wonderful ~18m video on it.

This pattern of mistakes here, really elucidates HOW these pianists memorize their music. They're not memorizing, as Abby Whiteside would put it, "a note-wise performance." They're, in fact, memorizing what the composer DID. They remember the gestures, over the tedium of pecking out individual notes.

Hahaha as a pianist I can confirm! The easiest parts in a difficult piece are often overlooked, thus not memorized quite as well!

And what about the accentuation? It seems to me that, at the beginning of the passage, everybody accentuates the the third note of the first triplet instead the first note of the second one.

The do it with your nose caught me dying 😂😂

The lack of practise in this section is DEFINITELY the issue

Who were you Rachmaninoff?

PLEASE, make Seymour Bernstein's reaction to Waltz Opus 64 2 Katsaris arrangement.

Here's my mess to add to the collection. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bqlipMV2rLS9mXU.html

It isnt a "fumble" if the pianist manages to recover and make it sounds emotionally and harmonically fitting. rachmaninoff himself was known for improvising and changing the score a lot in his playing just. listen to recordings of him on youtube. in general a section which is less dense in notes used to mean the preformer himself was expected to improvise and expand on (mostly baroque music). i think it is beautiful that not every performance of this passage is note perfect, it makes it much more human this way, human error leads to musical variety in the context this simpler musical line.

Number five: these concertos require incredible concentration to play. Here’s the one passage that says you can relax and catch your breath for a moment and drop your concentration.-Toby

Who's performance is in the beggining of the video? I mean the Rach's 3 with the fast notes

3:25 lmao nice flexing those 35 trills