Friday 24 April 2009

Godowsky plays Chopin

Before I put any new writing up, I recently found these videos. There's a post on the way all about Godowsky, and how his transcriptions exemplify an approach to early twentieth century compositional innovation that never really caught on, and how this aesthetic method can be abstracted as a lost, alternative form of avant-gardeism.

This recording is apparantly from 1930, the year that Godowsky suffered a stroke in the recording studio that put an end to his career, part of the string of bad luck that made his final years some of the worst that you could possibly hope not to have to go through.

It's Chopin's B flat minor sonata, op.35, the third movement of which I've just finished a new guitar arrangement of, which I might post up soon once I've edited it properly.



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