I was delighted to see Ian's posts re Godowsky on the "hardest composer to play" thread.

Would like to share some views regarding different performances and pieces other than the Chopin and Strauss transcriptions (although by all means lets keep talking about those too) - e.g., the Java Suite, the Passacaglia, the Sonata or the Bach transcriptions - do you play any of those Ian ?

I'd agree with Ian on performances of the the Strauss transcriptions although I've probably got more out of Earl Wild's reading of Kunsterleben. Having said that, he's not really a colourist (which seems to be a sine qua non as far as Godowsky is concerned) and he does miss out those two pages. I'll add my vote to  David Saperton, but I do have some other versions of the Strauss kicking about somewhere - well I need to do some clearing up . . .
More later on.

Ian - I'm pretty much in total agreement regarding recorded performances. Hamelin, Saperton and Bolet. Carlo Grante I've heard live - rather overcareful and not very inspiring. Rian de Waal I've also heard live - well I still have the programme but remember virtually nothing about the concert. I obviously decided he was no heavyweight. Glad you didn't mention Madge - dire or what !

Undoubtedly the work is a case-study of patronising orientalism, but it does have other qualities. That said, a comparison of 'In the Kraton' with Debussy's 'Pagodes' (the elements of that other music world so much more deeply absorbed) can be quite revealing.

I have a certain soft spot for Saint-Saens's "Africa" Fantasy as well, but would take exception if anyone started suggesting it succeeds in representing that whole continent.

Orientalism and music deserves a whole thread to itself, being such a huge subject. Depending on time, I might start a thread of that type later today; otherwise at a later date.

Arrau playing the Fledermaus paraphrase??? Really?? I'd be fascinated to hear it, though also find it difficult to imagine. I vaguely recall some very negative comments about Godowsky the pianist (and many others of that era) by Arrau in that Joseph Horowitz book Conversations with Arrau. Think I heard the Moisewitch Fledermaus once; I also have Nelson Freire playing that and Cherkassky playing Wein, Weib und Gesang. I had the Weber recording once (may still have it), don't remember being that taken; also a recording of all four Strauss transcriptions by some pianist I hadn't otherwise heard of, think it was an American. Have to dig through the vinyls at some point.

I realise we haven't mentioned the other Renaissance/Baroque transcriptions of Godowsky. Any thoughts on those?

I know it isn't a wind-up, but this particular construction of music and culture I always treat with some scepticism. Losing one's sense of reality, imagining oneself in a realm of enchantment seems very much akin to the sensations experienced by many at Nuremberg Rallies, by most accounts.

'Have you e-ver seen, some peo-ple lose ev-ery-th-ay-ing, first to go is their mind' (Sister Sledge - Lost in Music)

Losing one's mind, losing a sense of reality, is of course perfectly inevitable and reasonably when looking simply for an escape, a way of relaxing. When turned into an ideology or philosophy of life, it becomes ver dangerous indeed. Mystics, aesthetes and exoticists promote such things much of the time. And (sorry for the continuing references to fascism, but I continue to believe it is important as a negative standard against which to judge other ideologies and phenomena) the inducement of such a possibility is the mainstay of the propaganda techniques of dictators, demagogues (not to mention those working in marketing, advertising and PR, from where the original techniques were first developed (see Edward Bernays's book Propaganda)) the world round.

Certainly; same is true of raves, drugs, etc (Adorno would, I reckon, have instantly condemned all sorts of participations in such things, without really considering why some find such escape necessary in light of the pressures of capitalist society; that's where his Freudian individualistic ideas of 'ego weakness' unfortunately got the upper hand over the analysis of wider social and cultural forces). The types of irrationalist cults of submission of the will to a higher power are not entirely separable from the gamelan and the social uses to which it is put in Javanese society, though; when used to accompany royal occasions or for religious ritual, for example. Sorabji is relatively harmless when he remains a minor cult interest; the elevation of his ideas as manifested in the work, or other similar ones, into higher aesthetic principles to be widely promulgated and/or institutionalised is what I would fight to the last, though.

Just as with those who find through Nietzsche the idea that they, as artists, can think of themselves as Übermenschen, or occultists who believe in the legitimacy of non-consensual acts of henious cruelty on grounds of 'authenticity' (in opposition to hated Christian or other forms of morality, and the like), and so on. It's not impossible that there might be other, quite distinct, redeeming aspects of some of these philosophies that can be extracted from such things; but if we are going to celebrate any such ideas and philosophies, let's find what there is despite their worst aspects, not propound them because of them.

I would have imagined the crucial difference comes from the fact that, at a particularly charged football match, the mass idolisation is of a group of people (the players - though I suppose sometimes it may centre around cults of one or two of them) and of a nation or locality, rather than a singular individual, as the case with the mass-induced hysterical adoration of the mystical personality of the Führer at a Nuremberg Rally, not so dissimilar to other, earlier and later, forms of idol worship (for example the comparable phenomenon upon the death of Kim-Il Sung in North Korea, though I'm not sure how much this was carefully staged for the cameras rather than drawing upon genuine feelings on the part of those who demonstrated such mass mourning). When supporting one's local team, I suppose I think it seems less ominous than when it is mass crowds finding in football an exemplar of nationalistic identity; though when some supporters then seek out those from an opposing locality to beat up afterwards, maybe such fine distinctions become immaterial. Once again, if it's 'only a game', a form of escapism, then it needn't be like this, and certainly plenty of football supporters don't necessarily see it this way (but those of us who have been out canvassing during the World Cup period, and start to worry about knocking on certain doors where an England flag is displayed, not knowing for sure whether this is just a statement of support for the team, or a pro-[edit: silly party] symbol, are aware of how these mentalities can easily blend together).

I'm not going to condemn those who go to football matches, or even who are made to feel a powerful emotional* identification with their nation (and the concomitant feelings of superiority or disdain towards other nations) during such matches, as long as those sentiments are not made to extend beyond the game. But I wouldn't necessarily condemn the spectators at a Nuremberg Rally either - I can imagine how hard it would be not to be sucked in by such things. The real villains are those who stage such things.

*In the context of my other comments in the context of Sorabji about elimination of the emotional dimension of music being part and parcel of a disdain for the feminine, I am using a different sense of the word 'emotional', to do with the elimination of the personal, individual, unique forms of subjectivity, quite different to the cynical and calculated induction of primal, de-individualised emotional reactions en masse as exploited by propaganda and the like (which entails another type of disdain for the feminine, found in Hitler's comments that 'The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling' (in Mein Kampf, translated Ralph Manheim, edited D.C. Watt (London, 1969), p. 167, cited in Richard Evans - 'German Women and the Triumph of Hitler', Journal of Modern History, Vol. 48 No. 1, p. 127 - an article well worth reading on this subject). Bertold Brecht made, in my opinion, a mistake in conflating all forms of 'emotionality', whether emerging individually, from within, or induced en masse, leading him to a cult of ultra-rationality which (if one believes some of the ideas in Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment) turns Enlightenment into Myth and requires the domination of humans as part of nature. But let's leave that issue for now, it opens up wider cans of worms.