Puccini: Excerpt 2 from "La Fanciulla del West", Act II (Solo Piano)

This is recorded on my home piano, so it's a little watered down in terms of intensity and force. Though, I'm planning on upgrading my home piano soon so I'll never have these limitations or audio inconsistencies again (currently doing negotiations). Then, I'll have perfect and professional audio quality forever. Excited for that! All piano works I've recorded:    • All Full Recordings   @musicforever60_official on IG:   / musicforever60_official   #piano #music #classicalmusic Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Rameau, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvořák, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Smetana, Puccini, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy, Sibelius, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Bartók, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Orff, Janáček, Britten, Messiaen, Copland, Bernstein, Barber, Cage, Penderecki, Ligeti, Pärt, Górecki, Glass, Reich, Adams, Xenakis, Boulez, Stockhausen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Chopin Competition has just concluded—our five-year reminder of Chopin’s intricate and beautiful music. Once again, we’ve seen new faces enter the stage, doing their best to capture Chopin’s elusive “style” (whatever that means across a dozen so-called authoritative interpretations worldwide). Some express their deep understanding by polishing the music until all individuality and memorability vanish into sterile “perfection.” Others take the opposite route, showcasing how much they’ve “matured”—and yes, the judges notice. I’ve seen this cycle firsthand from within the industry, and it’s a familiar topic among professors and adjudicators. They’re all remarkable in their own way, and it’s good that we now have a new generation of touring Chopin enthusiasts—since, well, they clearly are enthusiasts, right? We can assume the world wanted more Chopin, that the laureates wanted to play more Chopin, and that concert agents wanted to book more Chopin because it sells. But does that actually make sense? Isn’t this the same recursive system we see in Hollywood or pop music? (Let’s pretend to be surprised.) Classical music, by contrast, is fenced off by an aura of “incomprehensible complexity” and speculative authority about what’s considered good. Whatever those at the top declare essentially defines reality for musicians, while audiences—lacking objective tools for judgment—default to what “feels right.” This gap between the masses and the elite fuels the illusion of enlightenment. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if someone devised and demonstrated a unified system that rigorously explained the elite’s evaluative methods—methods often rooted in emotional intuition more than concrete principles—and then shared it widely. What if the moat disappeared? (And yes, I know competitions are mainly political career instruments now. Everyone needs to survive, but agents’ dependence on competitions creates a feedback loop that breeds sameness, triviality, and the slow decay of the classical genre.) --- Anyway, I’m working on something right now—both literally and figuratively. This excerpt comes from my meticulous, honest one-on-one reduction of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West [Act II]. It has a few moments I quite enjoy, even if they’ll likely never reach the public. I’m curious—do you think others would appreciate it? The purple diamond notes represent vocal lines.