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Caprice No. 24

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Kyoko Yonemoto playing Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 in A minor (publ. 1819) at the Michael Hill International Violin Competition 2009. Widely considered one of the most difficult pieces ever written for the solo violin, it requires many highly advanced techniques such as parallel octaves and rapid shifting covering many intervals, extremely fast scales and arpeggios including minor scales in thirds and tenths, left hand pizzicato, high positions, and quick string crossing.

Being able to see how the difficult techniques are performed makes this a particularly useful sound to have video with. It's Paganini - the demon of the violin - one of the most eccentric and difficult composers to play, and it sounds fantastic. It's amazing how many undiscovered treasures we have on Wikipedia.

  • Nominate and support. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:56, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The educational value is certainly undeniable here, I think. Her performance is good, despite a few minor irregularities (although, I'm only an amateur violinist so it's not really my place to judge her!). /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My, what a find. This is really good. --haha169 (talk) 03:26, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I really like the way she played the high harmonics and the consecutive double-stopped octaves. However the variation with the scales in consecutive 3rds and 10ths did not come out so well, especially on the lower string. But she certainly captured the spirit of the piece and the imperfections are minor, so I must support. Graham87 05:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose:
    • The sense of metre is interrupted again and again in the opening section by the hiatus between each phrase.
    • Tuning problems start of second variation and elsewhere.
    • The double-stopped section is pretty awful.
    • She has a tendency to grate the lower notes. Tony (talk) 07:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Super stuff. Well played and the phrasing sounds fine to me; I have recordings of this with similar delays between phrases (Perlman, Accardo & Rabin), and I'm not worried about the imperfections. Major Bloodnok (talk) 11:48, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm not worried about the imperfections"—well that is a real problem. This process will be a lost cause if we're aiming so low. Tony (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We're not aiming "so low." We're aiming for what normal human beings, not Jascha Heifetz or Artur Rubinstein, can do. Let me know when Joshua Bell or Murray Perahia start releasing PD recordings. —La Pianista ♫ ♪ 15:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe Tony doesn't like the way I phrased it, but I chose to ignore the problems in the performance because on balance I thought it was a performance of "high artistic standard". Was it perfect? No. Did errors in the performance distract from the musicianship shown throughout the performance as a whole? No. I did bring this up on the talk page and there is an obvious disagreement about exactly what we are trying to achieve with musical performances and the FS process. If you are after perfection in the first instance, then I think we have a problem because wikipedia should cater to both the uninformed audience, and to the specialist. Going for perfection at the moment given the state of play with the FS would be a mistake, and has been said elsewhere we can raise the bar in due course when the number of nominees, and the quality increases. We have to draw the line somewhere (I'm not going to upload any of my piano performances thanks) and until there is a consensus about the whereabouts of the line which can be clearly written in the FS criteria, there will be disagreement about it. I will worry about imperfections in the performance when they distract notably from the performance itself. I didn't feel it did here too much, but you obviously did. Fine. Don't start picking on others if they disagree with you. We'd be losing an awful lot of existing FS and possible nominations if we went with your interpretations of the criteria; I don't believe it is the consensus view. Until it is and until nominations become of such high quality that they are note-perfect with a very close reading of the score feeding into their interpretation, I will disregard errors as I see fit.
Some errors in a performance of Bach's 1st Prelude in C Major from the 48 Preludes and Fugues, no matter how well-phrased and interpreted, would not get to Featured status in my view, because it is a relatively simple piece to play. The same number of errors in, say a Chopin or Debussy suite would not necessarily detract from the performance given the relative complexity of the music, and could become a FS in my view, all else equal. It's my view of the guidelines and the way we gauge a FS. Please clarify the criteria if you are unhappy about them. Major Bloodnok (talk) 16:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is sub-professional. I suppose we'll have to go through the same process we did at FAC in raising standards. People griped for more than a year, resentfully, about reviewers who insisted on professional-standard prose, referencing, etc. We won in the end, and now no one even blinks. When someone here says: "Did errors in the performance distract from the musicianship shown throughout the performance as a whole? No.", I quiver. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between artistry and technique. Tony (talk) 10:27, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Um, I did actually mention (and I did think it was the core of my message above) that if standards were to improve at some point in the future then obviously we would gauge the pieces by those improved criteria. I am currently operating on the basis of the criteria as they stand now, not upon some standard of my own making independent of that. All the criteria says in relation to this is "Musical performances are of a high artistic standard". This obviously is in the ear of the beholder, and really an inadequate method of assessing pieces of music. By all means lets have a debate about professional technique, how this can be assessed by professional musicians, musos and non-musicians, and how this fits into the ethos of Wikipedia. Let's work out how to move forward and improve the standard of work here, but we also have to bear in mind exactly where the FS is, and how it stands now. Also, if you do quote me and complain about anything I have written, at least do me the courtesy of attributing the quotation. I really do appreciate the knowledge about the pieces you describe and this gives a value to your judgement about the performance. However, if knowledge of how the piece of music should be played, based on exhaustive knowledge of the score, is key to assessing whether or not a muscial recording should be an FS then I think there will be significant problems getting enough knowledgeable souls to assess the pieces, at least until FS becomes more established and well-known. Perhaps that is the goal, but until the assessment criteria discuss this more clearly then I'll continue as I have been thanks.Major Bloodnok (talk) 14:24, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not if it's going on the main page. I don't require utter perfection, but I've pointed out a few very obvious problems. Some of the performance is just unpleasant to listent to (the tuning in particular). Ten minutes of hell? For the performer, yeah, not for the listeners, thanks. I'm getting a separate, outside opinion on this. Tony (talk) 08:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Outside opinion, admittedly not of a violinist, but a pianist at a conservatoire: here's what he said on Skype while listening to it:
    • "not good intonation at all ... and the grating lower notes could be the bow or the cheap violin too". Me: "IS it a cheap vln?" Him: "thin sound. Intonation is way off. Fail. Rhythmically wayward also. i've finished heard enuff" Tony (talk) 09:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I commented above in the Frog Legs Rag submission on what I think of the expert, and you should read it there. The TLDR version, however, is that I think he's a lazy quack and that if he's going to offer his opinions he needs to get an account. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:31, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I caught only two errors, and while I'm sure professional ears can find others, this is an exceptionally difficult piece played at a very high level, and it's overall quality is quite impressive. Unless we start getting professional recording studio performances, we're never going to get recordings where every note is perfect and where there is no peddling or occasional cough or movement sound by a performer. As seen in other nominations, when we do have note perfect performances, complaints are raised about them sounding artificial and lacking artistic expression or interpretation. If we do get professional recording studio performances they will have their own problems, I'm sure. In the end we can hope for total perfection, but we cannot vote under the assumption that it is possible. Even the US Navy Band, which we view as a benchmark for certain styles of music, has their problems, and they only do a small selection of pieces. If we convert the grading system of Wikipedia from numbers to letters, an FA would be a high A or an A+, numerically about a 96% or up. Yes, shooting for 100 is always nice, but it's unrealistic to ignore the 97s and 98s that come through the door. This seems very much like a high A to me. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:22, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Additional general statement. We should be excited that main page exposure will soon be upon us. But it is all the more reason to get serious about standards, particularly when nominating "found" material that is already available on the net or elsewhere. After so many decades of commercial recordings, standards are now very very high; we risk looking mediocre if we promote items that are not first-rate, unless they have special interest, such as for many historical recordings. I would be embarrassed to have this exposed on the main page, especially since it's a vid, and for that reason will attract huge numbers of hits. And let's not be lulled into the notion that standards will rise over time, and we can easily delete substandard items then. Tony (talk) 07:50, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'd pull my support for it, as the more I listen, the more on the fence I am, but at this point, numerically it wouldn't matter. Take heart though, in that plans are underway to overhaul the main page vetting system. Details soon, however it will be very much to your liking, I would think. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:05, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Promoted MHVC-KyokoYonemoto-PaganiniCaprice24.ogv The votes are over the margin by only 4%Why was I thinking 3.4 and not 2/3 12%. I suspect that this will come up for reassessment more then once. --Guerillero | My Talk 02:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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