This Newly Found 1928 Piano Recording Is Extraordinary | Victor Gille plays Chopin Op. 15 No. 2

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]A unique piece of video footage of Victor Jill has recently become available on YouTube. And for pianists, this is not just a historical curiosity.

[00:00:08]It's a window into a musical world that has almost disappeared. Jill was especially famous for playing Shopan.

[00:00:16]Since childhood, he was surrounded by musicians who were close to Shopan's circle. He absorbed an improvisational way of playing that was still alive in that environment. People say he even often visited Chopan's grave in Parles Cemetery in Paris at dusk, hoping to feel closer to the composer's spirit and understand his works better. And today I want to show you what piano students can actually learn from this very, very unique footage.

[00:00:53]Let's begin with the poetry of piano playing. Many students have a very simplified idea of musical intensity.

[00:01:00]They think intensity mainly depends on where the melody goes. If the phrase rises, they automatically get louder. If it reaches a high note, they treat that note like the summit of the mountain.

[00:01:11]And very often I hear interpretations like But now you see that it's actually not very natural because leaning on the strong beat is kind of intuitive for many, but it's not very beautiful here.

[00:01:39]And also making crescendo to the top of the phrase.

[00:01:44]It might seem like an intuitive thing to do, but actually doesn't sound really well. Doesn't really sound in style. And what Jill does here, he demonstrates a beautiful example of a so-called bellcanto technique, which relies uh not on those kind of intuitive cliches, but on a rather how a human voice works. So he starts each upbeat with a little bit more energy and actually softening the first beat.

[00:02:18]Then I really love his very very quiet uh tempo. He doesn't really care whether uh you're going to be bored or not. He just enjoys this quietness and this piece. And then a very delicate, very transparent ending which is not careless uh not weak but very very elegant. And then again more energy and a little bit more intensity on the leading tones because then music starts to breathe and then it really blossoms like a flower.

[00:03:21]Today, many pianists lead everything toward the top note of the phrase, almost as if they are conquering Everest and hoping the audience will admire the achievement. But this is not necessarily the aesthetics of Shopan's time. And I'm not saying that modern pianists are wrong because there are many many brilliant modern interpretations and I love many of them. Uh, and I'm a modern pianist, you know, myself. But the point is the aesthetics have changed enormously. Now look at how unpretentious Jill's approaches.

[00:04:11]He creates a flow towards the center of the phrase here.

[00:04:19]So you expect a climax, but then he plays actually softer the destination notes. And also I really like how he plays uh without the pedal and very very crisply those passages. And then again lighter.

[00:04:39]Yeah. So he creates this flow but he doesn't make an achievement out of it because modern interpretations very often would go in a more straightforward way. for example, climax of the phrase. And then the next phrase, obviously more and then, but you see that it sounds very ma massive, very straightforward. And that's why Jill's approach here when he creates this flow, but he doesn't really make a big deal out of it. He doesn't try to achieve you anything. He just plays a nocturn which is basically a salon piece. It's an unpretentious small souvenir. It's not a bad or a sonata.

[00:05:30]It's not something to achieve or conquer, just something to enjoy. And this sounds really refreshing to me because sometimes the most beautiful thing is not to insist but to actually release and let it be. Now let's talk about something every performer needs.

[00:05:47]How to survive mistakes. There is a spot where Jill basically forgets the left hand.

[00:06:02]But notice how he gets out of it. He does not panic. He does not stop. He does not make a face. He simply plays the right hand, which he remembers luckily, and something like it in the left hand. I bet that if you don't know the piece well, you could even not notice. And this is a crucial performance skill. You cannot always be perfect. No one can. But when you perform, your job is to stay with the flow of the music as much as possible.

[00:06:26]So if you perform a piece and if you forget a left the left hand, play the right hand. If you lose part of the texture, keep the part you can keep. If you forget everything, just improvise until you find the next section. The golden rule of piano playing, no matter what happens, no matter how big your memory lap or mistake, you never take your hands off the keyboard and you never stop playing. You play something like whatever. Just continue playing and continue fighting for finding the exit.

[00:06:56]But how you practice the specific skill of not getting stumbled or not getting stuck when you make a mistake uh and and continue going. I would suggest you every day when you practice combine diligent work on smaller sections when you polish details with playing through larger sections. Even when you have a very fresh piece which you can't play very well but still work diligently on a smaller section on a smaller spot and then go through the larger section in any tempo you can handle with a simple goal to never stop. So no matter what happens you just go on and you learn to handle mistakes on the go and just skip something and jump to the next bar to the next beat if you can't play something precisely. This is a crucial skill and which which you have to really train because many students get stuck in this mentality of I just work on these two chords and then I work on these two chords and I work on this specific jump and then they really lose this they don't develop this ability to think long and go with the flow.

[00:08:03]There are also several fascinating technical details in this video which I want to discuss with you. First, notice how often he plays with a really low wrist, which is below the keys.

[00:08:20]And this kind of technique was much more common in earlier piano traditions like 19th century. And together with very active almost grasping fingertip, it gave the pianist an intimate contact with the key and a special crispiness.

[00:08:35]And in this fragment, you can see a good example of what was often called pearle pearly playing. And the notes are clear, delicate, and beautifully separated like little pearls. But I have to add an important warning. On modern pianos, which are often heavier than pianos of that time, uh trying to imitate this exact low-risk approach can be actually risky and some students may get wrist pain very quickly. So this is not something I would recommend copying literally. And even when I try to play like this, I can actually feel that.

[00:09:09]Yeah, it's actually kind of cool to create this kind of crispy effect. And and it's kind of like a little bit rough, a little bit kind of like sharp.

[00:09:19]And it might be cool if you want to create something crispy here, but I would say that you can get a similar effect by playing with a normal like ergonomic wrist position.

[00:09:31]at the key level not below.

[00:09:37]So the result will be quite similar but without uh health risks. So I would definitely not advise this. But at the same time there's something really very very valuable in his playing here because look at how his arm is free and how active his fingertips. Even when he plays notes with a rather flat finger, you can still feel that he has a really great grasping contact with the key. And the arm beautifully shapes each motion.

[00:10:08]It's absolutely absolutely free. And there is a simple physical law here. If the part of the body that needs to work is underdeveloped, another part turns in as a compensation. So if your fingertips are not strong enough and not quick enough then of course you will get a lot of tension in the other parts of the body elsewhere to compensate this weakness. That's why uh if the fingers are not active and strong enough the wrist elbow and shoulder or even neck.

[00:10:41]This is why I have created a comprehensive 20our technique course designed to help you improve your technique in a safe but efficient way.

[00:10:48]There is a time limited discount available right now. So if you want structured help with this, check the link below. Now let's look at another detail his trill because this is very peculiar.

[00:11:05]So he uses fingers one and two and then slides toward the thumb.

[00:11:12]And this fingering gives him a very crisp trill. And he plays it without paddle. Actually another interesting uh point but again I would say that although the sound quality here is very peculiar and really crispy this tense fifth finger which he has uh it's not actually most ergonomic way to play trills. You can play in a similar crispy way if you want but without that tension without that tension in the fifth finger. And I really wonder whether Shopan himself would play drills like this as he was a genius in piano technique efficiency. And this is another major difference between the tradition of that time and today's traditions because today many pianists prefer to play Shopopen's trills smoothly often with a pedal almost like a uh vocal vibrto like this. Yeah. But this approach where Jill combines legato and this very crispy dry trill is actually very interesting, very unique from the today's perspective. So in this case, the trill becomes a kind of spicy contrast against the overall legato character. Now I have to say that not everything in Jill's playing is equally convincing for me.

[00:12:52]because for example the middle section is personally for me the least impressive part of the performance and many professional pianists today would reach greater freedom and flexibility here and I think that one limiting factor here is again same low wrist that helped him so much in the lyrical passages u before in the simpler sections. But here when the texture is wider and you have more leaps, playing these uh things on the lower wrist is actually quite limiting. Like for example here, of course, you can play like that with with wrists being really close to the keys. This is not the most difficult spot, but still I would say that having a little bit more freedom in the arm and shaping your motions in the following way when you would lean when you would lean a little bit on that octave and allow your hand to breathe slightly between the elements.

[00:13:57]This is of course exaggeration. Yeah.

[00:13:59]Then of course you minimize those motions and you get something especially this part is curious. So in this part he misses some bass notes because the horizontal movement which he uses here it's not the most efficient here when we have such wide leaps a curve motions a curved motions would be more um ergonomic here. So for example, this kind of motion would be much more natural here. And later through the section, for example, here you can see that he kind of finds this motion and it immediately becomes more precise.

[00:15:06]But in the beginning of the section he kind of fails to find this natural movement getting uh staying kind of glued to the key level moving horizontally and that's why the precision suffers. That's why an important point here is that a technique that helps one passage like for example when you play this on a really low wrist maybe it will it may help you to get a more intimate control over the keys. So one technique can be beneficial for a certain spot but it doesn't mean that it will work for every spot. That's why a good pianist and musician must develop a great range of techniques.

[00:15:50]Finally, let's talk about Robato.

[00:15:52]Because Jill's use of time is spectacular. His tempo is very free, almost improvisational, and it constantly changes according to how he reacts to the music in the moment.

[00:16:12]This is exceptionally good timing because look how he creates the flow uh of the phrase toward the center. How he takes more time on the trill and returns us back calmly to the next phrase only to linger on the upbeat.

[00:16:45]and and the rolled chord is extended to create excitement and suspense before the next phrase. So yeah, so this expectation is really graceful here. But he does not stretch it so much that the flow breaks. Also notice something very interesting. He does not react physically in the exaggerated way many pianists do today.

[00:17:12]And he's not trying to translate every musical event into a big visible gesture. He's not performing the motion with his body. The timing itself carries all the expression.

[00:17:33]However, I have to say that if you play the bass note before the beat all the time like he does, and if that happens every time, then uh it might be considered a bad taste from today's perspective. But overall, I have to say that this is very different from the modern concert hall approach where everything often becomes larger, heavier, and more dramatic. Jill reminds us that Shopan can be intense without being massive. If you enjoyed this analysis, subscribe to the channel and let me know in the comments which historical or modern pianists you would like me to discuss next. Thanks for watching this and see you next time.