"Shoot the Pianist", classical recital

[Egruat]

Hello,

Here is a link to the movie "Shoot the pianist", from François Truffaut. https://archive.org/details/TirezSurLeP ... uffaut1960

At the minute 35, there is a piano classical music. I am looking for the compositor. I think it is Liszt but I cannot find this music.

Does somebody able to help me ?

Many thanks

emmanuel_gruat@hotmail.com

[jbuck919]

It has been a long time since someone joined here just to get an attribution. (It used to happen frequently, and as our former moderator pointed out, half the time they were trying to figure out O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.) With the Shazam app virtually everything can be identified just by pointing your smart phone or whatever at the music source. Probably one of our other members will be able to give you an exact answer using that software, which I do not own myself.

It is an abbreviated version of one of the transcendental etudes of Liszt. I am sorry that I cannot be more specific, but that much is obvious.

[John F]

Intriguing. In the film we see the top of a recital poster naming Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, and Ravel, but not the compositions. Of these, the music sounds at first like Liszt, a Transcendental Etude would be a good guess, but I don't recognize it, and it goes on to sound more like Schumann and then like two other composers. Could it be a pastiche by the film's soundtrack composer Georges Delerue? Also, the pianist (Charles Aznavour) plays pretty awkwardly for a professional pianist in a formal recital with an audience. On purpose? Why? Shortly before, there's a bit of solo violin music which starts out almost but not quite like a famous caprice by Paganini, then wanders off as if in an improvisation. It could be that Truffaut and Delerue are playing games with us with faux classical music rather than the real thing.

[jbuck919]

Intriguing. In the film we see the top of a recital poster naming Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, and Ravel, but not the compositions. Of these, the music sounds at first like Liszt, a Transcendental Etude would be a good guess, but I don't recognize it, and it goes on to sound more like Schumann and then like two other composers. Could it be a pastiche by the film's soundtrack composer Georges Delerue? Also, the pianist (Charles Aznavour) plays pretty awkwardly for a professional pianist in a formal recital with an audience. On purpose? Why? Shortly before, there's a bit of solo violin music which starts out almost but not quite like a famous caprice by Paganini, then wanders off as if in an improvisation. It could be that Truffaut and Delerue are playing games with us with faux classical music rather than the real thing.

I was actually thinking along the same lines with respect to both pieces, but wasn't sure any film score composer was clever enough to accomplish it, so I came down on one side. There are a lot of Liszt etudes, an ocean of Liszt piano music in general, and the fact that I didn't know this one or couldn't find it on YouTube doesn't mean much. If it had been faux Chopin I might have had a better chance. I didn't know about this film before, but apparently it is quite famous and interesting. (The Wikipedia article about it is lengthy.) I suppose I'll have to watch it sometime.

[John F]

The title comes from a sign in a saloon in the old west: "Don't shoot the piano player. He's doing the best he can." Maybe it's apocryphal.

[Holden Fourth]

There are hints of:
Chopin's Op 10/1 etude, Schumann's Carnaval, Ravel, Debussy and maybe some Liszt though I don't hear any of the Transcendental Etudes. I suspect that it is indeed a pastiche composed specifically for the film.