Dazzling Piano Fantasies: Art or Kitsch?

[Balapoel]

Hmm. Peanut nose-crushing...

[Gauk]

What I don't understand here is the idea that if a transcription is not art, it must be kitsch. It could be neither.

[Alan Howe]

Kitsch is art, but of a supposedly lowbrow variety. So I imagine the question actually means:
Dazzling Piano Fantasies: High Art or Lowbrow Art?

[Mark Thomas]

Does it matter? Eye of the beholder, etc? In any event, it must surely depend upon the quality of the piece?

[Richard Moss]

Referring to the title of this thread (Piano Fantasies - but ignoring the second part!) whilst I must admit I nearly always prefer orchestral pieces, I must also admit that on a CD I got some years ago (of Hilary Davan Wetton conducting the Milton Keynes CO in Sterndale Bennett's Symphony G min plus PC F min), it also included his Pno Fantasia Op 16.

Compared to normal piano solos, what an absolute delight this was to hear - the sort of melody usually only found in the 'piano only' bits of a concerto.  Whilst I've got a small selection on piano solos (=Beethoven, Brahms et al sonatas, Mendelssohn Words without ...etc), rarely are any of them so full of melody of this nature.

Can members suggest any other piano solos (Fantasias or otherwise) that have such lush, romantic melody.  Leaving aside 'hi' or 'lo' art, I'm personally happy to include transcriptions if the result is pleasant to the ear.

Cheers

Richard

[Gauk]

Kitsch also implies highly degraded taste, which I really don't see in piano transcriptions. There's nothing lowbrow in, say, Liszt's piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies. You could argue that they exhibit workmanship rather than artistic creation, but that is about as far it will go.

[Alan Howe]

Here's a good working definition of kitsch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch

[Mark Thomas]

Isn't the key word "dazzling", with it's implications of keyboard virtuosity "for the sake of it", rather than being employed for some deeper artistic purpose?

[Gauk]

Maybe; one needs to go back to the original quote. If the person meant bravura variations on "Happy Birthday" then he could have had a point. Rather than transciptions in the manner of Liszt.

[eschiss1]

... is it the words or the music of Happy Birthday that a bit surprisingly (well, to me as it happened) are less than 3 centuries old?...