Nice pianists have an aura about them like no different musician. Working their magic on the 88 keys in entrance of them in repertoire starting from brilliantly crafted Bach and mercurial Mozart to the flamboyant fireworks of Liszt and Rachmaninov, the most effective pianists encourage admiration and adulation in equal measure.
However who’re the best piano gamers to have plied their commerce within the period of recorded sound (ie since across the starting of the Twentieth century)? We requested 100 of right this moment’s best pianists to have their say – three votes every – and right here is the listing that resulted… and you may get a sneaky take a look at their prime 5 piano gamers of all time within the video beneath
20 finest pianists of all time
20. Claudio Arrau (1903-1991), Chilean
Arrau’s expertise at eight was so superior, the Chilean authorities paid for him to go to Berlin for the most effective trainer, and for the following few years Martin Krause, a Liszt pupil, was a father to him, introducing him to an enormous vary of tradition, and serving to him develop his transcendental method.
When Krause died in 1918 Arrau was bereft, and went into psychoanalysis. Regularly he constructed up an immense worldwide repute, particularly after World Struggle II.
Although he may play dazzling virtuoso items with the most effective of his rivals, his actual concern was ever extra looking, probing of the best works, above all Beethoven and – on the finish of his life, since he regarded Schubert as ‘the supreme problem’ – Schubert in his final masterpieces for piano.
Arrau was the Faustian amongst pianists, at all times dissatisfied and disturbed, whereas cultivating a heat and a singular depth of tone. At occasions his enjoying was overlaid with self-consciousness to an virtually suffocating extent, however within the deepest music he has only a few friends.
On the finish of his life he made a collection of recordings which deserve a life-time’s listening. He discovered way more in Liszt than most, so his recording of the Transcendental Research is an outstanding technique to get deep into each composer and pianist.
Nice piano enjoying requires you to have unimaginable emotional rigidity with out getting bodily tense. That appears easy, however it isn’t.
Important recording:
Liszt: Research within the Transcendental Execution
Pentatone PTC 5186171
19. Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), Polish
Probably the most well-known piano gamers of all time, Josef Hofmann was an astonishing little one prodigy from Poland. He ‘retired’ at 12 for additional research with Moritz Moszkowski and Anton Rubinstein, then resumed his profession at 18. Ultimately he settled within the US, changing into director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Revered as one of many supreme pianists of his day, Hofmann’s easy method permitted a kaleidoscope of tonal colourings and expressive guises starting from aching tenderness to heaven-storming pandemonium.
The standard of his melodic tone was full and spherical, and commanding or beguiling by turns; its prominence within the total texture lent his sonority the Aristocracy. His enjoying additionally possessed spontaneity, which led him to focus on ‘internal voices’ and add surprises of dynamics and timing that later listeners can discover disconcerting.
His few studio recordings generally reveal a scientific craftsman, whereas in stay efficiency his enjoying was extra temperamental, even sometimes violent. Hofmann’s giant repertory emphasised Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and the virtuoso character items of his time.
World-oblivious and alone together with his instrument, (the pianist) can commune together with his innermost and finest self.
Important recording:
Golden Jubilee Live performance (1937) – Rubinstein: Concerto No. 4
VAIA/IPA 1020
18. Walter Gieseking (1895-1956), German
Gieseking was a delicate big amongst pianists, however his supposed politics tarnished his repute. Though cleared of being a Nazi collaborator, he wasn’t in a position to play within the US till 1955. He’s finest remembered as an interpreter of the French Faculty, Debussy particularly liking his gossamer contact, although his Mozart (the entire solo piano works) and incomplete Beethoven sonata recordings are additionally prized for his or her readability and classical dignity.
The opening motion of the Moonlight Sonata is nearly trance-like, as if Gieseking have been reluctant to the touch the keys lest the spell be damaged. Magnificence, nuance and understatement depict his model. ‘Refined’ is usually thought-about a impolite phrase nowadays however, in its literal sense, it maybe finest describes him – his look and his enjoying.
Whereas Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer (No. 13) and Schnabel (No. 6) have been baritones of the piano, Gieseking was undoubtedly a tenor; evaluate, for instance, his svelte Mozartian Beethoven Emperor Concerto with Fischer’s aggressive, muscular model, each very good however completely completely different.
Gieseking had a large repertoire which included Rachmaninov’s Second and Third concertos and, surprisingly, Tchaikovsky’s First. He additionally championed new music which, sadly, by no means bought to disc. Gieseking was additionally an excellent staff participant – his close to definitive recording of Mozart’s Piano Quintet K542 with the Philharmonia’s fabulous foursome is testomony to this.
One has solely to have the ability to learn notes appropriately, however that’s past most performers.
Important recording:
Mozart: Quintet in E flat for piano and wind, K452
Testomony SBT 1091
17. Glenn Gould (1932-82), Canadian
Gould was one of the well-known piano gamers ever. Bernstein referred to as him ‘the best factor to occur to music in years’, but improbably the defining second in that ‘occurring’ occurred in an deserted New York Presbyterian Church in June 1955.
Associated to Grieg on his mom’s aspect, the 23-year-old Glenn Gould recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a insurgent with a trigger, kicking in opposition to the prevailing Bachian norm with a combination of forensic evaluation, exhilarating playfulness and dazzling readability. And Bach would dominate his eclectic music-making even after the one evening stand of the live performance platform had given technique to a lifelong relationship with the studio.
Chopin, Liszt and Schumann have been famously ‘off’ Gould’s radar – as was Mozart, regardless of a provocative recorded set of the piano sonatas. Schoenberg, Beethoven, Brahms and Gibbons (‘my favorite’) all acquired the Gouldian imprint, however Bach remained on the centre of his universe, with a second Goldbergs recording previous his premature demise in 1982. The 1955 ‘first ideas’ stay particular nevertheless: ‘The file debut of Glenn Gould, a keyboard genius’ because the American File Information headed its evaluation.
My concept of happiness is 250 days a 12 months in a studio
Important recording:
JS Bach: Goldberg Variations
Sony Classical 827969038727
16. Murray Perahia (b. 1947), American
Rumour has it that when Murray Perahia enlisted for the Leeds Piano Competitors, fellow American opponents, suspecting the sport was up, made for the exit. A pupil of Mieczysaw Horszowski, Perahia received with a efficiency of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 whose poise and classicism set a marker for the qualities which have proved his hallmark.
Of the Fischer/Cortot era (see Nos 13 & 5), he insists ‘there’s no method, it’s simply talking’, and an analogous unforced directness knowledgeable his first main recording mission: a translucent, landmark set of the entire Mozart concertos. Aside from a Bartókian apart, the canon from Bach to Brahms has absorbed his subsequent consideration on disc, the previous a fruitful ‘remedy’ that bought him by way of a interval of enforced silence because of hand issues.
Aristocratic with out being aloof and devoid of ego, Perahia’s enjoying transfixes and illuminates. Anointed by the ailing Britten to accompany Peter Pears, Perahia’s Aldeburgh recording with Radu Lupu (No. 13) of the gradual motion of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos is an essay in chic communion, and a benediction.
I’m within the factor that lasts endlessly: the thought behind the music.
Important recording:
Mozart: Sonata K448; Schubert: Fantasia D940, each with Radu Lupu
Sony 827969301524
15. Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991), German
The core of his repertory was nice music of the German custom – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms – however Wilhelm Kempff performed as if he have been improvising quite than presiding over a solemn ritual. Gifted with a delicate contact and a predisposition for intimacy of expression, Kempff’s delicacy precipitated him to attain charming, satisfying character in moments the place others focused on momentum and precision.
Though able to flights of extroverted virtuosity, he was generally cautious with (or made heavy climate of) troublesome passages, and endemic to his spontaneous method is the fact of uneven, variable enjoying between and even inside particular person performances. But at his finest he had an enviable approach of constructing music sound pure and unpretentious whereas concurrently tapping into the profound knowledge of artless simplicity.
Extra like this
Along with German music, his repertory included Chopin, Liszt, and even some Fauré, and a few of his most beloved recordings function him in his personal transcriptions of Bach works.
In my inventive existence, I’ve skilled many crises. That was essential. Disaster results in development, and development is the most effective factor we are able to want for…
Important recording:
Queen Elizabeth Corridor Live performance (1969) – Bach, Beethoven & Schubert
BBC Legends BBCL 4045-2
14. Edwin Fischer (1886-1960), Swiss
Edwin Fischer stays one of the extremely regarded musicians of the Twentieth century. Equally gifted as pianist, conductor and pedagogue, he was largely liable for reviving curiosity within the keyboard music of Bach and Mozart at a time when such repertory featured comparatively sometimes in live performance programmes.
Fischer was additionally an early pioneer of scholarly efficiency follow, emphasising the need for interpreters to respect the integrity of the musical textual content. But his performances of the nice Austro-German Classical and Romantic repertory have been something however sterile educational affairs.
Like Schnabel his enjoying was by no means technically flawless however it was blessed with a miraculously rounded tone which retained its heat each at explosive climactic factors within the music and at these moments that decision for a fantastically veiled pianissimo.
His pupil Alfred Brendel commented that on the live performance platform Fischer’s ‘each fibre appeared to vibrate with elemental musical energy’. Noting a parallel with conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, Fischer’s nice buddy and modern, Brendel added that with the pianist ‘one was in additional rapid contact with the music: there was no curtain earlier than his soul when he communicated with the viewers.’
Thick-set gamers with thick fleshy fingers are predestined for the interpretation of works by composers of comparable body, whereas tall, long-fingered sinewy gamers are likewise the most effective interpreters of the works of equally constituted composers.
Important recording:
JS Bach: Nicely-Tempered Clavier
EMI 391 9582
13. Radu Lupu (1945-2022), Romanian
The elusive Romanian pianist rose to fame within the early Seventies after profitable some important competitions, amongst them the Van Cliburn (1966) and the Leeds (1969) – but his efficiency model is much certainly from what we consider as a ‘typical competitors winner’.
Lupu was an unpretentious performer, missing the glitzy veneer of a few of his youthful colleagues: with the stage presence of a bearded bear, and often sitting on a chair quite than a piano stool, he introduced interpretations that probe deep beneath the floor, eschewing outright virtuoso repertoire in favour of the nice Viennese classics. He was certainly one of his period’s most profound interpreters of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, masterfully evoking the latter’s other-worldly aesthetic.
His tone was rounded, velvety, the emphasis on songful phrasing and musical empathy; he by no means ‘performed to the gallery’ however gave audiences the impression that they’re sharing in an intimate change of concepts. Having studied with, amongst others, Heinrich Neuhaus on the Moscow Conservatoire, Lupu maintained in his enjoying a hyperlink to the ‘golden age’ pianists.
I might have preferred to make a profession out of enjoying nothing however gradual actions.
Important recording:
Radu Lupu performs Brahms
Decca 475 7070
12. Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948), Polish
Born in Poland in 1882, Friedman was among the many best ‘golden age’ interpreters of Chopin, and of many different composers too – his innate really feel for Chopin’s Polish rhythms and quasi-operatic melodies was second to none.
He was a pupil of the nice Polish pianist and trainer Theodor Leschetizky – who as soon as stated that Friedman had surpassed him technically – and over the course of a distinguished four-decade profession he grew to become a revered trainer himself, in addition to a composer, arranger and editor.
Like Alfred Cortot (see No. 5), Friedman had the astonishing means to remodel the sound of the piano into one thing resembling the human voice. With an expressive and colouristic vary that matched his imaginative talents, an ever-meaningful management of rubato and an emotional directness that goes straight to the center of each the music and the listener, each account that Friedman has left on disc is a treasure in its personal proper.
A nerve downside in his left hand pressured his retirement in 1943; he died in 1948 in Australia, the place he occurred to be touring on the outbreak of World Struggle II.
It doesn’t have to be that quick. There’s at all times time.
Important recording:
Ignaz Friedman performs Hummel, Chopin and Beethoven
APR 5508
11. Krystian Zimerman (b. 1956), Polish
Few artists seem so relaxed and at one with the keyboard as Krystian Zimerman. In even essentially the most note-splattered pages of Chopin, Brahms and Liszt, he retains absolute technical composure and readability. Though his fingers are usually not unusually giant, he’s blessed with lengthy fingers and a comparatively beneficiant span, which helps facilitate his seemingly easy fluency.
Purity in all issues is Zimerman’s watchword. His enjoying fuses the aristocratic class of the ‘golden age’ with modern fastidiousness. In his fingers fusty interpretative accretions constructed up over generations are peeled away to disclose pristine musical surfaces. Constructions torn asunder by subjective whimsy regain their natural composure. Even the Liszt Sonata, a piece notoriously vulnerable to technical and interpretative fracturing, thrillingly unfolds with a bracing sense of inevitability.
Basic filmed recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos (with Bernstein) and
a peerless solo recital of Chopin and Schubert, reveal a piano method in excellent symbiosis – the fingers miraculously even, the form of the fingers poised always, and a sleight-of-hand means to make the transcendental seem facile.
Music just isn’t sound. Music is utilizing sound to organise feelings in time.
Important recording:
Chopin: Ballades Nos 1–4 and many others; Schubert: Impromptus Nos 1-4
DG 073 4449 (DVD)
10. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-95), Italian
The enjoying of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli featured an unforgettable sonority that was an amalgamation of impeccably managed, awe-inspiring pianistic mastery, a textural sheen that was virtually iridescent, and a warmly resilient tone that might appear to defy the acoustical legal guidelines of decay constructed into the sound of the piano.
(A sign of his method and preoccupations might be gauged from his refusal to make a studio recording of Ravel’s suite Gaspard de la nuit on the grounds that the piano had not but been invented that might do that work justice.)
There was a paradoxical high quality to his extraordinary artistry as properly. His musical sensibility was usually punctilious however simply as usually involved with presenting the technical floor of the music in the perfect mild, which led to options that drew criticism for being musically mannered.
Usually he embodied a power of dedication that might lead to sovereign grandeur and overwhelming vitality, but elsewhere his enjoying appeared excessively tangible, marmoreal, and spiky quite than evocative.
Michelangeli’s repertory was restricted, honed fastidiously over a few years – sure Mozart concertos and Beethoven sonatas, and works by Schumann (Concerto, Carnaval, Faschingsschwank aus Wien), Brahms (Variations on a theme of Paganini, Ballades Op. 10), Ravel, Debussy (finally each books of Preludes and Photos), Grieg (Concerto), and notably Chopin (Sonata No. 2, F minor Fantasy, G minor Ballade, chosen mazurkas and waltzes) turned up repeatedly on his live performance programmes.
To play means labour. It means to really feel an excellent ache within the arms and within the shoulders.
Important recording:
Grieg: Piano Concerto (with New Philharmonia/Frühbeck de Burgos)
BBC Legends BBCL 4043-2
9. Martha Argerich (b. 1941), Argentinian
Unstable, explosive, quixotic, astounding and mesmerising – these are a number of the adjectives generally utilized by critics to explain the music-making of Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich. Undoubtedly one of the charismatic interpreters of our time, Argerich achieved worldwide recognition at an early age after transferring to Europe and profitable first prize on the Busoni and Geneva piano competitions within the late Fifties.
A pupil of the provocatively subversive Austrian Friedrich Gulda, whom she nonetheless regards as the best pianistic affect on her life, she subsequently overwhelmed each jury and viewers together with her spectacular enjoying on the 1965 Chopin competitors in Warsaw. After endeavor a punishing schedule of recitals throughout this era, Argerich rejected the notion of pursuing a profession as a solo pianist.
In accordance with her former associate, the American pianist Stephen Kovacevich, she merely loathed the concept of being alone on stage and from that point onwards she has targeted her consideration on enjoying concertos and chamber music. Her repertory is astonishingly versatile, extending from Bach to Shostakovich and demonstrating a specific dedication to Schumann.
Lengthy-standing partnerships with violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Mischa Maisky have broadened her musical outlook, Maisky describing performing together with her as ‘nonetheless essentially the most stunning expertise on the earth’.
Notoriously reclusive and reluctant to pander to the standard publicity hype usually connected to modern classical musicians, she has been astonishingly beneficiant in nurturing younger expertise by way of her annual collection of concert events on the Lugano Competition.
I like very a lot to play the piano, however I don’t wish to be a pianist. I don’t just like the occupation.
Important recording:
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 (with Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Riccardo Chailly); Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Bavarian Radio SO/Kirill Kondrashin)
Philips 446 6732
8. Emil Gilels (1916-1985), Russian
Up to date with Sviatoslav Richter (see No. 4), whom he preceded within the West, and whose superiority to himself he insisted on, Gilels was a really completely different form of pianist, although they shared a lot of the identical repertoire. Additionally they shared the identical nice trainer, Heinrich Neuhaus, and there are recognisable similarities of fashion. Gilels was not a temperamental performer, although his performances have vitality and life.
His Beethoven could be definitive if that time period meant something in relation to such music. However so would his Scarlatti, his Tchaikovsky and positively his recordings of Twentieth-century Russian music. Extra dependable than Richter in turning up for concert events, he gave an enormous quantity, each within the East and West, and his rigorous schedule killed him.
His recordings above all present his fantastic fullness of tone, his command of lengthy paragraphs, and sometimes an astonishing delicacy. His Brahms concertos with Eugen Jochum are a recording for the ages, his Grieg Lyric Items a revelation.
The creativeness is available in when the spirit comes along with the fantasy. After all, the method should be there, however the creativeness should go together with it.
Important recording:
Grieg: Lyric Items
DG 449 7212
7. Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), Austrian
In his heyday, Austrian-born Artur Schnabel was revered because the main exponent of the Beethoven piano sonatas; he was the primary to file all of them and his interpretations set the benchmark. Sixty years after his demise he’s nonetheless revered by fellow pianists and connoisseurs of the piano.
A virtuoso within the mould of Horowitz (No. 3) he actually was not – if you’re searching for pianistic fireworks and breathtaking accuracy, Schnabel just isn’t your man. His trainer, Theodor Leschetizky, remarked to the 12-year-old Artur: ‘You’ll by no means be a pianist, for you’re a musician.’
His enjoying could also be described as sincere and unvarnished and, sometimes, careless, as some recordings have greater than their fair proportion of smudged, incorrect or missed notes – like these of his nice modern, Edwin Fischer, who joked that he collected them. Composer Arnold Schoenberg as soon as commented, ‘… his concert events have been communions. And when the viewers dispersed, it was with a sense of getting been cleansed.’ Listening to any Schubert performed by Schnabel, it’s straightforward to grasp what Schoenberg meant.
His repertoire was restricted to these composers with whom he felt most empathy, specifically Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms and, like Otto Klemperer’s best performances of the Beethoven symphonies, there may be in Schnabel’s interpretations not solely granite power but additionally a simplicity which places music first and ego final. Taking the stone analogy additional, Schnabel’s enjoying reminds one of many Renaissance artist Michelangelo’s unfinished Pietà the place the marks of the chisel are very a lot proof of labor in progress.
Music is among the performing arts with which, in train, one might be alone, completely alone.
Important recording:
Schubert: Impromptus D899 & 935
EMI 586 8332
6. Dinu Lipatti (1917-50), Romanian
Lipatti’s soundworld, articulated by an infinitesimal vary of dynamics, colors and textures, would alone have assured him a spot among the many piano immortals. The beautiful, fine-graded subtleties of his Bach B flat Partita, for instance, are so quite a few that one can solely sit slack-jawed on the velocity and element of his superhuman reflexes.
But what actually units his enjoying aside is that each inflection seems to come up naturally from the internal soul of the music. It’s this tantalising fusion of supreme technical sophistication and disarming naturalness which lies on the coronary heart of his charming artistry. For Lipatti, music was one thing to be lived by way of and breathed like artistic oxygen.
One felt the identical intuitive sense of contact with each composer he selected to play, whether or not it was the world-weariness that lies behind Mozart’s most frivolous gestures, or the emotional complexity of Chopin‘s waltzes.
In 1947, on the very top of his profession, Lipatti was identified with Hodgkin’s illness and died three years later at 33. ‘Lipatti had the qualities of a saint,’ wrote his file producer Walter Legge. ‘His goodness and generosity evoked religion, hope and charity in all these round him.’
Music has to stay underneath our fingers, underneath our eyes, in our coronary heart and thoughts with all we are able to supply them.
Important recording:
JS Bach: Partita No. 1
EMI 567 0032
The perfect 5 pianists ever
5. Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), Swiss/French
If you’d like your piano-playing to be merely note-perfect, then practise all day. However to make music a matter of life and demise, to really feel from the within the drama, ardour and eloquence with which notes and poetry unite into an artwork kind, strive spending your early life as repetiteur at Bayreuth, and conduct the Paris premiere of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Not that that job, which he held from 1898 to 1901, nor that opera, given in 1902, wholly clarify the genius of Alfred Cortot. No person has performed like him since; in all probability nobody did earlier than, both.
However Cortot’s repute has been sullied by two unlucky points. First, his tally of incorrect notes is uncomfortably excessive for these reared in our phonographically disinfected age. Secondly, throughout World Struggle II he held a place as Excessive Commissioner of the High quality Arts within the Vichy authorities.
He might not have been the ‘finest’ pianist by right this moment’s examined requirements, however he was nonetheless one of the profound, delicate and real musicians of his time and past. His musical ideas have been on a transcendent scale that few have matched. Apart from, Cortot was greater than only a nice pianist: he was a lynchpin of his cultural world.
Born in Switzerland in 1877, he studied on the Paris Conservatoire with Louis Diémer and Emile Descombes, who had identified Chopin. Fauré, director of the Conservatoire, appointed him a professor there in 1907; Cortot subsequently taught such artists as Clara Haskil, Dinu Lipatti, Vlado Perlemuter and Samson François.
From 1905 he fashioned a famend trio with violinist Jacques Thibaud and cellist Pablo Casals. And apart from writing plenty of books and essays on issues musical and pianistic, he made editions of piano music by Chopin and Schumann which might be nonetheless revered.
Apart from the incorrect notes, his method was prodigious, particularly within the important high quality of high-quality, stunning tone manufacturing. If you hearken to him, whether or not in Chopin or Schubert, Beethoven or Fauré, you hear not only a piece of music, however a personal opera of the soul.
The interpreter’s artwork – a minimum of for the person who doesn’t intend to limit it to the barren successes of instrumental virtuosity – has as its important intention the transmission of the sentiments or impressions which a musical concept displays.
Important recording:
Schumann: Piano Concerto (with LPO/Landon Ronald)
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with LPO/John Barbirolli)
Naxos 8.110612
4. Sviatoslav Richter (1915-97), Russian
Regarded by many as the best pianist of the second half of the Twentieth century, Richter’s ancestry was German, however he solely carried out within the West for the primary time in 1960. He already had a prodigious repute, because of LPs, and the expectations of him have been phenomenal. A extremely delicate artist, he loathed the limelight (actually – in his later years he carried out on a darkened stage), and far most well-liked enjoying in a barn in France – his favorite venue, as soon as the geese have been evacuated – to any giant live performance corridor.
His favorite composer was Wagner, who wrote no important piano music. Richter’s repertoire was maybe essentially the most monumental of any pianist, although he hated ‘completism’ and by no means carried out, as an example, Beethoven’s Second, Fourth or Fifth Piano Concertos, or a few of Chopin‘s Preludes, whereas giving astounding performances of the remaining.
He was a buddy of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, each of whom wrote works for him, and Britten, with whom he performed duets. He tells us that for one interval of his live performance profession he was inseparable from a pink plastic lobster which he would go away within the wings the place he may see it when he went onstage.
It’s laborious to characterise his enjoying, since he immersed himself so deeply within the music that it generally appears we’re listening to the composer straight. That’s the case with Bach, Handel, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and the Russian composers; he’s extra idiosyncratic in Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.
After the early Seventies he refused to file within the studio, however a lot of his concert events have been recorded, and there are extra CDs of him than of another pianist; he loathed most of his personal performances, and on the finish of the nice documentary (on DVD) Richter: The Enigma, made in 1995, he says ‘I don’t like myself. That’s it.’
I don’t like pianos – I like music extra.
Important recording:
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra/Stanislav Wislocki)
DG 477 8584
3. Vladimir Horowitz (1903-89), Russian
When Horowitz emerged from Kiev to start his worldwide profession within the Twenties he struck many as a direct hyperlink to the Nineteenth-century Russian faculty exemplified by Anton Rubinstein, identified for his free method to rhythm, dynamics, and phrasing.
For the following three a long time, till his 12-year retirement from stay concert events (1953-65), Horowitz virtually outlined pianistic virtuosity, however not within the wild-haired, swooning method of a Paderewski; this lion of the keyboard was lithe, fashionable in gown, and quiet in his manner.
His thundering octaves in Tchaikovsky’s First and Rachmaninov’s Third concertos, or the Liszt B minor Sonata received him large fortunes and the eye of the musical world, however steadily Horowitz bored with ‘the octaves race’, and started trying to find repertoire that would supply him and his audiences with extra mental stimulation.
For his much-anticipated return to the stage at Carnegie Corridor in 1965, he opened with Bach (albeit organized by Busoni) and Schumann’s C main Fantasy, saving Chopin for the second half. Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi have been now constants on his programmes, in addition to Scriabin and Rachmaninov. Not surprisingly, Horowitz’s rhapsodic method to Mozart and Haydn was nearer in spirit to the traditionally knowledgeable performances of right this moment than to the inflexible scorebound approaches of his contemporaries.
Essentially the most recognisable facet of Horowitz’s tone was its vary of color and its physicality. Even his softest enjoying had physique, whereas his loudest was at all times crystal clear. In each phrase, a wealth of dynamic and rhythmic shadings was framed in a always altering but logical pulse, a pure bel canto method harking back to the nice Italian baritone Mattia Battistini, whom Horowitz idolised.
By no means content material to relaxation on his laurels, Horowitz, like his father-in-law Toscanini, at all times looked for extra truthful interpretations – strive listening to his many recordings of Chopin‘s B minor Scherzo, each in a different way paced, and with internal voices in a different way balanced. Horowitz was dubbed ‘the Final Romantic’, however in some ways he was the supreme classicist, with head and coronary heart in equipoise.
Perfection itself is imperfection.
Important recording:
The Indispensable: Chopin, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Scriabin and Scarlatti
RCA 74321634712
2. Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982), Polish
If there was an award for the pianist who got here closest to the inventive supreme within the widest repertoire, it will virtually actually go to Rubinstein. Whether or not enjoying Fauré or Brahms, Albéniz or Beethoven, Ravel or Schubert, the outcomes have been chic. But he’s most celebrated for his Chopin, whose aristocratic poise and class discovered an ideal match in Rubinstein’s personal interpretative genius.
His golden tone, beautiful sense of timing and sensitivity to phrase and construction have been tailored for the nocturnes, waltzes and mazurkas. But remarkably he sustained that very same stage of musical intuitiveness and profound eloquence all through the extra heated virtuosity of the concertos, scherzos, ballades, preludes, sonatas and polonaises.
There was seemingly nothing that Rubinstein couldn’t play on the highest ranges of distinction, from concertos and solo recitals to forming two ‘million greenback’ piano trios, first with Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann after which with Henryk Szeryng and Pierre Fournier, with whom he made excellent recordings of Brahms, Schubert and Schumann.
Most of us now affiliate Rubinstein with the gathered knowledge and autumnal glow of his stereo period recordings (from the late Fifties), but when he first emerged on the scene on the flip of the Twentieth century, it was as a prodigy of electrifying virtuosity and élan.
Extremely, as witness chic video recordings of concertos by Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Chopin, Beethoven and Brahms, he was nonetheless enjoying like an angel in his eighties. Rubinstein was one of the extensively recorded of pianists, though his love affair with the gramophone bought off to a shaky begin when he refused to file for the early acoustic course of as he felt it made the piano ‘sound like a banjo’.
If fashionable traits have moved in direction of discovering absolute options to technical and interpretative challenges, Rubinstein was a spontaneous musician to his fingertips. ‘On stage I’ll take an opportunity. There needs to be a component of daring in nice music-making,’ he as soon as insisted, and this prolonged to his relaxed method to practising (within the early Thirties he even took a while out as a way to refine his method).
Having a photographic reminiscence proved a particular boon, significantly when he got here to present his first efficiency of Franck’s difficult Symphonic Variations, which he discovered on the prepare journey to the venue, figuring out the fingerings on his knee-caps!
We should transmit what these nice compositions categorical. It’s our present to have the ability to transmit to an harmless and ignorant public.
Important recording:
Chopin: 21 Nocturnes
RCA 09026 630492
1. Sergey Rachmaninov (1873-1943), Russian
What would we all know of Rachmaninov’s enjoying if his recordings didn’t exist? A lot might be deduced from the music he wrote. There’s the huge vary of virtuoso technical useful resource, with implied energy and stamina to match. The melancholic lyrical present could be self-evident. So would the incisive rhythmic intuition – and, to evaluate from the later works a minimum of, the tight-reined readability with which Rachmaninov the pianist would unerringly form one musical paragraph after one other.
The recordings verify all this. They usually additionally inform us each extra and fewer. With out them it will be unimaginable to know fairly how phenomenal Rachmaninov‘s rhythmic present was – without delay ultra-precise and springily propulsive, not not like Prokofiev’s, however unleashing a momentum that’s much less motor-driven, extra like a tidal surge. This was absolutely the standard that enabled every part else to be so particular – the way in which {that a} phrase spontaneously tugs in opposition to, or yields to the underlying pulse, so that each musical choice appears attainable.
The tonal high quality, too, is spellbinding. The opening bars of the G flat main Prelude (which you’ll hear on the set beneath) are among the many easiest Rachmaninov wrote, but you understand without delay you’re within the presence of one thing extraordinary.
What number of different pianists may phrase the right-hand’s repeated chord-pattern with that form of suppleness, or deliver such fullness and focus to the left-hand melody? In an interview in 1936, Rachmaninov stated: ‘Interpretation calls for one thing of the artistic intuition. In case you are a composer, you have got an affinity with different composers… understanding one thing of their issues and their beliefs. You may give their works color… So that you make music stay. With out color it’s lifeless.’
What the recordings can’t inform us is how the youthful Rachmaninov performed. Earlier than he left revolutionary Russia in 1918, he appears primarily to have carried out his personal piano music, alongside a lot composing and conducting. Afterwards, life in Europe and America meant a full-time piano profession, and with it the necessity to construct a repertory. Bach, Beethoven (notably the Appassionata), Borodin, Chopin, Debussy, Grieg, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann (Carnaval was one other favorite) and Tchaikovsky all got here to function in Rachmaninov programmes apart from his personal works. He would practise for as much as 15 hours a day and toured extensively.
All of this appears to have been his approach of coping with the non-public tragedy of his uprooting from Russia. So, evidently, was the well-known public reserve, mirrored in his contained, expressionless method on the keyboard. Stravinsky, who as soon as referred to his compatriot and fellow-exile as ‘a six-and-a-half-foot-tall scowl’, additionally remarked much less waspishly: ‘His silence looms as a noble distinction to the self-approbations that are the one dialog of all performing and most different musicians. And, he was the one pianist I’ve ever seen who didn’t grimace. That may be a nice deal.’
However had it at all times been like that? We shouldn’t neglect the unmistakable roguish streak that emerges within the Mendelssohn and Musorgsky transcriptions. And did Rachmaninov play quite extra expansively in his earlier days, as a piece just like the Second Piano Concerto suggests? In the meantime the recorded legacy presents its personal proof. After listening to certainly one of Liszt‘s extra devastating performances (of Beethoven‘s ‘Emperor’ Concerto), Wagner remarked that pianism of this order ‘annihilates every part else’. Rachmaninov‘s enjoying has the capability to go away you with the identical impression.
I’ve by no means been fairly in a position to make up my thoughts as to which was my true calling – that of a composer, pianist, or conductor. These doubts assail me to at the present time.
Important recording:
Sergey Rachmaninov: His Full Recordings
RCA 82876678922
We named Rachmaninov one of many biggest and most well-known composers of all time
