Yes it is a rare ability, but if these pianists are going to play what’s probably rightly called the highest music, why shouldn’t we hold them to the highest standards (and hope they reach them)? YW and Bunyat aren’t there, but they could try, and they would have a better chance without the insane touring. As DC said in the UFC, there are levels to these things. It’s why I can’t take YW or Bunyat seriously. Some of you guys respect them as pianists. I’m not really a pianist and am looking at other criteria.
I have a different opinion about Sokolov – I think he does need to be heard live to experience that next level. Granted I haven’t heard him for a few years, but that was certainly the case for me in the Noughties (Bach/Beethoven program, Beethoven/Prokofiev, Scriabin & Chopin programs). He has that aura.
As for YW I’d happily hear her live. She’s not scheduled to come here though. I’m sure she’s thrilling and I’d enjoy it and perhaps I’m underestimating her, I don’t rule that out, but I don’t really have a reason to think so yet.
There’s a massive disconnect between what is pianistically impressive and what is emotionally, sometimes even spiritually moving. I’ve heard even good amateurs and decent professional, but far from stellar, pianists play quite beautifully, even touchingly so, or occasion. On the other hand I’ve heard da doc do really quite incredible pianistic feats, but has his playing ever moved me? I doubt it. I’ve worked on the Liszt Liebestod more than any other piece in the world and, perhaps consequently, tbh I find da ho’s rendition shambolic… but within the first page I know with absolute certainty that a truly great pianist is playing.
Very few pianists alive today come even close to moving me in the way Horowitz, Cortot, and in a different way, Cziffra do. Oh, and Samson Francois in Chopin.
Following this I might as well reveal that my least favourite Chopin work in Op.10 from the other thread is the 11th Etude… and add that Francois is the only one I’ve heard do something with it to challenge that opinion.
Yeah this is why I don’t rate Hamelin. I know he’s a genius at the keyboard but for my non-musical mind he’s never gone beyond surface playing.
You made a good distinction there, and I think ideally we’d want technical mastery that reaches well beyond the tech. For me it’s really not that different from film or literature, in that (usually) all the technical mastery in the world won’t help you transcend if you don’t have something deeper to share. I think this is why I generally dislike (or perhaps it’s better to say distrust) pianists who don’t or can’t play Chopin.
In any case, ultimately and gladly, there’s way more than one way to enjoy these things. I think here I’m just picking on what I think is the most important one, what we in the end would say is art.
There are different ways to be moved, though. Hamelin has never reached me in the way that a lyrical pianist such as Ginzburg or Lipatti have, but he has definitely elicited strong emotional reactions from me, for example in the chordal crescendo section of the Quasi-Faust from Les quatre âges.
It’s so bland? And “pretty”? It’s still better than what most of his colleagues were writing at the time, but it is the only Chopin work I can think of I’ve been repelled by (though there are several more Mazurkas and early works I don’t particularly care for).
ever stumbles on here after I forget to log out…I’m so fucked.
