…But I can live with da result so far ( 
da winnah)
da zepp vil randomly vote fo
da GENSUI-KING
From 1’05 HAHAHAAHAHAH provin dat he iz truly dezervin of hiz SDC nick 
bazically diz mofo iz tellin da ROCK:
‘tru yo compo iz a bit zheeyat, let moi improve it while effortlezzly fakerudyin mazelf at da zame tym’
when da zepp inevitable ORCH debut cummah diz vil be ma reference rec tru
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Hahaha!!!
Dat iz a pretty wikid perf tho!
lol! I’ve honestly never noticed!
Well, even da Gensuiking isn’t da tru Gensuiking among these. Hofmann too sure knew how to fuck up a perfectly fine piece of music. But if pianopera throws in the towel that’s going to be my vote anyway since we can’t have him disappear in the noise here.
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There are several problems with this list.
One is that there are only three pianists I could live without on this list: Feinberg (though I admire his Scriabin), Cortot (for early Chopin and Debussy) and Kempff (I’ve never been a big Kempff fan).
Furthermore, several of my fav. 78rpm recordings were actually done by artists that are not on this list: Busoni (Liszt HR), Backhaus (several acoustic recordings), Rosenthal (Chopin plus his own arrangements), Petri (Liszt etc.) and Lhévinne (pretty much all of his recordings).
Soooo…I voted blanco. 
Yeah but AGAIN!!! - I could only pick 10. As written in the OP it’s perfectly fine to cast your vote on someone else by just commenting.
I left out Busoni intentionally actually since we have so few recs by him, and I also doubt they show him at his best. I’d like people to vote based on what they’re hearing and not on legend (though if you do find his HR13 superior to anything the others did that’s of course still a valid vote). If I had been able to redo the 10 I think I would have substituted Ginzburg for Zecchi however, but even so it wouldn’t have mattered for my vote. My dilemma here is between Kempff, Friedman and Hofmann - though I’m perfectly fine with Rach as the winner.
Yes exactly so let’s leave it to that! He’s ‘hors catégorie’ in many ways…
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I really wonder what is a good place to start, how is this guy alongside Rach, Hofmann and Friedman
Damn! 
@xsdc which Kempff shud I go n listen to?
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Hahahah
http://www.dasdc.net/t/kempff-rameau-couperin-handel-kempff-mozart-kempff-schubert-etc/26084
Wtf happened to dasdc
His 78-rpms.
Some of my favourite Kempffs are from his 1945 sessions for Radio Hamburg/NWDR, recorded in an occupied Hamburg immediately after WW2. They’re extraordinarily beautiful and have a luminous autumnal quality to them you only really get from Kempff and live BRENDEL. I think you’d be content with the smoothness too. The Fauré Nocturne and Liszt Gondoliera from these are two of my all-time favourite piano recordings.
I’m also ridiculously partial towards his Beethoven Polydors. It’s commonly said he made three LvB sonata cycles - one in stereo, one in mono and “one on 78s” - but he in fact made lots of remakes of individual sonatas already during the 78-rpm era, including 4 Waldsteins and I think 5 Pathetiques. One particular favourite is the Waldstein on 57009-11 (->Dante), but I don’t recall any pre-LP Beethoven I don’t like from him.
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Oh no.
After 
intensity levels, no, this 111 - hell no.
I only listened to movt 1.
Sounds like 
Holy shit, this is what a comp 111 sounds like?
Fuck that!
Pretty sounds tho but wtf, he needs a Testosterone injection 
Eat some beef, boi! 
This fucker got the hell documented out of him, yet we don’t have enough Rock, prime hoff or Friedman fo fucks sake
Kempff: 
3 Likes
There are also some pretty great performances from Japan in the 60’s.
Man, I must be missing something. Let me hear some of his other recs:
I don’t see how he can be placed alongside Rach, Friedman, Hofmann or Moiseiwitsch… but let moi listen to his stuff for a few days.
True, a good description. Kempff at his best was poetic and inspired. But for me the Fauré, despite all its prettiness and subtle touches, lacks clarity, precision and above all strong passion. Many of Kempff’s (live) recs are marred by sloppiness - he simply didn’t have the technique for the big Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Schumann or Chopin pieces. In that sense, his pianism was quite limited.
Well, also true, but that’s like saying Monet lacks clarity, precision and strong passion. It’s the absence of that which opens up for the calm, mellow, dreamlike qualities which makes his works what they are. As with Kempff (in this particular case anyway) I think it’s perfectly applied to their motives.
I’m not as fond of him from his 60s onwards either, though live he could enthrall an audience right up to the end. Partly because of the waning tech, which never was particularly strong to begin with, but more since the smoothness and fluidity began leaving him. There’s something parlando about his later playing which I appreciate, but it’s also rather dry and wrinkled compared to his 78s. I don’t care much for his stereo recordings, but I still jump at every opportunity a new live recording comes within my reach.
Friedman fo detailz & zhort piecez - Rach fo big pickcha. :mart:
Moizeiwitzch fo combo ov both.
Well as usual this boilz down to personal taste and what you want to hear in this particular Fauré piece, or in his style in general. Calmness, mellowness, dreamy atmosphere are only part of it. I’ve played this Nocturne myself and for me, this music certainly needs these qualities but no less important are the strong passion, or even a sense of ecstacy…and at the same time you need to bring out the sense of direction, structure and clarity, and IMO more sober use of pedals than what Kempff does here.
He was never a musician who strove for technical perfection like for example ABM. From the beginning (from the earliest recordings) there was often a certain clumsiness in the more technical demanding parts of a piece. But his tone was often quite wonderful.
Dats mo of a symptom of da rec industry taste tho