Think it was more obscure than that.
Howard really can play, though you’d never guess from his Hyperion recordings. I heard him live too around 2003ish maybe and was surprised by how little it sucked, although he does seem to have declined significantly since. There’s also a wealth of live recordings with him around from the 70s and 80s playing both rare and exceedingly difficult works which are supposed to be very impressive (it’s the playing which earned him the right to embark on a complete Liszt series, after all), although I haven’t heard any of them myself. Yet… it’s definitely something I think could be worth looking in to.
Still, great forgotten pianists and we’re talking Leslie Howard… I’d like to nominate Richard Farrell, Frederic Chiu, Arthur de Greef, Jan Smeterlin, Pär Lund, Rudolf Kehrer, Robert Goldsand, André Laplante, Valentin Gheorghiu, Dubravka Tomsic, Arnold Kaplan, Edouard Risler and Henri Barda.
…who if not forgotten are at least rarely talked about today, or have never achieved the fame and careers they deserved. Several more spring to mind immediately actually.
Best of all… all are flesh & blood (I see I misunderstood this topic completely)
Nothing is what it seems…
I know gullivior, I met him personally in Italy and he IS a great pianist, teaching at a Conservatory in N Italy. Because of all kind of personal complications he never made it as a concert pianist.
These “great forgotten pianists” are obviously all fake funny names, gudman explained them well. However, the recordings are NOT Midi, all these pieces were actually played/recorded on a keyboard by gullivior but at a slower speed, often at about half tempo.
So in a way they are fake/artificial but they are still human.
In my opinion, uploading these series is a sort of ‘revenge’, combined with a great sense of humor…