That’s understandable. Let’s drop all the shenanigans and denude this sheeyat
The last two are Cherkassky & Rudolf Serkin.
Vlad, I was going to guess Cherkassky but thought he was Russian-British, but true he only lived in England in his later life. Very colourful individual pianist, not many like him today.
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Yeah Cherkassky was a singular MOFO. All-round Guru.
Great tech in his youth, as he aged he lost some tech but still had that magic colour. His Amsterdam open concert is really entertaining, shame most of the folk there didn’t appreciate the magic.
I probably shouldn’t recount this here, but keeping the details out a friend told me a pretty funny story about Cherkassky earlier this year relating to his peculiar (& polarizing) playing. My friend became a great Cherkassky fan already while a grad student at an American university in the 1970s, who also ran their own concert series where he had become invited as a committee member (after writing them and showing strong dissatisfaction with the Istomins, Brownings, Katchens etc they had chosen in previous seasons!). Knowing he’d face resistance over inviting someone like Cherkassky, he sent the other committee members (intellectuals & academics, as he described them) tapes of Shura playing not standard repertoire but “advanced” things like the Bartok Sonata etc, accompanied by a long letter of how authorative Cherkassky was in this repertoire. They agreed such a respectable, intellectual musician should of course be invited, and especially requested he play Bartok he was famous for (remember, SC was almost forgotten in the US at this time). Now in charge of the project, my friend then created his own program from the four (!) Cherkassky was offering at the time, of course keeping Stockhausen etc completely out of it!
He never said how the other members reacted after the concert, but he did say that a few months after the recital he was invited over to dinner at a relative who it turned out was also a great pianophile and who had recently heard of my friend’s interest. It turned out this relative had been in attendance at the Cherkassky recital, but found the playing so ridiculous that when he over dinner learned my friend was responsible for the coup of getting SC invited he broke off all contact with him! 
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From what I’ve heard of Cherkassky, perhaps it’s fair to state that he sometimes played like a pig, and sometimes like a God… 
I like some of his earlier 40’s and 50’s recs, da Strauss Godowsky Wine, Hookers n Zheeyat, da Brahms 3…
But much of the hard solo rep which he programmed (Brahms Paganini, Liszt DJ etc) - he couldn’t quite dominate it.
That said, he had an exquisite tone.
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Best playing I’ve heard from Cherkassky was a london recital from 1970, I think. It has a D959 which is still probably my favourite.
Wtf… datz def a Russian mofo!
How about diz mofo, an SDC legend, a legendaire of legendairez n alzo posessing sum of da most bootiful hands of all tym!
ahahahahah da MOTEL 
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truuuuuuuuuu!!!
Rezpek da zepp!
Motel??
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Grynyuk
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Oh, ok.
(Motel???)
Because he has good octaves and apparently there’s some motel called Super 8 or sum sheeyat.
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Haha, this is the most random nick yet
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Cherkassky once managed a legendary feat of non-recognition. A woman was brought to see him after da rectal and he thought she looked vaguely familiar but couldn’t place her, so he asked “do I know you” or similar…
“Yes. I used to be your wife.”
My piano teacher had one lesson with SC. It ended abruptly when SC hit on him and ended up chasing him round da 88.