Pianists with legendary pianissimo

Ah, definitely. I recently heard a live Chopin Sonata 2 which completely blew my mind. He would go from ppp to FFF and back like it was nothing. Pozzibly I will post this rec.

The 2 times I heard ABM he never played below a mf. you can see this in his vids from his last time, he was more preoccupied with projection than anything, so the playing never was really soft. It might suprise you, but the one time I heard Serkin, his pp were very well projected but really lovely. Also Ogdon had a really magic pianissimo when he was on.

I watched Lupu play a whole program at the lowest dynamic level I’ve ever heard, interrupted by some really harsh fff playing. So much for the poet of the piano.

Recently, I was amazed by Cykat’s myriad levels of p/pp/ppp, etc. the last time he played in nyc.

Then again, Lupu is seriously overrated.

Volodos does have wicked pp/ppp, schubert-liszt pieces particularly.

Lupu was widely criticized for his soft playing. don’t know if that has anything to do with his pianissimo playing.

Richter in his Franck PCF - after listening to his recording I started practising that piece (like um about a day ago). Then again, his Chopin Ballades are always so nicely shaded…

YES! Volodos!!!

I think Gilels is pretty much the only pianist who goes from FF to ppp in the coda of the Prokofiev 3rd Sonata.

Randomly, Goerner has sick control over his tone below pp, no matter at what velocity.

I’ve got a pretty controversial pick. Leslie Howard.

I remember when I was learning Liszt HR6, I listened to his recording and I was BLOWN AWAY by how he played the octaves section at a pretty fast clip, but in almost pp. I might not like ANY of his playing, but I have to dole out some respect for that.

There’s film of him just put on up on Youtube - he’s totally uninvolved in his playing, but he’s surprisingly competent on a lot of levels.

I still think his Liszt-Beethoven Symphonies are much better than both Katsaris and Biret. (Scherbakov has him beat though)

omg i’m gonna be died after this

Pogo :blush:

no matter what you think of him, in his younger days the guy had INSANE dynamic range. even in his bizarre and basically harsh op.111 there are some amazingly pppp moments in the variations where he is able to voice legato lines at very low dynamics extremely impressively

True

omg chris i thought i saw you charging a hadouken in my direction but then you agreed, wtf

Well, there’s not much to argue about when discussing Young Pogo’s technique. I feel like he played a lot of mf, but I do remember some great pianissimos.

That said, my hadouken is on standby and any mention of old pogo will cause me to unleash.

Haha da firzt rezult in google image when I typed “old pogo” :

lol :laughing:

Pogorelich has some extremely nice shades and technical control over his sound, weird I forgot about mentioning him as well.

Do accompanists count? Some of them do pretty good pianissimi.

definately not. the piano is usually half stick or the recording has been mixed to favor the voice, so it’s hard to draw a real conclusion.