slippedisc.com/2018/04/the-least … ent-426358
Some of you might want to add some names as well in the comment section? 
Does he mean to say Arrau is the least remembered giant of the piano?
That feels incredibly 
in that case. I think he’s still very much with us.
I can’t immediately think of anyone fitting the title actually, but certainly in terms of reissues I’d like to nominate Gieseking and Backhaus, who haven’t been given the attention they deserve. Cherkassky perhaps. Firkusny also springs to mind, who you never hear about, but I suppose it could be questioned whether he ever was a giant.
Among your suggestions Erwin I agree about Horszowski, but I wouldn’t call Ginzburg, Feinberg, Medtner or Neuhaus forgotten. And I wouldn’t call the others giants…
Well at least they were forgotten by all the SD readers so far!
Totally agree with your suggestions Christian.
Btw at least four of the names that Lebrecht mentions I wouldn’t put in the top 10…
I’ve been periodically refreshing this article since I first saw it, and I know such lists are subjective and a bit stupid, but how anyone can have Brendull in their top ten and not ABM is completely beyond me. I do absolutely despise some of Brendull’s Liszt and his pompous and hypocritical ramblings about “sanctity of the score” leave me struggling to avoid expletives.
It was 60 odd comments before someone mentioned Pogo btw? He may be mad now but he was clearly a genius before. And almost no mentions of Hofmann, unbelievable.
hahaha pozz tha HOUZE?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Keyvv_4vog
or check tha hung rappah in tha relatd 
ahahahahaha i alzo c tha legendary CAMBRY in tha relatd! 
tha original TUBE legend 
fuckkkk, da cambry!!!
haven’t heard that mofo mentioned since like 2006.
Yeah, his few existing recs are consistently fabulous.
da
GHEY-LIB 
Well, there are A LOT of pianists, and we all gravitate towards different aspects of them. If one is to assess others’ lists I think one has to look at them as objectively as possible, and try to identify the qualities and influence of each pianist regardless of what you may think of them yourself. I think Gould is a complete clown at the piano for instance, but I’m still fine seeing him on a list like this because of the ideas he brought. He was “important” - I think what he did for Bach was even more revolutionary than what Rubinstein did for Chopin or Schnabel for Beethoven.
Brendel is a questionable name for me too however. I like him - if only sometimes and only so much - but no matter how I twist and turn this I still find it hard to motivate how he’d end up among the top 10 supposedly greatest pianists of the 20th C. I suppose you can see him as the poster pianist for the Urtext movement, which was very influential and maybe inevitable too following the playing during the first five decades of the century where nothing was particularly Ur-anything, but from my point of view at least that was a collaborative effort which neither began or ended with him.
I don’t see how a pianist who cuts the arpeggios from the norma fantasy can be held up as a poster boy for the urtext crew. Having said that, I do like many of his vox recordings.
Incidentally, I kinda like these lists. Not because I think they necessarily say anything about who really were the 10 greatest of the 20th C, but because when you ask people to name their pick you immediately get a feel for who that person is and what’s important to him/her in music (and, dare I say, what they not (yet) can see or appreciate in music). I think it’s especially helpful on forums like this, since people who frequent them are rarely either idiots or inexperienced - but they often see things in a different light than you do.
Hehe, well he plays urtext except in passages which are really difficult. 
There’s a lot of pianists who does that cut incidentally, I wonder why. If there was an influential edition printed at some point which left them out for instance.
Brendel makes a big thing out of pianists not respecting the composer’s intentions, then he does ridiculous things like his facilitations in the 2nd HR where I can only assume he misses notes out the ascending scales due to inability to play them fast enough. Earl Wild really lays into him in his memoirs, incidentally.
I don’t get why there is any fuss about him at all tbh. Sub-par tech, poor control of dynamics and tone colour, my personal bugbear would be his Liebestod where he doesn’t even voice stuff. Utterly dreadful and for his Liszt to be held up as a pinnacle of intellectuality is a fucking disgrace. In Haydn and early Beethoven he’s a bit better but there are real musicians who play this stuff, not this fraud with the air of an autistic waiter.
Rant ovah. Pozz.
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Incidentally I strongly suspect that some of his views on Liszt playing arise from a subconscious need to intellectually / psychologically rationalise his own limitations.
Man. 
da festin opens da flood gates.
No I agree I suppose, but I think Brendel had a rare ear for character. He may not be exciting or revolutionary or even necessarily particularly insightful, but everything sounds very “right” (sometimes…). At his best I really think he was special however. There was an autumnesque quality to his playing which could be extraordinarily beautiful - not least in Liszt - and there are moments live where he really transports his listeners. My take on him is essentially that he’s overrated by the masses, but underrated by pianophiles.
Haha. I genuinely find his Liszt close to unlistenable. I’ve got an old Vox disc where he’s playing paraphrases and the only one I can stomach is the Weber-Liszt Benediction or whatever it’s called, and I’m not going looking for it to check 
You say he sounds “very right” and I can see what you’re probably getting at. Trouble is I’d say “very correct” and I mean that pejoratively. I find something very studied and unnatural about his playing. It’s like something has emerged after great effort, not one of creative struggle but one of pedantic nitpicking. I admit there’s some subconscious bias on my part too, but I prefer musicians where the music is pouring out as if it’s spontaneous and outwith their control. (That’s why my favourite piano recordings ever would include 
Strauss paraphrases.)
That’s not his repertoire and he really had no business recording it.
However, he does very well in the sonata and concerti for example.
I like his Liszt because it’s different to the Cziffra approach.
Well I certainly agree he had no business recording it! The thing is there are so many other people I prefer in the concerti and sonata who aren’t deploying the Cziffra approach - otoh Bolet, Zimerman, for example. If anything Cziffra is a bit episodic and fragments the integrity of the sonata, though he plays with utterly exquisite delicacy in places. And in Beethoven I’d infinitely rather listen to Solomon and others.
In Holland, we piano students used to call him Alfred Zwendel (zwendel = fraud in Dutch), because of his technical simplifications where things get difficult. Whateva his merits, totally agree that he doesn’t belong in that top 10 of “giants”.