I think Chopin was probably one of history’s greatest improvisers, considering that all his pieces started off as improvs. Probably only Bach was better. This is pozz why I’m not a fan of modern improv (whether Kat style or otherwise) because it takes a great composer to be a great improviser, and frankly no modern pianists are great composers. 
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Yes?
Care to elaborate on why you think this is so? Seems counterintuitive given that jazzers rarely “compose”.
Tru i think da moz legendary chop improz may haff pozz reached COMME level m*zically 
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You like Chopin that much?
That’s a very different kind of improvisation though. With classical music I think Brew is absolutely correct, although I’m not sure the reverse is also true.
How?
I think most of jazz is improv in the same way that Katsaris is improv. That is to say, not really at all. They already have a very clear idea of what they’re going to do before they do it, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to play together.
I was mostly talking about classical anyway. Any of the well known improvisers in classical music, I don’t think much of. This is why the loss of improvisation in classical music isn’t much of a loss to me.
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Hm, they have a basic structure, sure, and of course there is some technical stuff you have to learn but the idea is that they organically interact with each other. So it is improvisation. Or at least, maybe you have a different definition of it?
And this leads to: what is classical improvisation anyway? Improvising in the style of a composer/era? Improvising in an idiomatic style (which you could just call jazz anyway)? I would say it is rather unfortunate that has fallen out of favor, because it can be quite exciting.
I don’t see how the principles of improvisation would be different in jazz and classical. Sure, the style will be different, but how is the process different? Ted Greene was able to improvise in a chord-melody style on jazz standards but would also play 2-3 voice baroque stuff at times too. He “just” had to learn a different style.
I think we probably just have different expectations of improvisation. For me, what makes Chopin’s or Bach’s improvisation great is that it was pure creation; it lead to music which hadn’t been conceived before. That’s what impresses me. If we believe what George Sands said, all of Chopin’s pieces started as improvisations. For example the story of op 64/1 being composed based on a dog that chased it’s tail (in French it sometimes has the nickname “valse du petit chien”). It may be apocryphal, but even if the pieces we are left with were extremely “worked out” afterwards, this is a level of improv far beyond Cziffra (no hate).
This seems rather nebulous though. You don’t really know that “it was pure creation; it lead to music which hadn’t been conceived before”. Does the music of a Cziffra improv exist before he played? What are “levels” of improv?
n diz iz y
u iz da BEZT FAN klazzikal m*zic cud evah hope fo 
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I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I feel much romantic improvisation is ornamentation of a basic idea using whatever bag of tech tricks the pianist has. It’s actually quite a big topic, but “classical” “improv” imo tends to go in one of two directions, form-free, which can gravitate towards aimless noodling, and “on themes” which at best reaches spontaneous paraphrase construction but more often is “which tech for the next segment?”
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There are absolutely levels of improv. For example, someone going through a bag of tricks isn’t the same as someone who has no idea what they’re going to play before they play it. Things can be in different stages of being “worked out”. But this is not the point I’m making. The reason why I think Chopin was one of history’s great improvisers is that he composed music which broke new ground. Music which started as improvisation. The fact that something someone is playing hasn’t been written down and therefore is “improv” doesn’t mean much to me, or I’d go crazy over Katsaris going through his bag of tricks. I couldn’t care less whether it exists before he plays it because I don’t think it’s good music, therefore I don’t value it and can do without it. This is why I don’t see the lack of improvisation amongst current pianists as any great loss, because I don’t value them as composers.
We already established that I couldn’t care less what you think.
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I think you’ll find it’s perfectly possible to satisfy both criteria 
tbh that is probably my standard modus operandi…
Not the principles, but maybe the goal and the meaning. With Chopin and Liszt here at least what makes their music so remarkable is their ability to put scenes, emotions, moods and mental constructs in to sound, to keep a narrative in their music, and to create compositions which have such distinct character that they often are like little universes of their own. Beethoven for instance is known to have routinely brought his listeners to tears, only to abruptly pulled them out of it simply since he liked to play with them. From all accounts these people could play in exactly whichever way they wanted, had minimal barrier thought to sound, and had the same ability to make up tales at the piano on the spot like you and I do in words to a child, which we can choose to be heroic, grand, sad, happy, exciting, fantastic, thoughtful etc or anything in between depending on which characters we introduce and what we subject them to. You’re speaking to one of the most indifferent people on the planet towards jazz, but if jazz does anything like that it’s at least flown over my head. I think it’s easier in that case to draw parallells between jazz and the kind of technical improvisation found in the baroque, where it’s more a matter of keeping things rolling and go with the flow.
I anyway think Brew’s right since if you’re able to improvise like Chopin, Beethoven, Liszt etc did, you’re also able to simply refine it a bit and write it down in which case it should make a similar impact as a composition. I’m not sure the reverse is true though. I can well imagine there are many great composers who weren’t great improvisers, since they needed much more time to work out their ideas and have the music do what they wanted it to do, or maybe since they didn’t have the same frictionless connection with an instrument some of the great composers did have.
Yeah that’s true, but it’s more about muscle memory no? Maybe with your ears you also know where you’re trying to get to harmonically as well.