Yeah. When it comes to virtuosity, Hamelin is more impressive than Horowitz.

Musicality/sensitivity may be a different battle, but Hamelin is also a very musical and sensative player, too.

Also, Alexei Grynyuks's Hungarian Rhapsody octaves surpass Horowitz, Argerich, Janis's and Cziffra's in raw speed (sure he does miss one jump and one octave, but the blurry sound probably comes from the recording hall and use of a video camera. Believe me, I've recorded video in similar circumstances, and the same thing happened when I was not overdepressing the damper pedal.)



The whole performance isn't my favorite, but there are many amazing Horowitz performances that really aren't my favorite either...

How did we get all the way over here?

Back to the original position of LaReginadellaNotte: 16 year old kids playing chopin etudes, no matter how much Julliard examiners/professors love them, are not prodigiously talented if that's their upper limit. Fantastically talented maybe, but not prodigious.

Prodigious talent can, and probably should be, reserved for the little ones at or under 13 playing much more difficult works (Kissin playing the Chopin concertos at 16, this american pianist playing Rach 3 at 13, Josef Hoffman, etc).

I suspect that Grynyuk was playing the octaves faster than he could. They didn't sound as clean (and certainly not as loud) as Horowitz' octaves normally did, although they were extremely fast. I remember seeing another clip of Grynyuk playing the octaves from the Liszt Sonata, and he played them so fast that not every note was sounding.

Kuanpiano, what about pianists who developed impeccable technique after only seven years of playing? Are they prodigious? What if the pianists also play works that are much harder then the Chopin Etudes?

Hamelin playing Opus Clavicembalisticum at 17 and sight reading the Liszt Transcendental Etudes at full speed.

(I have no reliable source, just a YouTube comment of someone who said they went to school with him as a teenager... But either way is sounds AWESOME haha!)

Youtube username "zebb1111" said:



Here's the video, second page of comments (I think): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMLVzWInJu0

Opus Clav claim comes from somewhere else...

EDIT: LaRagina, I didn't like how A.G. played the Liszt octaves either.

I said that if they were 16 and that a Chopin etude was the best they could do, then it's not prodigious. 7 years of playing? And you're missing the point: the correct term is child prodigy, and 16 is not a child. I mean, if a 50 year old person who started learning piano at age 43 learned chopin etudes, would they be considered a prodigy?

Do you think that Horowitz was a prodigy? He claimed that he wasn't, although one of his teachers,Tarnowsky, claimed that he was. Horowitz studied with Tarnowsky from the ages of 12-16, and I know that he was playing the Rach 3 by the time he was 15 or 16, but I don't know how advanced Horowitz was at the age of 12 or younger.

You didn't like his octaves either, OSK? Perhaps we have similar octave preferences. lol In what way do you think Hamelin is more technically accomplished than Horowitz? Do you think that the former can play faster and more accurately?

I don't know, but I don't really care either. Prodigy doesn't mean a person will develop into a great pianist, and great pianists aren't all child prodigies.

Why the Horowitz obsession?

Well, I do consider Horowitz the greatest pianist, after all.

According to Harold Schonberg, in order to develop into a great pianist, you must first be a child prodigy. He said that the reflexes needed for virtuoso playing need to be developed at a very young age. According to Schonberg, if you start later than six, it may be too late to become a virtuoso.

Well, it doesn't have anything to do with being a child prodigy. I'm sure only know of his playing well after his formative years, but that doesn't say anything about his past. I mean, Richter's a legend, but he certainly started piano late, went to the Moscow Conservatory impressing Neuhaus, and then went on with his studies and career.

Dimitris Sgouros was a child prodigy who played Rach 3 at age 12 or 13...but apparently some people have heard his recent playing and claim it doesn't compare to any of the greats. This isn't my opinion, because I haven't heard his playing personally, but from what I've read around..

Do you think that Schonberg was wrong for saying that you have to be a prodigy and to start no later than six in order to become a virtuoso?

Yes he was wrong.

Yes. He is not a god.

Do you always rely on other people's opinions to form your own? Just curious..

Well, when someone is well-known enough to be writing a book, I tend to take their opinions seriously. Perhaps I shouldn't, as even published authors don't always know what they are talking about. With that said, I do agree with some of Schonberg's critiques of Horowitz's playing.

Since Schonberg was merely a music critic, perhaps he didn't understand the piano playing mechanism well enough to judge what has to be done in order to be a virtuoso. Without the firsthand experience of developing a virtuoso technique, it may be difficult to speculate as to how someone else might go about developing one.

You're right...Hamelin does have amazing technique, but there's not that sense of ease with him that Horowitz brought. Hamelin's playing often leaves me cold, while Horowitz' playing was anything but.

He was right and yes when they are better informed than me.

Anyone can write a book and these days practically everyone does. I'm not saying Schonberg was a nobody...I'm simply saying you don't need to be "someone" to be published.

If you're relying on another's opinion to form your own and they're better informed than you are, then how do you know that they're right and how do you know their information is correct, since you're uninformed to begin with? Because they learned it from so-and-so? Who's the ultimate authority? Why let someone else decide what's truth for you?

Who said uninformed? Adolescent logic if I ever saw it.

Absolutely. Especially more accurately, because often times Horowitz wasn't the cleanest performer (doesn't take away from his magic, though). Have you listened to much Hamelin? He's a real wonder! He is an incredible wonder: the COMPLETE Godowsky Studies on Chopin's Etudes (forget Chopin's Etudes and Liszt's Transcendental Etudes... he probably plays them all and they're too easy for him!) as well as his own ridiculously hard compositions, and the ridiculously hard compositions of other obscure composers, and SO much more.

And a lot of people like him for his super difficult repertoire, but if you listen to him play slower things, he's very sensitive and musical, too.

I seem to remember having seen a video of him playing Un Sospiro up on youtube, and he plays it very sensitively.

Anyone who thinks M.A.H has anything on Horowitz in terms of technique has MUCH to learn about technique and sound production at the piano.

Hamelin is not a particularly clean player. I've seen him live three times now. Anyway, cleanliness in playing has little to do with technique-much more to do with being cautious vs. taking risks.

Piano technique is much more to do with control of textures, balance, and quality of sound. In these areas, Hamelin is quite unremarkable. Horowitz was quite a legend.

As I have said before on this forum-most of Hamelin's fans are teenagers madly in love with Alkan.

I don't even know why I'm posting this-Hamelin and Horowitz do not belong in the same post!

richter started pretty late.

If you think the only ones who are able to play virtuosic works are Horowitz and child prodigies-turned-professional-pianists, you're wrong. There are amateurs who can play just as well, at a lower standard due to lack of practice time, less talent, etc, but they CAN do it. If only Horowitz can play Rach 3, then how come there are many students, amateurs who can also play it as well? Granted it's not at the same level, but you know what I mean. Pogorelich is learning the Liszt sonata, and plays Rach 2 and his second sonata, as well as stuff like the Chopin concerto no. 2 and will probably deny that she was a prodigy. She's just one example (sorry if you didn't wanted to be used!! ><), but if you look around Pianoworld, there are many many many more pianists, who were not child prodigies, but have the chops to play some of the most difficult pieces out there.

Seriously, if you only hear of professors who can't play well, and your idea of a prodigy is a 16 year old playing a chopin etude, and all of your ideas about virtuosity come from Horowitz as well as reading others opinions...doesn't that make it painfully obvious that you don't know enough about "virtuosic technique" or how common it is to even comment on it?

His grandad was a piano maker, dad an organist, composer and teacher. He started at 8 - just inside the wire.

What do his relatives have to do with it? The point is he started later than 6, so Schoenberg was obviously not right about every single person.

Ps the dad was also a pianist

J.A.P. Alkan is more than fast notes. My favorite Alkan works are works Hamelin hasn't recorded yet... And even so, he does works like "Super Flumina Babylonis" and the Op. 65 Chants very beautifully.

Obviously! Go stand in the corner Mr Schonberg! (there's no e after the o)

You should have capitalized the "T" in "there's."

Either way, Richter was AWESOME. How about Harold Bauer? Did he not start playing piano until later? How much did being a violinist affect his ability to grow as a pianist?

Without a period it's not a sentence - so no! Harry may have switched but when did he start piano?