Arrived this morning and I'm well chuffed .
On a side note, there seems to be no trace of either her or this CD on the Naxos website, and it's no longer available from Amazon.co.uk, although that's where I bought it from. Strange?

That's indeed strange, the link that the album once was listed under is empty now: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572491

Here it is as a download, but currently not available either: http://www.amazon.de/Valentina-Lisitsa-Beethoven-Schumann-Thalberg/dp/B003ACCGW0

I wonder if she did something to annoy them haha.

Let's be optimistic. Maybe the CDs sold out completely.

Or maybe V. Lisitsa has signed a contract with a major label and they wanted removed from market all prior recordings ?!?

I wish her Audiofon recitals were still available. When a used copy is offered on Amazon, it's usually at some obscene price!

I got the album on itunes, is it not there?

Great album - the Appassionata is elegant, powerful, and not excessive , like some of the recordings i' ve seen of her on youtube.

Just out of curiosity, what is "well chuffed"?

excited, happy ... british word

That's an interesting idea, it would explain why there is no trace of her on naxos anymore. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that it's sold out considering her internet following. Classical CD's never sell many copies.

she's a fast and accurately playing vamp, she could have been a tennischampion, but an accomplished artist?

I personally think chess would have been better fitted.

and a modelling career to follow that..

I personally don't find her that attractive.

well, neither do I, but most of us seem to do...

if she would put up some make-up she would be the beauty queen. i think she's still naturally beautiful.

meanwhile, in her ustream she avoided putting her face into camera and literally wrote into the chat "hands >> face" =)

Well I like her a lot :P

Hero worshipping is one thing, but this is just getting nasty :P

Plus, i don t think she aims for that kind of publicity. She's 41, practices 34000 hours a week ...

actually, she probably practices about 70 hours a week, as she stated herself that she usually practices 14 hours a day (!), and assuming she doesn't practice on the weekend and takes some time with her husband, the seductive villain

Don't break Debrucey's dreams now. I'm sure you'v got a shot at her. You just have to 'take care' of her current husband, and seduce her in another way that piano playing. You can do it!

Debrucey is a queersexual so no dreams have been broken ;-).

Also I don't like the term hero worshiping. I'd be the first to admit that she's done plenty of things that I don't like, hehe.

but one cannot deny that some of her Chopin études are quite to the point..

Her playing isn't my reference for anything, but she does some magnificent things, especially with the Chopin etudes! She has a technique I could only dream of having.

some of my pupils, practicing the études, always tell me how awsome she is, I used to blame that on their hormones, but having closed my eyes during her Youtube-version of them, I must agree: a fluent technique, and that's what at least some of them are about..

haha, maybe your hormones had an influence as well!
i imagine she could become my reference for lots of pieces, her technique and especially the clarity she brings to phrases and fast passages is amazing, yet somehow it's different from Hamelin, there's more magic.
i think Hamelin's only weakness is that he doesn't appreciate the sound of the piano, as he stated himself (slightly differently) he is only interested in its power to manipulate pitches, to produce polyphonic music, and he doesn't even care about piano construction etc.

I don't know anything about L.'s opinions about pianosound/construction, but in my case, hormones weren't involved

Where did he say that? That makes me very sad if that is true. He's been my idol for the past couple years (and my introduction to him was not Alkan, actually).

You would have been right if they were talking about Valentina Igoshina.

I remember the interview in which he used Antheil ability to create any sound out of the piano. I don't remember the comment about polyphonic music though. This, to me would seem like a contradiction to his style of playing thick textured music like Godowsky and Rachmaninoff which is simply to just let all the voices stay inside. Although I have to say I think this is a bad idea in some music. The Godowsky Sonata and the Passacaglia are both so extremely rich that the choice to not explore the different lines and weave them seems like a real loss.

Hamelin's interview for the no limits dvd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHz29Wt4uA
at 0:39 he starts talking about it

"and it might seem a little surprising, but i'm not really interested in the piano as an instrument itself, i don't care very much about piano making, piano manufacturing, it really doesn't interest me that much. What i care about is what it can do and how it can realize my thoughts and my intentions, and the composer's intentions. And i'm always interested in how far i can go, as i said, making audiences forget that i'm playing a piano or an instrument, i'm just making music"

the later point actually connects to what he said earlier (0:39), that debussy went pretty far to make a piano sound just like anything under the sun.

so the point is there, but maybe you can't completely deduct from that that he doesn't appreciate the sound of the piano. still, i'd like him to be more interested in the piano as an instrument.

that, i think, might be Valentina's advantage