Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Wow! FTCL at the age of 13!

And this doctor did his FTCL at 11.

http://pianofortephilia.blogspot.com/2010/10/lin-xiu-min-piano-recital-review.html

But the point of such comparisons escapes me.

Without detracting one iota from the achievements of these amazing kids, I'd just like to point out that I was 46 when I completed my ARCT -- that was impressive for a completely different set of reasons And I did not end up hating the piano...

Hey :P Chewbachca, may i know what's your name? :P I googled my name and i saw this haha. And i created an account just to ask you this

I get the feeling though that not all of these kids are going to grow up loving to play the piano. In my anecdotal experience with some people I know they are in it for the prestige and applause, so once you reach the age where your playing hits a ceiling and people no longer wow over your performance they would much rather do something else rather than touching the piano.

I saw him on Australia Got Talent 2 Years ago. He started very very early and his dad is a pianist / teacher, which is also a big advantage.

Some of them will end up in a sanatorium or being serial killers. add some random quote from Rubinstein here please.
Look at the age the gold medal gymnasts are... the younger the better so much that there are regulations (remember the China scandal about that last Olympics?).
That is like piano... talent + hard work at ridiculously young age.

When I think about pianist that gave me something "more" I think about Rubinstein, Horowitz, Askenazy, Arrau, Richter, Algerich, Gould... and many more... and I don't picture their faces as kids.

It's impressive to absorb that kind of notions as a child... but at that age (been there, done that) you're way more of a computer able to "reproduce" what you learn more than being able to process the information and develop your own theories.... you need the information, but only if you aren't burn in the process you MIGHT say something original by your 30's and beyond.

To me piano playing isn't a 100 meters run... it's a life long marathon.

Dmitris Sgouros graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, London at 13 with the highest marks the Academy has ever awarded, but at 12 he'd already graduated with a Professor's Diploma and Gold Medal from Athens Conservatoire. And he'd already made his Carnegie Hall debut at 12, playing Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto with Rostropovich, and went on to record it with the Berliner Philharmoniker a year later.

Impressive, no?

And he's still playing.....

Hehe, please stick around. Glad to have you on board.

I'd like to know this myself. This appears to be a 20th century composition. From 3:53 on, the piece is a paraphrase of Beethoven's Turkish March from the Ruins of Athens.

I bet he'll come to hate the instrument faster than I ever will.

What these kids do is absolutely incredible, no doubt. But sometimes, with the grading schemes it feels a heck of a lot like rhythmic gymanistics and not very much like art.

What is the visual art equivalent? Do they have grades and exams, so you can be XY-17 by age 9? What would you be doing? Reproducing and interpreting famous artworks from different eras in painting, sculpture, etc. under time pressure?

This is why classical music is dead. But on the upside, if we keep up the codification and quantification of "skill", piano may be added to the olympics soon.

I feel that we need to hear the young pianist's point of view and explain how much he loves (or doesn't love) what he's doing before just throwing out statements like "He'll grow up to hate it", or how it's just mimicking teachers and recordings instead of art.

I mean, sure, it's hard to be a profound, experienced artist when one is young, but that's a part of the growing process, is it not?

i think the concern is the amount of practice required for these kids to get to where they are when it is difficult to get any kid to sit down and focus on something for hours on end. there's been too many examples of parents living vicariously through their child nowaday, and my fear is that they are motivated to play for the wrong reasons even if they are naturally talented and enjoy the music

from personal experience sometimes mixing your hobby with your job just turns it into a chore

Haha for those of you who wants to know what the song name is. I don't remember, it's been really long since i played it :P but it's something like Ruins of the Athens.

Yes - after a long introduction the piece eventually morphs into a paraphrase of Beethoven's Turkish March from the Ruins of Athens - but obviously this modern arrangement is not by Beethoven.

I have this friend in London who was a piano "prodigy". Her brother told me this, she never did. She still loves music (in her mid 30s now), and met her Anyway , he told me she was "freaky", started playing at 9-10, was playing the Rach 2nd and 3rd concertos at age 15. She got a lot of pressure from the Conservatory and her environment, and kept playing. She only played live in small venues and for chamber music programs only. By the time she went to Uni at 18, she totally gave up piano and has never played again. There s still a grand Yamaha at her parent' s, but she s never sat at it ever again. Whenever i ve spoken to her about it, she doesn t say she ended up hating it, just that she liked a different life and career better (she s a quite successful recruiter now), and that she was not going to play piano part time only.

It took some investigation, but I found it:

Fantasie über Motive aus Beethovens Ruinen von Athen, S.122 (Liszt, Franz)

http://imslp.org/wiki/Fantasie_%C3%BCber_Motive_aus_Beethovens_Ruinen_von_Athen,_S.122_(Liszt,_Franz)

I think the player took a cut in the beginning and skipped the cadenza.

This is how Liszt gets a reputation for writing trashy music. There is nothing musical about this performance. There is just episode after episode of complex and difficult passagework, none of it connected in a long line that would give you a sense of the piece as a whole. The playing is sloppy; the opening trills for example give little evidence that there is a melody buried in all that labored effort. There is no lightness in the playing, and a sense of bravura is missing because the performer does not have a comfortable and relaxed command of the material. He can barely show an ability to create a tonal contrast from bar to bar.

This music could probably be credibly performed by Cyprien Katsaris, Arcadi Volodos (who has his own spectacular version of the Turkish March of Mozart), or Marc-Andre Hamelin. A teacher should not assign this music to a teenager no matter how talented because it is not clear the student would have a mature control of the instrument. This does not just mean a mature interpretive skill - it means an ability to play a virtuoso piece with complete relaxation which comes after many years of experience.

As a result, this performer does no credit to himself and does a complete disservice to Liszt.

[It is not clear from the score that the Alternativo (Andante fantastico) should serve as a replacement for the opening section that precedes it. By performing it this way, there is little hint until halfway through the composition that you are listening to a transcription of the Ruins of Athens. Maybe it was intended to be added to the first section.]

I originally suspected that the piece might have been by Liszt - but it just didn't add up. Now it all makes sense. Thanks !!

Here's a "performance" (piano roll by Ferruccio Busoni) of the original complete work. The section that our 13 year old pianist plays starts at around 4:50 in this recording. And yes - by starting at this point in the piece the listener doesn't realize this is a transcription of the Turkish March from the Ruins of Athens until halfway though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsdWyPBeDJI

This was the Fantasie on Themes from the Ruins of Athens, S. 122 in solo version. Our 13 year old artist performed the Capriccio on the same themes, S. 388. There is some similarity at the opening but then the two works veer off in different directions. It is as if Liszt had an endless variety of piano variations he could concoct for any music. The Fantasie is also available with orchestral accompaniment and 2nd piano accompaniment. I wonder why it isn't performed as a piano concerto? It is certainly both musical and effective. Maybe it is hard to find the individual scores for the orchestra players.

Busoni was thought of by his contemporaries as one of the cleanest performers around, and it shows. He is virtually note perfect, with elegant style, and attention to the long line I was talking about earlier. His piano on this recording roll from 1907 sounds wonderfully rich - I think they used Steinways for these piano rolls.