Is anyone on this forum familiar with Yevgeny Sudbin? What do you think of him? Personally I find him incredibly impressive and would take any chance I get to go and listen to him.

I like him very much. Saw him in concert last year--his "Gaspard de la Nuit" was one of the best that I've heard. I have most of his BIS recordings and enjoy them very much, too. I don't have his latest Chopin recital, which has gotten mixed reviews.

His recital a couple of years ago in Denver was quite stellar. You should see him when you get the chance.

I heard him perform Beethoven's 4th piano concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra back in 2008. Absolutely brilliant. By far one of the greatest performances of the piece I've heard. The following year he returned to perform the 5th concerto, and I found it far less impressive.. rather disappointing.

I own a few of his recordings of Scriabin and Haydn piano sonatas. Those I quite enjoy.

The disappointing Emperor aside, he's definitely a wonderful pianist that's on my watch list.

-Daniel

I became aware of him because whenever I went looking on youtube for my video of Scriabin's 9th Sonata, his was one of the few that came up before mine.

His is a little better.



It's super.


edit: I took another listen, and....granting that I can't be objective I'm going to amend that comparison.

He "plays" it better -- way better -- but I can't say it is better. It's far more impressive technically -- I couldn't dream of doing some of the very fast stuff that he does -- but he doesn't let you hear as much of what's going on.

To each their own.

Wonderful pianist, one of my favorites among the 30-somethings (though I only know of his work through recordings).

I haven't had the time to listen to all of it, but his Chopin disc contains some eyebrow-raising moments - but nothing provocative enough to distract from my enjoyment.

Here's a Radio France podcast of a recent concert in Bremen by Sudbin:
http://sites.radiofrance.fr/francemusiqu...;d_id=425007000
Click on the headphone icon on the right to open the popup player.

The podcast will be available for the next 30 days.

Wow.

BTW, I knew my grammar was wrong! As I've noted before (with you!), I consider the 'correct' usage stilted, especially in casual settings.

In formal writing, I would have said it right.
Or actually, more likely, I wouldn't have used the phrase at all. I try to reserve cliches for chatting.

I heard him play Beethoven 4 with San Francisco Symphony + Ashkenazy conducting, and I remember him being quite good so I bought his Scriabin CD and his Medtner/Tchaikovsky Concertos CD (I'm a Medtner/Scriabin fan). With Scriabin, he takes somewhat excessive liberties with tempo but really brings out the color/tone and really nails the feel. I'm not synesthetic, but for some of the weirder Scriabin preludes that are really hard to understand, I feel like his playing can almost bring out those flashes of light and whatever.

The Medtner/Tchaikovsky was really amazing though. I'm so glad I bought that disc, the Medtner is one of those pieces you never hear, and it is one of my all time favorites. I see some "Medtner plays Medtner Concerto 1" recordings floating around on Youtube, and they are much less convincing than Sudbin.

You don't think he did the same with Beethoven? I think so, but I really loved his Beethoven's 4th nonetheless.

-Daniel

I only mentioned Scriabin because I played a bunch of the pieces on that CD, and followed most of them with sheet music, and he does some really wild tempo fluctuations. With the Beethoven, I'll be honest, I didn't really remember it that well, and I hadn't heard it before. Didn't help that Davies has bad acoustics and I couldn't hear the piano over the orchestra very well from my seat.

Everything I've heard him play, I tend to agree on the tone and balance that he uses, it's very carefully and tastefully done. IMHO.