Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is the new crop better than the old???

Only if the music isn't being compromised to achieve it, which 99% of today's pianists do.

This is pretty obvious kiddo, but your understanding here is skewed.

People that hold views in opposition to mine are not "fools"; people that hold foolish views are fools.

You sound like such an idiot when you say this to people who are likely twice+ your age. Show some respect.

This is simply because piano play is a finite system, and the breadth and depth of the system has been explored enough to almost be exhaustive. The only things that remain are perhaps the things most difficult for the human being: all the right notes at just the right time, and things like this.

You mad bro? Show some respect, kiddo.

Shoot, I thought they were the new crop.

Definitely–not everyone likes everything and all music. That's part of what makes all of this fun and gives us the variety we want. Some like this and some like that.

That said, there's a much richer and rewarding experience to be had with Art Tatum than the surface texture of fast runs. For anyone who's interested here's a great book about Tatums's right hand and what makes it special and unusual. And it's not his technical ability–although that's part of the equation. No way around it.

Tatum wasn't a bebop player. But his approach to harmony was a serious influence on Charlie Parker. That's been documented. Here's a pretty good article from the NY Times about Tatum where that's described: Why A Virtuoso Pianist Still Provokes Debate.

Another amazing part of Tatum's art was his rhythmic virtuosity. Those runs were essential to it.

Here's another article from the NY Times where the great jazz pianist Hank Jones explains the musical role of fast arpeggios and figures in Tatum's style. Hank Jones talks in the article about how those runs express harmony. From what HJ says anyone who knows John Coltrane's music may wonder if they were an influence upon him as well.

Tatum may be an acquired taste–no doubt about it. But so is a lot of great music. Sometimes with great music the rewards can be even greater when we go to it. Rather than hoping it'll come to us.

And there is a lot of great music, jazz and classical and everything else, where the surface textures can sound totally the same–to an uninitiated listener. But with experience and some understanding the worlds of those musics open up themselves up. It's not an uncommon experience for musicians to hear something and not like it. And then come back to it later–sometimes years later–and wonder how they missed it in the first place!

I hope no one'll read any of this as argument that Art Tatum is great and everyone should love him. His music may be be great. But if you you don't like it, for whatever reason, that's absolutely fine. Because there's a lot of other great music out there to be played and heard! But, on the other hand, put in the extra effort with Tatum and the rewards are there. But that's a choice of course.

Just in case anyone wants to see what Tatum's music looks like on the page I googled "Tatum transcription" and was amazed to find a Vol. 1 and a Vol. 2 of Tatum transcriptions that someone's photocopied and put on the web. Probably not legal at all but, for better or worse, there they are.

Download either or both books and take a look. It's not just the right-hand runs that'll stand out. There's his rhythmic virtuosity, his amazing sense of harmony, the left-hand stride figures with tenths, the inner lines. His voice leading is impeccable. And with everything that's going on there's nothing wasted. You can see that in the transcriptions. If you like his music you can hear that in the recordings. Well. My opinion! But, again, for anyone who doesn't like it. Well, that's fine. It's only music! And Tatum's legacy is contested by many. One of the NY Times articles I linked to above says as much. But it also points out that Horowitz, Rachmaninoff, and others were among the great pianists who used to go hear him play.

Hope the transcriptions are fun and that'll someone'll take a try at playing some of the them.

I couldn't help myself ... here's Tatum playing Jerome Kern's Yesterdays. Jazz pianists who play this tune still quote bits and pieces of it from Tatum.

A bold proposition, but is it true?

Tatum was a better musician than every single one of today's Classical music regurgitators.

Re Tatum's RH facility: at first I was astounded, then bored, but then astounded again, and still, to this day: astounded

A crude analogy: at 6 I thought Bach was boring (which to my 6-year-old brain meant "repetitive"). ut at 12 I heard the Brandenburg Concerti (courtesy of a music course my mother happened to be taking at UofToronto under "Dr. Ouchterlony" back in the day).

Then onto the Well-tempered, the choral music.... I was hooked.

Repeated exposure sharpens the ear and the mind.

Yes, there used to be more discussions about music, interpretation and technique. There have always been a few curmudgeons but most of them were knowledgeable and additive, even if they were a bit crusty.

For the last two years or so, the forum seems to be dominated by people who are either overly fond of hearing themselves talk or who, IMO, go out of their way to be nasty just because they can do so in anonymity, i.e., they are trolls. I can't make them go away, but I can ignore and pity them.

Over the years, the ebb and flow of members will continue to change the flavor of the forum. I am waiting patiently for a return to the bracing, interesting, collegial atmosphere we had in the past. I originally came to PW to learn but I haven't been learning much lately. I do hope those members who have contributions of value will continue to post.

Atrys, you must know that arguing a viewpoint by calling it "obvious" and refusing to provide examples is unpersuasive and, dare I say it, ignorant.

So please make some specific comparisons. What contemporary pianist has a more commanding technique than Godowsky? Rachmaninoff? Lhevinne? Busoni?

Take a look at the forums on PianoStreet and you'll see what these forums can become if we're not careful.

Consider an ordered set of living, contemporary pianists ranked descendingly by technical facility. Consider sets created in identical fashion, but for different time periods. I'm asserting that the mean technical facility is higher for sets appearing closer to the present; this trend will continue into the future.

One can make the case that the most skilled pianist for any given set is not surpassed by the most skilled pianist in sets appearing afterward, but I also believe this is pedagogical stupidity. Listen to recordings from Rach and other icons that have available material; it's obvious to any thinking person with functioning ears that the elite of today play circles around some (most) of these men.

I agree that outliers may exist, but it's only a matter of time before they are truly surpassed; human population will increase, methods and techniques improve, etc. Don't think for one second that Rach or Liszt or whomever else will "remain the best forever", this is nonsense, and so too is the thinking that contemporary technical facility is on par with the skills of dead talent.

I'm resisting the urge to be rude, but this is just so, so wrong. What do you intend to do in the field of arts, why are you in a classical piano forum if you think it has all been "explored enough"?? I'm not attacking you, Atrys, I really want to know this...

You're thinking in a different scope; I'm talking about the physical mechanism of piano play with "explored pathways" as a cursor, not the "art" of piano play.

Yet I often find the ones from the past more pleasing to listen to. So whatever the contemporary pianists do better does not necessarily enhance their musical performance.

Maybe it's the recordings that are so overworked these days. But it could also have something to do with the way pianists prepare these days. Someone (cannot remember who) said that a good performance has the element of taking risks. Maybe pianists these days have to overpractice in the quest for note perfection to the extend that musical freshness disappears from their performances?

For me the best pianist is one who can play the piece in different ways still sounding good, not the one who can replicate the performance endlessly with exact precision.

Absolutely.

Any teenage hotshot these days can hammer out anything frighteningly difficult as fast as the fastest recordings we have from the big names of yesterday. I just heard a 15 year old play Feux Follets as fast as Berezovsky with ease, and he isn't even famous yet. I know of people at Curtis going through an entire shelf of difficult repertoire in one year, and their playing is squeaky clean.

You can cherry pick the top names from "the old" (e.g. Richter) or the older pianists who are still around who play very clean and fast (e.g. Argerich, Hamelin), but if you set the bar slightly "lower" (e.g. Ashkenazy), I think you'll find a huge number of 20-somethings now that can match that.

If this is the definition of good pianism, then it is probably true

It may be possible to accept the above thesis (which I'll have to remain agnostic about 'till I get more information), and, as well, the thesis that the "older" crop of pianists remain more interesting to listen to. In other words, we can acknowledge that superb technique (in the narrower sense of the word) abounds these days. But perhaps it has been at the expense of spontaneity or "risk-taking."

But superb technique (again in the narrow sense) isn't or shouldn't be inimical to artistry. In the right hands it should serve as a sort of "handmaiden" to it.

I suspect that part of the problem is that when you hear playing as clean as, say, Yuja Wang's is, it's difficult for "older" ears like mine to hear the art. I only hear phenomenal, mind-blowing technique, which I'm not accustomed to hearing; and the aesthetic moment, although it may be there, is somehow obscured, or lost, at least to my ears.

I do like Trifonov for purely aesthetic reasons. And the "technique" is transparent. But I haven't heard him in really technically challenging rep. So, there are exceptions to the generalization I made at the start.