Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Kissin, Lisitsa, Lang Lang So Overrated

I don't understand why they are so popular, they are approaching to a piano like some kind of athletics. they miss out the composer intention and show off with their skills rather than convey the music itself like cortot, rosenthal, paderewski, horowitz, richter and every other great pianists did. i think %90 of new age pianists destroy classical music. for example I watched the last chopin competition and i dissapointed compared to old ones i remember dang thai son, pollini, zimerman how they played with such delicacy but today pianists are more like hammer hitting on the piano, doing weird facial expressions they are just attention seekers. I ask to myself what is the difference between today pianists and lady gaga i don't see any difference

Years ago I saw a documentary of Horowtiz playing his last concert. He was quite frail by then and I was thinking, you have got to be kidding me- he can barely walk, how can he play? But he absolutely nailed pieces by Mozart and various Romantics with a touch and fluency which were celestial.
BTW, do not apologize for your Eglish. It is excellent.

Really?

Kissin? Seriously?

Batuhan, you say that as if it were a bad thing.

I can't comment about Lisitsa or Lang Lang, since I have heard very little of their works. However, I do enjoy listening to recordings of Kissin. You should watch the documentary/film "The Gift of Music" featuring Kissin, available on YouTube if you feel inclined to do so. I won't compare Kissin or Lang Lang to Richter or Horowitz in the same way that I won't compare Beethoven to Bach.
Then again, maybe I have bad taste or maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about

Don't watch competitions if you want to hear seasoned artists playing with mature and well-developed interpretations. Competition players are young and they're playing to impress judges. Watch concerts of today's best well-established concert pianists instead.

Don't confuse entertainment with virtuosity. It's nice when the two combine, but often entertainment leads the way.

and don't confuse virtuosity with artistry. It's nice when the two combine but often virtuosity leads the way.

The other two yes, but Kissin? I would have added Wang to that list.

It's the economics of commercialism in today's societies. Pianists that have something to say musically, usually do; deep personal art forms are something that doesn't market very well to the masses. If we want better artists on stage, we need more educated audiences that appreciate thought provoking experiences, over entertainment.

We live in different times.

OP, The pianists you mention in your title grew up in radically different environments, cultures etc......than the earlier pianists you mention in the body of the post.

I seem to remember a couple of my teachers making similar criticisms about Pollini during the 70"s: ".....bang, bang, and still more banging."

During the 80's, Kissin seemed to be a child-prodigy-freak-show; that is, if you believed some of the cruel criticisms that I heard.

It was all overly petty, jealous and stupid: I walked away thinking that these former teachers of mine were certified "a-holes."

Performing pianists can grow up in public, not quite like our Gaga-s and Kardashians, but they can. Not an easy thing to do, I bet.

Sometimes I feel that Lang Lang is genuinely trying out new ideas onstage to see if they work or not (disclaimer: this is from video and audio, it's been a # of years since I've seen him live). If he is, then that's his prerogative as an artist - one that is still growing.

Do we need to like everything that he does? No, we don't.

To me, regarding a live performance as a finished product is sort of
part of a competition mindset. Or maybe it's fear.

I'm a Lisitsa fan, but damned if I haven't tried to find something that I dislike about her playing, and I couldn't. That was probably some strange ego thing at work.

Attention-seeking? I hope so. How are they going to build the career that they want in our current cultural environment without that trait?

I like to think that we all seriously want to respect the composer's intentions - especially if we are still students. But my "objectivity" in that realm can easily be interpreted and filtered by your perception as "subjectivity", and vice-versa.

I'm getting in too deep for a leisurely Saturday morning. I'll shut up now.

First of all, you compared the three pianists to some of the really great pianists of all time. Saying someone is not as good as Horowitz, Richter, Cortot, or Zimerman would be true for the huge majority of professional pianists at any time in history.

Kissin IMO has been one of the best pianists in the world for 25 years and is incredibly popular with the public and often gets terrific critical reviews also. Lisitsa has gained great popularity from the internet and her radiant personality. Although I think she is very good, probably not many would call her world class. Lang Lang is a separate case. Very talented but more of a showman like some of the pianists of the 19th century. But as much as some dislike his playing, few can deny his incredible contribution to popularizing classical music and this alone makes him very important IMO.

I think it is huge big mistake(often made on this forum) to criticize the majority of young pianists as just bangers with technique and nothing else. Recent winners of the Chopin competition have been really terrific IMO, and I have heard at least a hundred concerts by young pianists who I believe show great musical understanding as well a big technique.

Some pianists who make facial expressions do it for attention but for many others, Trifonov or Uchida for example, that is not the case.

Lady Gaga happens to be a terrific singer if you heard her recent collaboration with Tony Bennett.

One difference between LGG and today's young professional pianists is that most of today's pianists probably can't play the piano while standing on the piano bench with their behind sticking up n the air.

I don't really see how anyone who has seen many of the huge number of terrific young pianists playing today could say that they all are on the purely entertainment level of Lady Gaga.

Most of today's young professional pianists can't sing either. Heck, even Horowitz and Richter couldn't sing, much less stick their behind up in the air........

I wouldn't put these three in the same bucket.

First, there is no comparison between Lisitsa and the other two. Let's take her out of this class because she is very inferior in every way compared to Kissin or LL. It is almost comparing an amateur to professionals.

That said I would not put Kissin and LL in the same bucket too.

Kissin right from the very start of his career had a usual normal, standard career of what other prodigies before him had. He plays predictably and solidly though some might find too standard and not so interesting at times. But nevertheless he is a great artist and deserves his place. I am happy that the world has him.

LL, is altogether on his own category. He represents the popular side of classical music mainly aimed at Asian and US markets. But it is not by luck that he is where he is. He earned his reputation too. Maybe it would be more appropriate to put him and Yuja Wang in similar categories.

I have yet to hear a truly interesting recorded performance from Kissin.

A few years ago, I heard Kissin play the Brahms First with the Toronto Symphony. It was wretched.

I consider Kissin an astoundingly talented pianist, and his video (as a teenager) of Prokofiev 6 just destroyed me. How could a young lad grapple with such 'adult' content? It is not music for youngsters.

That said, and with all due respect, Kissin can be oddly inconsistent. I heard him a number of times in London during my uni years (of course I knew everything then ), and a magisterial Schubert D958 oddly contrasted with a rather impatient assault on the 4 Chopin Ballades.

Of course the plentiful encores were great fun, including a breath-taking daredevil wiz through the finale of Weber's 1st sonata. Wow!

His recording of the Brahms F minor IMO was very fine, though I have not heard him play it live.

Selected cuts from that album are currently in rotation on our local jazz station.

If Tony Bennett makes up in enthusiasm what he may lack in current vocal abilities, who cares. A great collaboration, and anyone doubting the awesome talent of Lady Gaga should listen in!

But you are in a small minority because his concerts have been selling out for many decades and these are not the same people who flock to hear LL.

Not sure what "truly interesting" has to do with great piano playing.

I used to think that the Lady was all show and no talent (i.e. no voice, let alone pianistic skills), until I accidentally saw a clip of her singing Edge of Glory at the BBC Radio 1's 'Big Weekend' show on TV (it's on Youtube, if anyone's interested) - just her and the piano - and was amazed that a current pop singer can actually sing in tune (with no evidence of autotune) and with such finesse.......

You don't think a great performance has to be interesting?

I know people flock to Kissin's performances, and they get technically-competent, middle-of-the-road performances. There's plenty of demand for that kind of performance.

Give me an example of an adult Kissin performance where he takes any significant interpretive risks.

When I heard him play the Brahms, he sounded so uninvolved in the slow movement that the music came nearly to a standstill.

For me "interesting" is insignificant compared to moving, beautiful, involved, passionate, cerebral, etc. I would almost never use that word to describe a great performance. In Dubal's The Art of the Piano(where he gives Kissin a sensational review). he uses an incredible number of adjectives to describe the playing of hundreds of pianists. He almost never uses "interesting".

Technically "competent"?? That sounds like a joke. Kissin has one of the biggest techniques of any pianist.

"Significant interpretive risks"? Who cares? I'd argue that most of the great pianists don't do much out of the ordinary interpretively(I assume that's what you mean)? They just play more beautifully, musically, intelligently, and move the audience emotionally. One does not have to take risks to do that. Unusual does not necessarily equal good.

I think most people watching his famous performance of the Chopin concerti as a pre-teenager would conclude Kissin is a pianistic genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFjh49ggsc

That's a good point, 'interesting' isn't particularly descriptive.

Agreed about Gaga's singing abilities. She is a natural. Her act is ridiculous however as are her songs.

I watched a whole season of the UK Voice.. Jessie J can really, really sing. Huge voice, dynamic range, control and accuracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfzXq1gcG4#t=213

I like Kissin a lot.

"Moving," "beautiful," and "passionate" are about as generic as you can get and grossly over-used in decribing musical performances.

And what exactly is "cerebral" playing? Another over-used term that means essentially nothing.

Interesting = unusual, daring, not what you hear every day.

Kissin -----------------here
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Lisitsa------------------here
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Lang Lang--------------here

LL is a great showman, also a great pianist. Wang is up there with the best of them and Kissen is #1 in my book. There are individual pieces recorded by each that are not my favorite recordings however they each have recorded things that are some of my favorites. As for them being inferior to the old guard I could not disagree more.

How old are you?

Horowitz-------------here
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Lang Lang when he's on point-------here
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Kissin---------------here
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Lisitsa--------------here
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Lang Lang when he's being a moron--------here

I think you have the gap between Horowitz and the rest a little disproportionately small.

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down here

Why does all this remind me of Knight and Day (Tom Cruise & Cameron Diaz)?

Liszt------------------------------here
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Nyiregyhazi----------------------here
Busoni---------------------------here
Anton Rubinstein-----------------here
Chopin---------------------------here
Henselt--------------------------here
Alkan----------------------------here
Thalberg-------------------------here
Paderewski-----------------------here
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Josef Hofmann---------------------here
Rachmaninoff----------------------here
Alexander Siloti------------------here
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everyone else----------------------here and further down

How low can one go?



Maybe Jules Verne has the answer........

HI,

Personally I like Kissin, Lang Lang and I quite like Lisitsa too. That said, I know exactly what you mean and where you are coming from. Before I go on, I could point out that this very criticism has been pointed at pianists for many many years, and the gymnastic style of playing is really nothing new. Audiences have always been dazzled by pyrotechnics, and in a way there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself - it has its place. Sadly it seems to have found its place in pieces like the Chopin Etudes or the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, which are two examples of where you need good technique and ability to fly around with accuracy, but you also need to be able to say something, to phrase, to produce beautiful sound.

There is a tendency in competitions for juries to pick the pianists with the strongest techniques. I think that's because it's a more solid aspect to judge - you can say 'He has a good technique' and have everyone agree with you than say 'She is a great artist, she played a few duff notes but she is a great artist'. Audiences become more used to hearing pyrotechnics than they do music. Although there were pianists who displayed little more than technical ability 100 years ago, many of them didn't make it on to record for posterity. Many of the great pianists what we have on record come directly out of the Liszt or Leschetizky tradition, (admittedly their teacher was that master of the technical work out Carl Czerny), and these pianists were more concerned with communicating the music.

I'm rambling but what I think I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that because it's easier to see who is playing the right notes faster than anyone else, it is often that which is lauded as great, where as artistry is more subjective. Arrau, Schnabel, Horowitz, Simon Barere, Dinu Lipatti, Tatiana Nikolaeva - are some of the great artists of the past. Yet, I know people who have told me they don't like some or all of these artists.

There has been a fashion emerging in interpretation over the last 50 years - and that is to buy an 'Urtext' edition of whatever you are learning, and play exactly what is on the page, nothing more, nothing less. So that means, for instance, if it says at the start of a Mozart sonata 'mf', and it doesn't change dynamic for 40 bars, you can end up with a somewhat pedestrian performance.

I heard a little anecdote about Beethoven talking with a pianist, and I can't remember where this came from so it's very third hand information, but it was something like this:

'I really enjoyed working on the Sonata [let's say Appassionata for argument's sake] but I couldn't maintain the tempo you had suggested all the way through the [development] section.....'

Beethoven fumes back 'I NEVER INTENDED YOU TO!!!'

I am afraid there are so many things wrong with Mr. Sayers' diagram that I am not even going to try to list them all...

Me
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The world

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Now that this is solved (and the word "me" is not limited to this times poster)...

Can you get back to bashing LL and YW and everyone else, please?

I already can observe one flaw: the gap between Liszt and the first cluster of performers below is too small .

I think it's just the opposite at the most important competitions. All the contestants have such a high level of technique that their musicality becomes the most important and key differentiating factor. The judges at these competitions certainly realize that more than technique is needed to be a great pianist.

I think all the great pianists of any era had great technique and great musicality. Of course, some had a more amazing technique than others, but all had sufficient technique to express their musical ideas.

I strongly disagree here.

I think even most students today just entering good conservatories realize that the Urtext is just the beginning of the interpretation. They certainly would not think that the mf marking meant to play exactly mf for the entire time. Of course, most teachers and students today have greater respect for the Urtext today.

It is more than just a fashion if a pianist can't get a music degree unless he approaches and responds to music through this one perspective. I would call it dogmatic, and also sadistic, if a pianist is told he will get an "F" for not adhering to a philosophically noncommittal style of interpretation which is of the essence of modernism.

Yes, times are changing. Especially in the last 14 or 15 years one can hear a gradual widening of playing styles.


It isn't about more or less respect for the Urtext, it is about philosophical perspective.

Salieri to Wolfie (in Amadeus), when the latter kissed his hand profusely: "Please, it's not a holy relic."

I'm just listened to Nelson Freire playing Beethoven's Emperor (live BBC broadcast from London's Barbican Hall). I haven't enjoyed a performance of this hackneyed work so much in years. He doesn't treat the work like a relic, to be respected because, after all it's Beethoven, the great composer. He conveys a real enjoyment in his music-making - very much live, not always respecting the dynamic markings, even rushing his fences occasionally and pushing hard, with a rhythmic buoyancy (and unmarked sfz), rather than concentrating on refinement of tone or respect for the details in the score.

Will a performance like this win the approval of the Urtext crowd? No, but the composer would have loved its occasional gruffness and good humor (assuming, of course that he isn't too deaf to hear it....), and the way the pianist coveys the essence, if not always the letter, of the score.

Or how about:

Listening to music without ranking performers
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Rankings

Urtext playing is all a question of degree.

Much of what you describe is not anti urtext unless you are talking about the extreme case of those who go crazy if even one marking is changed/ignored. Brendel might be an example of pianists in the group, and I'm sure he has very good reasons for thinking this way. Rushing occasionally may not even have been intentional. Refinement of tone and rhythmic buoyancy is not related to urtext.

Ignoring the composer's dynamic markings and phrasing isn't anti-Urtext?

What is?

I was going to type the appropriate amount of gaps, but I didn't want to be sitting here until midnight.

Richter
Sokolov/Horowitz/Pletnev








Kissin etc

Horowitz
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Horowitz in Japan
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John Paul Jones
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Colonel Sanders
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Bugs Bunny
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A bag of popcorn
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Everyone else
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Lisitsa

Where's Ronald McDonald?

Like I said , I think it's a question of degree (or how often and how extreme the changes are). If a pianist ignores .2% of a composer's markings most Urtext proponents wouldn't be upset unless the change was something very major(like playing an Adagio as if it was Allegro)

The thing I don't like about Lang Lang's playing, although his technique is flashy, he doesn't play the notes in tempo, and it sounds sloppy.


You win the thread

The Urtext pianists I know will not accept any deviation from the score - this always indicates a flaw in the performer according to these pianists. There is zero tolerance of it, and they can become quite agitated [upset] when their corrective advice, if any, is rejected.

I cannot help wondering... If Liszt was transferred to the present and was playing under an alias, would you people really think he's so great... Times and tastes have changed a lot...

The same goes for all the other guys who have been long dead.

outo,

If anything, it's better than we can imagine. Just listen to any new-age pianist play Chopin, and then listen to Rachmaninoff play the same piece. I'd like to think his playing is closer in style to Liszt than Yundi Li's. If one's taste is the contrived sounding, lukewarm, predictable, traditional style of today, then sure, maybe it wouldn't be their cup of tea.

Batuhan - other pianists do not exist to fulfill your ideals - you must do that for yourself.

Probably, but when you go further back at some point it might become TOO different to what you expect from pianism. Also what was considered great in those days might have been filled with inaccuracy that is intolerable in the age of recordings. We have been used to hearing many versions of the pieces and most of them follow the score. In those days Liszt could have played anything and only very few people would have noticed any difference.

I'm sure there would be some novelty attraction, but in the end he might be labelled as an incompetent showman, just like some people do with LL

My most favorite pianists are from the past as well, but at least I have heard recordings and can compare with the recordings of the present ones. And some of the pianists of today are just as good IMO, just in a different way.

I'm willing to bet, based on what I've read of reviews of that time period, that the most noticeable problem would be his rhythms are not as tight as some modern musicians.

At the same time, I'd bet that the depth and beauty of his interpretations would be overwhelmingly great.

PIanolover -

I think this is a question of territory, in that, here in the UK there seems to be a different set of pianists promoted in the media than there is in the US and Europe.

Observing through the internet, in the USA there has always been a higher standard than in the UK.

Things have started to change in the past 10 years, but it really is that recent. The thing about conservatoires promoting a rather pedestrian idea of interpretation has, unfortunately, remained true in this country for a long time, and it is only slowly starting to change - usually as heads of keyboard departments retire and new blood comes in.

There is also, rather unfortunately, a situation where many people studying at conservatoire simply don't have the technique to go any further after. A famous pianist told me recently that it seems to be endemic in UK conservatoires (and not just UK ones but it's pretty prevalent here) that the piano students try to play the Liszt transcendental etudes when they can't even play a scale with an even touch.

Again, things are changing as the next generation of local piano teachers takes over, but there is a black hole in the quality of piano tuition available before conservatoire level, and our grading system doesn't help it - there are many students who attain ABRSM grade with distinction these days, and they actually can't play very well at all.

The other thing is, that out of the thousands of graduates from music colleges every year, only a handful will ever be able to make a career in music because of high standards in the profession, and because of the lack of opportunities available these days.

I see things like that here in the states, also.....(don't get me started).

And indeed, experienced musicians did recognize Liszt's deep musical abilities. Sure, some lamented his showmanship, but I think most of them still saw there was much more to him than that. And too, the public performer/showman part of his musical life was relatively brief - he knew when to stop.

I can only speak for myself, not "you people", but yes, I do think that I would think that a reincarnated Liszt was great.

First of all, having read through reams of his piano music, I know that he must have had a truly amazing conception of what the piano could do, and he had the chops to bring it to life. He just wouldn't have written what he wrote, otherwise. And from all reports, he really could play his own music.

Second, I love all kinds of interpretations, including very messy or wayward ones that still have a high level of poetic content going on. Just because tastes have changed doesn't mean I can't appreciate older tastes. After all, I can look at old visual art from Liszt's time and think it is pretty great, even if the idioms of today's visual arts are utterly different (and I can enjoy them, too). So why would musical performances be so much different, in terms of being able to appreciate them?

Okay, I'll grant you that some of the extremes of sentimentality and melodrama from the Romantic era do not resonate for me very much, but that doesn't mean a lot of the better stuff cannot still can work for me as viable artistic work.

I think there are very many great Chopin players today. Almost all the winners and even finalists in the Chopin Competition would be in that category.

Rachmaninov is considered by many to be one of the greatest and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time(in a fairly recent poll of living pianists), so saying you think today's pianists can't compare is not really a reasonable criticism of those pianists.

I think of the living pianists that Martha Argerich, Federico Colli, Murray Perahia, Artur Pizarro, Paul Badura Skoda, Alasdair Beatson, Sofia Gulyak, Leon Fleischer, Garrick Ohlssohn are very special. In fact there are many others too. I like David Wilde, Richard Goode and Misha Dichter, and Fou Tsong is wonderful.

Polyphonist, "How old are you?"

Whats it to you?

Yeah, in Glasgow people would go to the library and take a record or DVD out of Horowitz or Argerich playing Rach 3, and then the next week they'd be trying to thump it out, without a clue of how to actually practise it. Usually they could get a botched version of the first movement, but the rest of it was left on the shelf (thankfully, poor Rachmaninoff!).

I don't know how many times I have heard the Chopin etudes, the Liszt sonata, Pictures at an Exhibition, Islamey, all performed in the same trussed up way, because of limited technique and yet somehow the very pieces that are so difficult were able to hide the crap tone of the students behind the pedalling (usually too much) and the fast (usually too fast) notes.

Then you'd hear the same students attempt a Haydn or Scarlatti sonata, or a Grieg lyric piece, thinking it would be 'easy', and you'd realise they actually couldn't play well at all.

This, for the record, is from my own experience of listening to conservatoire students in the late 1990s and early 2000s and is limited in its scope, and I don't speak for every conservatoire by any means.

There was a certain downward spiral happening - the students would get annoyed that the teachers wouldn't let them play those big works, thinking that the teacher was limiting the student's experience (the teacher was usually trying to repair some fundamental technical and musical flaw), and the teacher would get really p**sed that the students weren't listening to them and so the lessons sometimes became somewhat useless.

Of course there were good students and sometimes not every teacher was all that good (this is the same everywhere), and sometimes the teacher was mismatched to the student, but usually the ambition was bigger than the ability. There's nothing wrong with that per se, in fact it has to be so that you can improve (if you see what I mean), but the sheer blindness of some of these people was astounding.

I've also had the experience where a teacher in a top conservatoire where I studied, put himself on such a high pedestal, and his students on such a low plane, that studying with him was nothing short of a nightmare. It wasn't just me who found this.

Thankfully I found a teacher after that who was so humble, yet so very able and talented, and so willing to find out exactly where things go wrong and exactly how to put them right, that it was like someone turning on the oxygen tank. He was a long term student of Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Aube Tzerko. I wish I had met them but alas I didn't have that opportunity.

That competition has only produced a handful of truly unique players. The rest sound the same.

Frankly, I find a critical attitude like this ridiculous. Do you realize that by age 10 most/all of those pianists understood more about music and played with greater technique/musicianship than you probably will ever attain?

Are you sure?

Joel I agree with you - today it seems that many are going for security in technique above all. Many pianists with great technique haven't always thought about how to communicate the message in the music. Many don't really know how to apply rubato, how to phrase, and articulation seems completely nonsensical. In fact many juries are so used to this kind of playing it comes as a shock when someone comes along and communicates.

People are so worried about wrong notes, but everyone plays wrong notes.

Pianoloverus is right in that there are pianists who can do it, but I wouldn't agree that they are the complete package by the age of ten.

Look, Artur Rubinstein didn't consider himself good until he was 40, and he could really play. Rachmaninoff was constantly striving for perfection and always felt he fell far short. For me, Rachmaninoff and Horowitz are probably the greatest pianists on record.

The competitors are, in essence, at a job fair, lining up to try to get positions as curators at a museum of antiquities. Being "personal" is a no-no for that job application. Skill at dusting off vitrines containing objects of veneration is a big plus.

I didn't say anything remotely like that.

I think most of the great pianists at least in the last 60 years, including contest winners of the big competitions, didn't play with highly unusual interpretations. Being highly personal for its own sake is not a virtue IMO. That doesn't mean they played just like everyone else. The differences between very great performances of classical music and average performances are often quite subtle. They did play more beautifully, with greater musical understanding, and were able to move their audiences more than lesser pianists.

Murray Perahia would be a perfect example of this type of pianist, but there hundreds more. IMO many of the finalists in the Chopin Competition are very great pianists and among the greatest pianists of their time.

Not sure I am understanding this at all. Is there a better video, perhaps? Cannot say I am at all impressed with Jessie J.

On the evidence above, nothing to match Lady Gaga:

I made a drive with some friends just yesterday to see Valentina Lisistsa perform with a small regional orchestra in a rather modest setting. She performed both of the Brahms Piano concertos, works which I've long known, but never deeply loved. (I've tried, they're just too dang long.) Though the performance was a bit loose technically, it was delightfully rich and emotional. I've seen both Barenboim and Ax perform the second concerto before, and, of the three, Lisitsa's, while it had a few "doubled notes" here and there, was, to my memory, the most purely musical (and least boring) of the three.

Her signature piece seems to be Liszt's La Campanella. She performed it as an encore. Put simply, she took this show-offy piece, and, yes, totally nailed it, but made it into a very intimate, musical gem as well.

I'm not quite sure why so many here seem to dislike her playing. Could it be, perhaps, that she has managed the art of self promotion a bit too well and people find her popularity distasteful as a result? She's not Horowitz or Argeritch, but she's an accomplished, delightful pianist who I very much enjoy hearing.

I am the lady who plays piano 24/7 on my job. I am a full season subscriber to SF Symphony and I hit all the piano players. Now, this may sound dumb, but I go mainly to hear somebody else do it besides me and to get away from the dozens of people I have to deal with. I am notoriously uncritical, but I know if it's really bad, which it seldom is. Most of the pianists who perform with the symph are really pretty good including those listed in the title of this thread. BTW, Yuja is coming in a couple of weeks and she's going to play Islamey. There are kids at school who played this, and I always thought the piece was a lot of fuss and feathers for little artistic return, even though the middle section is really nice. I guess all of the above depends on what you want out of your musical experience. It's probably just me...

Really? Where do you get tickets? I looked on the SF Symphony website, but can't find it......