This one should be fun.

So who do you think deserves the title of
The Best Classical Pianist[/b]

They can be from any classical era (baroque, classical, romantic, etc.) and give us some reasons supporting your choice aswell.

well, outside the stories and history passed on to us, we can't fully judge Liszt and Chopin, though I would guess Liszt could be. as far as those I've heard play, I have a hard time choosing my favorites, or even the best. when it comes to art, that's virtually impossible. There's Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, among the many of those that follow.

Check the archives, JaredR88, by doing a search (very top of the screen page). This topic has recently been discussed at length.

Regards,

....and not so recently discussed at length, and before that discussed at length, and before that...

Yes. This has been rehashed several times along the years...

Oh give the kid a break.

Check out Marc-Andre Hamelin and Nikolai Lugansky. Jonathan Powell is one of the giants of 20th century repertoire and he regularly performs new and unperformed material.

Sur l'autre main, Jared wins a cheese log and a toaster oven for being the 1,000,001th person to start a thread on this subject...

Joyeux Noel et toutes ces choses...

Auntie Lynn, you're funny trying to sound fancy by using french words, but these english expressions translated word for word in french make no sense at all... :| Nice try though !

Another wormhole for off-topic communication. I'm for it.

Is it French to leave a space before shouting marks and questioning marks ? Like that. I always think of Mapboy (aka M John Harrison) when I see those spaces.

Auntie Lynn, you might well have said : "D'autre part..." or "d'un autre côté..." for "on the other hand..." but I'm not sure what was meant by "toutes ces choses..." : "all those things ..."?

Mais, Joyeux Noël, à vous aussi, et à tous les francophones qui passent par ici!

Amitiés,

BruceD: I think she was trying to say: "Merry Christmas and all that stuff...", mais je ne suis pas sûr.

Joyeux Noël!

Ed

Thats more like it......

Bonnes fêtes à toutes et à tous

-Michael B.

Yes, you have to put a space before colons and question and exclamation marks in french. As your sharp eye noticed, I do it intuitively when I type in english.

Edit : I just noticed I made another mistake... The name of languages have to be capitalized in English, unlike in French!

Hägar the Horrible and Lucky Eddie are in a cafe in France. Hägar says to Eddie, "Tell him we want wine on the house." Eddie says, "Nous desirons vin sur la maison." In the last frame, they're being served wine on the shingled roof, and Eddie says, "It's hard to translate."

For my money, the best all around classical pianist is Murray Perahia.

Damz, not so much a sharp eye as the fact that I have been thinking about the subject of marks and spaces. Now I know more about it. Thank you.

French speech marks are like this to << >>. I had a french exam and got confused by those because, the teacher forgot to mention that small detail

Yup, in fact they are like that : « insert quotation here ».

I've seen those used in Finnish fiction, though ”this is perhaps the more common of the two correct styles.”

Hmmm, I don't have an absolute favorite. My 4 favorites are:

(in no particular order)
1. Evgeny Kissin
2. Marc-Andre Hamelin
3. Stephen Hough
4. Howard Shelley

Rachmaninov, Josef Lhevinne, Moritz Rosenthal, Ignaz Friedman. Firkusny and Gilels, Myra Hess and Annie Fischer of the next generation. Yara Bernette, Maria Tipo were also fine players.

I understand that Gabrilowitsch was no slouch!

Gilels for sure along with those others mentioned by Jeffrey B.!

Hamelin is the best !
Technically at least.

Note the space before my shouting mark

Your choices are hard to argue with, Jeffrey, but the mention of Maria Tipo in that company gave me pause.

She certainly comes from a very illustrious background with endorsements from big name pianists, and I would be surprised if you haven't met and heard her live.

I can't claim that honour, but a Clementi CD I listened to once (which duplicated much that Horowitz had recorded- she lives dangerously) seemed rather bland and under-characterized. Later on, a CD of Bach-Busoni was very tentative and disappointing. The music seemed to swallow her alive.

Why would Tipo record repertoire requiring the resources of a much more heroic pianist? Turn to Egon Petri (or Horowitz, Giles, etc...) and one instantly hears what is missing in Tipo's playing.

It must have been the Symphonic Etudes? Perhaps I am confusing her with another pianist. Say, Ingrid haebler was another very fine artist. Backaus and Cziffra too. This list is not too important to me, but it's nice to reflect. I also wish my teacher, Adele Marcus, had more recordings out there. The one with her playing will be released in 2008. I think it will be a nice surprise to many, since she taught many famous pianists from the mid-20th century, like Byron Janis (wonderful pianist), and others. Say--William kapell should have been in this list too.

Your mentioning of Rachmaninoff first makes me raise my hat to you sir.

I would eagerly await this Jeffrey.

And happy holidays. You have contributed so much of value on this forum. All very much appreciated.

Lazar Berman, performing Liszt, in his prime years, ca. 1975. I've never heard anyone else peform Liszt so effortlessly and with such cinsistant facility while utilizing a 120 decibel dynamic range between his ppppp and sFFFFFFFz.

And why oh why is this concerto not performed more often?

A mystery...

Let me add Ashkenazy to the mix. This guy recorded everything from Mozart to Prokofiev, and it was all very well received. Not exceptionally flashy, but his interpretations are just, well, really good. Listen to his Mozart concerti recordings. They certainly aren't "originalist," but they are terrific. His Beethoven is great, his Chopin is still widely regarded 35-40 years after it was recorded.

And the first too .. great piece.