Is it starting at a young age under good tuition, developing top sight-reading skills or is it dedicated practice and excellent aural memory that eventually carries the day?

I guess the formula of achieving a success as a concert pianist is not only to be a technically excellent performer but also to be able to spellbound the audience. Piano performing is just as much show business (combined with smart marketing).

2 things, technically:

1) You have to be a pianist
2) You have to play in concerts

LOL

Although I'm a pianist and I play in concerts, but wouldn't consider myself a 'concert pianist'
How odd :p

Dave

2 things:

you gotta be good
you gotta be lucky

koji (STSD)

...or you need a lot of money and lots of friends so you can hire out concert halls, and fill them up with audiences.


btb,

Sight reading doesn't have as much to do with it.

hey
what a stupid thread!
look around and try to find a concert pianist who is able to make his living on playing, there are only a few buddies to do so, the "rest" , well sleeping the half of the day and practising the other

it's better learning a serios craft and be a lucky plummer than living in LA doing concerts or writing scores for Disney

all rite, fellows?

Thats a bit harsh

I think you are best listening to Brendan or Elena for this type of question.

I think it has a lot to do with luck. I mean, think about Lang Lang. He had nothing until he got a lucky break when some concert pianist got injured before a performance, so he stepped in, and after that one performance he got so much exposure that his life's not been the same since. Same thing for Horowitz, his career was abysmal (he played for half-empty auditoriums in France and to scathing reviews) until, in America, he subbed in for an injured pianist and played the Tchaikosvsky Concerto No 1 as if his fingers were on fire. His life was never the same.

I remember reading that, before the concert, the conductor at the time said to Horowitz something like, "just don't screw up and we'll make it out no problem." Remember that Horowitz had less than one day's notice to play in the concert. So, Horowitz proceeded to light the piano and the audience on fire with his fingers, and the shocked conductor occasionally stared at Horowitz's fingers in awe and amazement. I can imagine that if I was there, I would know that a special career was jumpstarting on the stage.

Pretty much everybody takes a different path.

So is Watts. That Liszt Concerto No.1 launched his huge career.

Cecil Licad had 6 listeners including the stage hand in her first recital. Listen to her new Gattschalk recording on Naxos will fully convince you that she IS cut out to be a professional pianist.

Or Koji (Thracozaag, who has already sounded off). Don't forget that he's a phenomenal pianist as well who went to Curtis and is now at Julliard working towards his Ph.D. He knows a thing or two about the business!

His post actually sums everything up perfectly and concisely. "Gotta be good; gotta be lucky" All of us can develop, overtime, an amazing technique and, if we love the music, a respectable sense of musicality. But as for hitting the concert stage and attracting an audience, well..that typically relies on who you know and on being at the right place at the right time.

True. Funny thing now is that a good number of pianists substituted for an "ailing" Watts and had a big boost because of it - Orion Weiss and Lang Lang come to mind immediately.

Edit:

To add my experience to the thread, you need:

1. Money or a sponsor.
2. Luck.
3. A bubbling personality.

And these days..

You gotta know the right people
You have to sell yourself! (aka provacative photography)

No I think you can be boring and make it big as a concert pianist. Yundi Li talking is probably about as exciting to listen to as a ceiling fan. I have on tape several of his interviews. But his playing is exquisite.

rofl

Meng-Chieh Liu as well! Watts has unwittingly helped a lot of pianists, haha.

koji (STSD)

Weiss is good but by boosting Lang Lang to fame, I'd say Watts has created a monster...

Yeah, Orion's a terrific pianist; glad he's getting concerts. Funny that Licad got mentioned in this thread, my ex filled in for Licad at the last minute in Germany, and got quite a bit of noteriety for it.

koji (STSD)

Watts needs to come to KC and cancel STAT.

Apologies for a badly worded question which should have read

"What background, attributes and skills are necessary to qualify to become a Concert pianist"?

Scrub round all those very real marketing strategies, money and luck catalysts.

Can you qualify for Concert pianist status without

1. Musical flair
2. Perfect pitch
3. Top teachers
4. Sight-reding fluency
5. Equivalent ABRSM Grade 8, etc.
6. Dedicated practice
7 Rachmaninoff hand-spread
8 Photographic memory

IMO, numbers 5, 2, 3, 7, and 8 are not essential traits of a concert pianist. I think a certain amount of panache is needed to be popular, but I don't think good body language is absolutely necessary. 4 is iffy, as I don't think you ever have to sight-read a piece on command without being given time to practice and learn it (Brendan, care to comment?). 6 is the most important step for anything in music, so it is necessary to being a successful concert pianist - nay, a successful person.

Depends what you define as "concert pianist". If we're talking strictly solo performances, then sight-reading is only important insofar as it helps one learn new repetoire quickly.

"Musical flair": not sure what you mean by that; if we're talking "showmanship" then that may help one become popular I suppose. In terms of the old "musicality" versus "technique", I'm afraid technique wins out by far. It doesn't matter if you think you have great musical understanding of a piece; being able to play the notes in a very professional and polished manner is a necessary requisite of being a concert pianist, where as excellent musicality probably is not (note: obviously a bare minimum of decent musicality is expected).

"Perfect pitch": absolutely unnecessary.

"Top teachers": not necessary, but helpful of course.

"Grades or diplomas": nope

"Dedicated Practice": Of course. This is an absolute requisite no matter what path you choose.

"Rachmaninoff hand-spread": [originally misread that as hand-speed] nope. Rachmaninoff had huge hands, very few concert pianists would match his, and there are plently of successful pianists who have fairly small hands. Obviously, being able to reach a 10th would help, but it's not necessary.

"Photographic memory": well, being able to easily memorize pieces and keep them stored without much practice would be an amazing boost, but it is not necessary to be unusually gifted in this sense in order to become a professional.

Just my 2 cents. Please note that I am not a professional and my playing is no where near that level.

Thanks to NAK and Fred for the input. It would be interesting to discover whether a Concert pianist would concur with your views.

There are concert pianists that don't have 2, 7, and 8, but I don't think any haven't had the rest. I think they are a requirement in the real world.

That's good because someone (a non-pianistical someone) once told me that I would never be a concert pianist because my hands are too small. I thought that this was an incredibly narrow-minded view to take as I rarely have a problem with big stretches as long as there is a suitable alternative (rearrangement of the chord). I'm still hoping that I will play in concert professionally at some point.

yeh my hands are probably relatively small, but then look at people like daniel barenboim, he doesnt have big hands does he?

yet i still think hes a great pianist,

De Larrocha has relatively the smallest hands of all pianists. She is not even 5' in height. Yet she played Khachaturian Piano Concerto.