Piano Forum

Pires is a God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDVJkxGz_Tc&t=517s

The start is the simplest of music and yet she creates layers of depth and such despair, each single note in the first phrase of that melody requires a paragraph to explain - and it is all pounded home with the sledge hammer of pianississimo.

Seriously, each time I listen to her, I am drawn into this vast realm she has created - she has added another dimension to this - as if she has added a "razor sharp sound stage" to the music (audiophile reference.)

The next thing I wonder is just how "good" (my opinion obviously) is her rendition?  So I went and found a bunch on youtube and no one gets there.  Pires delivers the tears and goosebumps.  (I do acknowledge that her recording has the ambience of an auditorium which really trumps some of the hard room recordings below.)

*) Brendel:  sad, but fast, lacking depth
*) Zimmerman:  similar to Pires but tempo makes it a completely different and weak, ineffective emotion, too much sporadic rubato
*) Kempff:  similar but doesn't get it - can't get the despair going
*) Gieseking:  tender but no ppp - ends up a march
*) Neuhaus:  impressive but attempts despair through rubato, but lacks the ppp that reaches your heart
*) Sofronitsky:  a soft march
*) Hwang:  a march
*) Sokolov: pretty effective grief, but lacking ppp, and too dynamic
*) Williams:  ordinary
*) Arrau: a lifeless, march with ineffective rubato and dynamics

CONCLUSION:  Neuhaus and Sokolov are the closest but still can't get to where Pires has gone.

I couldn't find any from these favorites:  (suspect this piece is too simple for some - they have bigger fish to fry!)

*) Horowitz
*) Rubinstein
*) Argerich
*) Lisitsa
*) Buniatishvili
*) Lang

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Pires' Wrong Concerto Epic Save is beyond comprehension and now with this C minor, I am so moved, that I may turn away from Prokofiev and work on some Pires recipes!