Yeah, I'll go for it.(1) MonkAnd then the others. Gould, Hewitt, Argerich, Ashkenazy, Brendel, Schiff, Richter, Cecil Taylor, and I'll add Lisitsa for the win. No particular order. TBH, I don't listen to a lot of music, especially piano music. I'd rather just hack my way through it at the keyboard or at a desk, but I do pay attention.
Interesting. I thought you would say Tatum or OP.
Horowitz, Rachmanioff, Bolet, Argerich, Economou and even Yuja Wang since she matured over the years. Why doesn't anybody include Rubinstein besides billym? He was such a great pianist. He was a fine standard.
3. Alfred Cortot
Too bad no one mentioned Claudio Arrau.
That still doesn't make your opinion any more valid. Vitality, forward momentum? Which exact parts let's see exactly the comparisons and how you measure it.
While she has a quicker tempo in many places, it's just not the tempo that does it. She just "goes for it" in a different way that I prefer.
Well, any opinion about something subjective is as valid as any other, since it's down to personal taste.
Err no it is not an opinion that Arrau was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Have a look at all the accolades and adoration Arrau has, look at his track record, you are totally blind to that and just want your flimsy opinion without any juxtapositioning of what you think is better and not dull.
I hadn't heard much of Annie Fischer before, but that recording certainly makes me want to listen to more of her playing. I am a sucker for the kind of 'immediacy' you mention, and I've often thought about what causes it, so that I can attempt to bring it into my own playing.
I'm well aware that Arrau has many accolades but taste is still subjective. I'm not going to prefer Arrau's recording of a specific piece just because many other people do, if my taste is different from those people. Einaudi, who was discussed in a thread here before, has many more admirers than Arrau but I do not think that makes Einaudi objectively better. I posted a recording that I enjoy more in my previous post in this thread with Annie Fischer that you can listen to and see if you understand what I'm looking for in Beethoven.
You can post whatever you like (although comparing a live stage performance vs a studio recording is not really that convincing) that still doesn't make your opinion any more believable. Your opinion which you of course can harbor is still highly marginalized, hardly any one else will agree with you that Arrau is "dull", just a ridiculous comment which you probably should have kept to yourself since you have not shown how he is dull rather comparing him to who you think is better but that doesn't prove dullness. Crazy people will also say Michael Jordan wasn't that good of a basketball player.
I disagree that my opinion has to be believable
but I find it entertaining that it seems to be triggering the master triggerer himself.
According to what measuring system? Can you tell me how to show that he is dull?
I find his recording more boring than Annie Fischer because the tempo is slower and passages that are full of fire and forward momentum in Fischer's recordings sound more plodding and pondurous in Arrau's playing, and I prefer the former. Arrau is good, just not my taste.
Arrau's Beethoven is terrible...
Ahh pianostreet, the flat earthers of classical music taste.
I've studied and analysed the Beethoven piano sonatas in detail for ~22 years. I have heard recordings by ~60 different pianists, including ~17-18 complete cycles. I have graduate and postgraduate degrees in music. It is my carefully considered opinion that Arrau's Beethoven is lousy, with the exception of the following recordings:Op. 57, Ascona, 1959 [Aura/Ermitage]Op. 10/3, Brescia, 1973 [Music & Arts]Op. 53 and 81a, Columbia Studios, 1947/49 [United Archives]All of which are good, if perhaps not the last word in any of these sonatas.Arrau's best recording, and one everyone should hear, is the recital of 20 May 1963 in Lugano, where he plays Brahms's Variations on a Theme of Handel & Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. The rest of the 1959 Ascona recital from which the Appassionata I recommended above comes is also worth hearing: Schumann's Fantasy and Debussy's Pour le piano (plus Chopin's C-sharp minor Etude). And I have always been fond of his 1964 Tanglewood recital of Mozart piano sonatas, even though it is not exactly in a style suitable to Mozart. In general, most live recordings by Arrau are worth hearing.His studio Beethoven recordings, however, including both complete cycles, can safely be avoided. Most of the later live recordings (including the other ones packaged with the Brescia Op. 10/3 I mentioned) are also not very interesting; his attempts at the late sonatas were always soporific. There are many better choices: Paul Badura-Skoda, Olga Pashchenko and Peter Serkin on period instruments; Schnabel, Annie Fischer, Edwin Fischer (no relation), Bruce Hungerford, Friedrich Gulda, Hisako Kawamura, Jörg Demus, Michel Dalberto, Michaël Lévinas, Mitsuko Uchida, Steven Osborne, Solomon Cutner, Stephen Kovacevich, etc, on modern instruments. For people who really like slow, relaxing, easy-listening, Beethoven for babies type performances, Wilhelm Backhaus, Emil Gilels and Grigory Sokolov do so with much better command of piano touch and sonority than Arrau ever had.I would accept praise of Arrau's studio recordings if one were discussing, say, his recordings of Schubert D946, D760 & D780 from 1956 on EMI, or the set of Schumann's major piano works he recorded from 1966 to 1976 for Philips, or for that matter the even later set of Chopin's major piano works recorded from 1973 to 1984, all of which do reveal a musician with deep insights into the Romantic repertoire and an innate understanding of the music of Schumann in particular, equalled by few others. But the technical ability with which he backed up these insights has been surpassed by many others before and since; and the studio tended to rob him of the energy of live performance that otherwise allowed him to overcome these deficits. And his Beethoven happens to just... not be good most of the time. It and the studio Mozart sonatas are the weakest part of his discography, and I have to assume the high praise he (and Barenboim, and Brendel; and for that matter Karajan, Thielemann, etc) has always received for his Beethoven is because most critics do not actually like the music of Beethoven very much and wish his music had been written by Ludovico Einaudi instead.
Looks like you have an elaborate reason to support why you harvest such marginalized perspectives but you are still not being specific you are just throwing up generalizations. Lets see you take some EXACT bars of music in a recording and demonstrate how Arrau is "lousy" and "terrible" with Beethoven lol. Do you have a favorite recording or an actual artist?
Well...... Some people just have different tastes. I personally enjoy Arrau - I respect and acknowledge him as one of greatest pianists of all time. His Beethoven is WONDERFULL, and I listen to MOST of his sonatas. But like I said before, others might find him boring and typical. That's just their opinion. Everyone deserves to voice their thoughts, right?
Topic: Fave 10 Pianists 