Who's YOUR favourite pianist?

[galante]

I'm making a YouTube video for my channel showcasing all the famous live performances by a specific famous pianist and reacting towards their performance. I'm starting off with Paderewski for the first YouTube video. He is definitely one of the greats in the history of piano playing and should deserve more attention.

I would like to ask who's YOUR favourite pianist and why, and what's their top 3 most famous performances?

[lelle]

My favorite pianist is Alfred Cortot, who was one of the titans of the first half of the 20th century. He is my favorite artist because he has an inimitable mix of intelligent reading of the text and unabashed emotion, while at the same being unapologetically individualistic. You can immediately recognize his playing no matter what he plays.

There are no live performance videos with him (only a handful of truly live recordings exist, where he is a bit out of shape), but there is a lovely "l'Adieu" performance with video with plenty of interesting things going on:

[kosulin]

Emil Gilels.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Cziffra for me, no contest.
IMO his most notable recordings are those of Liszt's Grand Galop Chromatique and of Brahms' Paganini Variations. Any of his better performances of Liszt works could fit for the third.

In terms of pianists who are currently alive, my personal favorite is probably Sung Chang, AKA Traum Piano (the name of his synthesia YouTube channel). He has numerous notable performances and a LOT of videos on his YT channels. I recommend his Petrushka (the complete version, not the two videos on the Traum channel), his renditions of Liszt's S. 140 no. 3-5, and his performances of Sonata in B Minor.

[transitional]

Artur Schnabel. He doesn't have any recordings that stand out from the rest, because he's just always so insightful and resourceful. However, he's particularly known for playing Mozart (if I'm interpreting right, the composer he admired most), Beethoven (first time all 32 sonatas were on record), and Schubert (helped garner more of a public appreciation for his sonatas), so from those composers, I'd go with:

Mozart - K 333 sonata - lightweight sonata that Schnabel allows to sing out rather than the typical one-dimensional, "happy" Mozart stereotype

Beethoven - Op 110 sonata - excellent tone in the 1st mvt. His recording made it my favorite Beethoven sonata.

I'm not the biggest fan of Schnabel's Schubert (even though Schubert's my favorite composer and Schnabel's my favorite pianist) so I'll put his Brahms Concerto 2. If I understand correctly, this was a favorite earlier in his life and he mentioned it in his autobiography. Much more energetic than most performances today.

Of course, all of these pieces are pretty long, so you can do whatever you want with them. Where's your YouTube channel, by the way?

[perfect_pitch]

Maurizio Pollini...

My god could that man play. 70 years old, when people are usually playing Yahtzee and Cribbage, this bugger was STILL playing Brahms 1st Piano Concerto and still plays it better than a lot of the younger pianists.

I still think his playing of the Three Movements from Petrushka by Stravinsky are still the best to this day, even better than Weissenberg.

[klavieronin]

Claudio Arrau for me. I don’t know what his most famous performances are but there’s one of him playing Beethoven’s 32nd sonata that is extraordinary.

[dizzyfingers]

I'm making a YouTube video for my channel showcasing all the famous live performances by a specific famous pianist and reacting towards their performance. I'm starting off with Paderewski for the first YouTube video. He is definitely one of the greats in the history of piano playing and should deserve more attention.
I would like to ask who's YOUR favourite pianist and why, and what's their top 3 most famous performances?

There are alot of these lists-of-pianists videos on YT, aren't there?
What is going to make yours new and unique?

Yuja Wang is great at the Prokofiev piano concertos, as a set, though not necessarily my favorite for each one.
Kissin has almost always impressed me - his recordings are like sculptures in sound.
His Brahms sonata 3 is colossal in scope, I think Brahms would be pleased.

I tend to be exploring the older generation of pianists these days, more than anyone contemporary - recordings from the 30's and 40's.
Benno Moiseiwitsch.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I still think his playing of the Three Movements from Petrushka by Stravinsky are still the best to this day, even better than Weissenberg.

Eh, I prefer Sung Chang's, mostly due to the first movement. Pollini's rendition just doesn't give off quite the same energy in Danse Russe, and his La Semaine Grasse just feels a bit off, though for no real reason in particular. I must admit that Pollini significantly outperforms Chang in Chez Pétrouchka, though it's not by enough to compensate for the other two movements.
I've attached a video of Sung Chang's Petrushka below:

I highly recommend a listen; it's a severely underappreciated performance.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Horowitz - never took himself too seriously, and was a pretty good improviser.  I wish there were more recordings of him improvising.

McCoy Tyner, Chic corea, Quennel Gaskin, and Sullivan Fortner

I can’t get behind a pianist who can’t improvise/compose or only plays one genre anymore

[roosterforecastle]

As for my favorite pianist, it’s hard to choose just one, but I’d say Vladimir Horowitz stands out for me. His technical mastery and emotional depth in his performances are just incredible. He was known for his expressive interpretations, particularly of romantic works, and his ability to convey such intensity through the piano is unmatched.