Accomplished pianist

[kghayesh]

We always notice the term accomplished pianist.... but what does that term exactly mean??? and what defines an accomplished pianist???

[pianonut]

concert pianists are accomplished, but we generally call them virtuosos if they are really good.

what i consider accomplished is the all around type. they can conduct a choir, a symphony, hear chords, remember melodies and notes well, are multi-purpose thinking (like our church pianist) and usually play about as well as any studied pianist, but don't specialize necessarily in performance.

[ted]

I think the word "accomplished" implies an affirmative judgement regarding the player by other people, although by the dictionary definition it would theoretically be possible to apply it to an isolated individual who achieved his own definition of success. While this may be strictly true according to the letter, I think that for most of us the word "accomplished" implies some form of verifiable social recognition of ability by third parties, preferably by more than a few third parties. The actual modes of ability, as Pianonut has rightly pointed out, do not matter. Indeed, the more ways the merrier.

[ramseytheii]

We always notice the term accomplished pianist.... but what does that term exactly mean??? and what defines an accomplished pianist???

An accomplished pianist is one who brings the audience, to experience something that is out of the boundaries of time, which shackles us in our everyday existence.  It is one who is at one with the instrument.  This happens in many ways.  Glenn Gould talked to the piano like it was his best friend.  Richter dominated the piano like it was a man in chains, and he the woman with the whip.  Strange analogy I know.  But they fit each other.  The accomplished pianist is one who creates the infinity on stage.  I am not talking about this much-besmirched "High Priest" attitude.  I am talking about the release, from the everyday, into something untouchable by our usual constraints.
It was not until I learned to do at the piano, mechanically, anything I wanted, that I realized, anyone can obtain that.  It is never too late to realize this.  We must above all concentrate on developing our personalities.  In the immortal words of Polonius, "To thy own self be true."  The mechanics are the materialistic side of life.  Some people collect fast octaves, fast scales, fast thirds, super-soft sonorities, et cetera, like others collect cars, or some useless objects of so-called rarity or value.  No; this is the wrong way.  It is the wrong investment.  We cannot make these materialistic investments, and expect people to care, and to listen.  Above all we have to care about those things which are common to all of us.  That will make an accomplished pianist, someone who can take the audience into the music, and show that it is important for everyone.

Walter Ramsey