Good/Great pianists who started late?

[kilimanjaro]

Any names?

[pskim]

Garrick Ohlsson, age 8

[Aurelio]

I used to think 8 is a perfect age to start.  

If you consider age 8, as a late starting age... what about 13, 14, 15, 19, 30, 40...?

[JTownley]

  Joe Townley  -   age 10! (hehe)
https://www.JoeTownley.com  Lots of piano videos!

[kilimanjaro]

If you consider 8 as late - I really hope you don't feel old in your thirties and retire!   And stop trying out new things.

Anyways, I meant at least someone who started in their late teens or even early twenties.  And I am not just curious about famous concert players.  I also mean someone like some respected jazz club players, guys who we see on tv in shows, teachers at music schools, etc..

[10Fingers]

one of my favourites: Dang Thai Son - he had his first real piano lessons at age 16 at the conservatorium in moscow!

He's the winner of the international chopin competition in 1980, that was when Pogorelich fainted.

PLEASE read his biography, it's very touching and interesting at the same time. Despite the unhappy circumstances under which he had to live (Vietnam War) he managed to become one of the best but unfortunately also one of the most underrated pianist.

regards,

Thi  

[frederic]

10fingers, its interesting you mentioned Dang Thai Son. I was going to start a topic on him a long time ago but i thought maybe no one here would know who he is.
Yes, he's an extraordinary pianist. But unfortunately he is not very well known. I've got 4 recordings of him playing Chopin's Nocturnes, Scherzos, Ballades, and Impromptus. It's very good playing. Ahh... i never knew he started that late. That makes him even more talented!

[amee]

Dang Thai Son was the first Asian pianist to win first prize at the Chopin International competition.  He was also the only non-Polish pianist who was invited to play at a special concert in 1999 in Warsaw that commemorated the 150th anniversary of Chopin's death.

He did start taking piano lessons from his mother (who was also a pianist) when he was 4 years old.

[chopinetta]

Gil Garburg- age 10! i think i'll take joe townley too!!!

[chopinetta]

Gil Garburg- age 10! i think i'll take joe townley too!!!

[Aurelio]

• Joe Townley, age 10  
  
• Garrick Ohlsson, age 8
  
• Dang Thai Son, age 4
  
• Gil Garburg, age 10

Where are those late starting pianists?
I can't see anyone...

[10Fingers]

yeah, Dang Thai Son got his first piano lessons at age 4 from his mother but you forgot to mention one thing: that wasn't really piano lessons.
He and his mother had to escape from Hanoi during the war and moved to the a small village in the mountains in the high north. They took an old bad piano with them  and Dang Thai Son was allowed to play 20 minutes a day only! He had to take care for the chickens, cows and the village the rest of the time.
When they moved back to Hanoi, Son was already over 10 years old, and at age 16 he was discovered by a russian pianist ( i think that was Izaac Kaz) who took Son with him to russia where he received his first proper lessons.
So I think we can also call him a late-starter.

reagards,

Thi

[chopinetta]

it's incredible to hear about pianists who started late but improves quickly and ends up being a concert pianist!!

but it is also good if you start early. then you'll have a really long experience on it. because if you are young you don't really care about performing in public so you don't get nervous when you're asked to play. and you get used to it!

[JTownley]

Chopinetta wrote:
Gil Garburg- age 10! i think i'll take joe townley too!!!

:-*Chopinetta, you are such a sweetie-pie! If I were your teacher you'd be my "star" pupil!!  

[roman]

I wish I couldhave started like at 7 years old, but I started at 12 I think, but I've caught up to the years I think, and maybe even passed them.

Has there really been any great pianists who started at 30/40 and so on? I think the max age limit to start is like  16 or something if you want to be serious in it, even then 16 is way too late.

[RiskyP]

If I remember correctly, Aram Khachaturian started when he was 19. Although he is not very popular in the US, there are few in Asia and in Europe who do not know about his music.

[JTownley]

 yeah, Good 'ol Ketchepturian was a great composer, but was he a great pianist?
https://www.JoeTownley.com  Lots of piano videos!

[MzrtMusic]

Artur Rubenstein didn't start practicing until he was like 40. That's the closest thing I know...

Love,

Sarah

[BoliverAllmon]

The answer is ME!! LOL. Seriously, I started when I was 18 years old and now at 19 I am one of the best if not the best pianist in my college right now. I don't know if I will ever become a great piano performer like Perahia or Kissin, but I will be great at what I do. I am currently working on my Church Music degree which has me learning piano, voice, and classical guitar. So, I am very busy.

Boliver Allmon

[BoliverAllmon]

I don't know that 16 is way too late to start playing piano. It depends on what you did during those years. I personally played violin for many years as well as playing bass guitar. This helped develope my ear for music. I think this is the hardest part of playing music is developing the ear.

Boliver Allmon

[ericnolte]

Accomplished pianists who were late starters?

Hmm.

While it's true, as someone pointed out on this list, that Artur Rubinstein was 40 before he began to practice really rigorously, his technique, as he put it in the first volume of his autobiography, was just about as powerful as it ever got by the time he was 17.  I guess this means that he worked hard after 40 to play with greater care, but his technique was already in place.

I think Harold Bauer was 20, when he decided to be a pianist.  Of course, he played before that, and he was a very serious violinist before that.

Sviatislav Richter was also 20, when he presented himself to Neuheus for serious study.  He'd been studying conducting until then.  But also bear in mind that he had gone through the whole rigorous Russian central music school training.

Rachmaninoff (yes, that's how he spelled his own name, and it's what's on his tombstone... I've seen it with my own eyes) was 45 when he decided to become a concert pianist, but, here again, he was already a superb pianist and a completely trained musician in every way.  He started early, but didn't get serious until he was 11, and moved away to live with a couple other serious students at his teacher's house.  He went through a very thorough conservatory training.

Now, I remember reading about a young Polish man (whose name escapes me... I think I read about him in... maybe... Harold Schonberg's book on the Great Pianists) who presented himself for study with a great teacher without knowing the first thing about music.  The teacher tried hard to discourage the student, warning him that it was too late, and that nothing but frustration and disappointment could come of such a lunatic venture.  Well, ten years later, the young man had persisted and become a concert pianist who played one of the Chopin concerti in public, with a real orchestra!

Anybody remember this story, and know who this young man was?  

I'm sure there are many others who started late.  

I have lots of thoughts on the topic, as I myself was 30 years old before I could play more than a couple scales, or knew anything at all about the nuts and bolts of music.  I could play a few hard licks, but I could barely read baby music.  While I got an early start, I also quit early, never worked at it, and never got out of baby music till I was a late teenager.  After the music bug bit me (with a VENGEANCE) when I was 29, I found a great teacher and worked like a man possessed, and within three years I was invited to give a solo recital for a National Music Club benefit in Sarasota, playing some pretty hard literature.


Enough for now.

Eric Nolte

[ericnolte]

Oh, I forgot to say how old that young Pole was when he presented himself for serious study at a late age.  I think he was somewhere between 18 and 21.  He was really already fully grown before he ever touched a piano.

Best,

Eric Nolte

[Andrew]

As much a layman as I am in this area, I still have to say that hearing people talk about 16 being the latest you can start if you want to be serious disappoints me.

Mastery is effortlessness - nothing more.  I think every one of us, regardless of age, can do some things on the piano with incredible ease.  Tomorrow, what we can do that easily will have expanded somewhat (not noticably, perhaps, but it adds up).  Whether or not a person reaches the level of Horowitz over the years is irrelevant.  There is no reason not to begin at 20, 30, 40..  even the day you die.

From what I've learned of educational psychology (and admittedly, I haven't directly seen this applied to the learning of motor skills but I imagine the same principles hold to a certain degree), starting "late" does not put a person at any kind of disadvantage but a social one.  A late beginner is less likely to be taken seriously in a world where 4 year olds are routinely sent to colleges of music.

As for the idea that technique "peaks" in the late teens - I take that simply to mean that because most of these famous pianists have been practicing nearly since their birth, and since technique is a far more finite area of practice than style or composition, they have no need to futher their technique by that time (at least as far as they know).

All that said, I know even less about music history and performers than I do about theory - my favorite pianists (and some of the only ones whose names I even know) are Victor Borge, Chico Marx, and Vince Guaraldi.  I can't really help with the question that was actually asked, heh.

-Andrew Drummond

[ericnolte]

Hello all,

  Andrew Drummand makes an inspiring point,  in effect, that we should pay attention to what we can still hope to do, and embrace what remains for us.

  I am reminded of a book I wanted to bring your attention in my last post, but because this book is not by a pianist, but a cellist (not to mention another reason: that I was already  babbling away too long with these fleet fingers that can type at nearly the speed of heat....)

  Anybody know John Holt's book, _Never Too Late_? John Holt was a radical educator who came to international fame in the 1960's for his work in the area of psychology called child development and learning theory.  He is best known for such books as _How Children Learn_.  He has been compared to Piaget for the keenness of his observations on the way young people learn, and he stands head and shoulders above the clunky writing of so many academics, for the grace of his prose.  His conclusions are inspiring too, in the way he formulates the implications of his work.

  Now, the reason I'm telling you about this is because in his spare time, John Holt took up the cello.  The cello, lads and lasses!  At the tender age of...
40-something.  And he got pretty good at it.  Moreover, he wrote this wonderful book for us, to bolster our sagging spirits when we may sometimes think it's pointless to hope we can continue to improve.

  I should think that for the wet young pups on this list who have already acquired virtuoso chops, this book will not speak with any real immediacy, but you know what?  I know for a fact that there are plenty of very young people out there who seriously believe they are over the hill even before all their adult teeth have grown in.   But for those of us who were already too old even to enter the piano competition circuit before we could play baby music, this book is a profound inspiration....

  Music is one of those magical alternate or parallel universes, about which contemporary physicists have so much to say.  The ambition and the effort to learn enough to open the door to this magical realm is what makes us wizards (of various gifts, of course....)   :)Contrast our varying wizardry with the poor "muggles" whose passion for anything exalted was drained away, for god only knows what pathetic reasons, long before they became the poor craven conformists we see among those herds of bored and anxious high school students.

  The point of working hard at music should stay clearly in focus: we must persist at it for the joy it brings us in the process of pursuing it, and not for the comparison we can make of ourselves to Martha Argerrich or Murray Perahia.

Best,
Eric Nolte

[ericnolte]

Hello again,

  Once again, I missed a point I should have made in my last post:

  Surely there are those who are left scratching their heads at my reference to "muggles" and "wizards" in my last post.

  First, I apologize in advance to that half of the population who may justly feel slighted at my unwitting, (in fact,  entirely witless) omission of any reference to the equally gifted "witches" among us....

  Secondly, it must be obvious to most, but not all, that I am referring by analogy to the current literary rage among the population of Tweens (and many teens and adults), of J. K. Rowling's enormously successful Harry Potter series of books.  

  In Rowling's books, witches and wizards have to go to school to learn their art and craft of magic, and they know how to fly.  

  Now, by my sight, anyone who can render a passable performance of a Chopin Etude, or a fugue of Bach, is clearly a witch or wizard too!  

  "Muggles" are our non-magical brethren, and are a stand-in for the poor plodders of the world.  I do not intend any elistest snobbery by these references, as I believe I make it clear, at least by implication, that I hold such "magic" to be available in some degree to everybody whose passage through childhood's fire did not singe their eyes, or squeeze the juice out of their souls.  This is "magic" that is available to anyone for whom some passion burns ardently in a corner of their minds and hearts, and engages them fully and brightly enough to let them fly....

Best regards,
Eric Nolte