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Berezowsky, Demidenko

stores, I did enjoy Angela's recital -- I think her playing of the gigue of Bach's Fifth French Suite is one of the best things in the world.

Thanks for your advice, it really helped. She seemed to like the flowers. I'm really glad I did it.

Tonight, I am going to see Simone Dinerstein (Goldberg Variations).

I recently saw Benjamin Grosvenor, that was amazing, another favourite was Paul Lewis and Steven Osbourne playing Schubert duets

I must say, I was a bit disappointed with Dinnerstein. I love the Goldbergs, but (to me at least) she made them seem bland and boring. But I guess it tend to show that tiny changes in dynamics, phrasing, etc. can mean the difference between an average performance and a great one.

My favorite Goldberg Variations performance is Murray Perahia,but for most Bach keyboard works, Angela Hewitt is my favorite.

I ve never seen anything like Sokolov's 2012 program (he s changed it now). Mozart s A minor sonata and Rameau. He 's just on a different level, at elast in that repertoire.

Hi Prélude. I wasn't at the concert, and I don't know Dinnerstein's playing, so I can't defend her playing. But you'll nearly always have a hard time if you are comparing what you hear in a concert to a recording that you've heard ad infinitum.

I agree. I have seen many of the big names in piano today. Probably most all of my favorite performances have been given at student or professor recitals.
Example- I have heard Lang Lang and Andre Watts perform the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto. I have also heard it performed twice, by two separate students. In order of who I like best:
Student #1, Lang Lang, Student #2, Watts.

Famous pianists have either good publicists/connections/won competitions (or all three). There are many pianists around who do not have those things, yet still have the technique and passion to make for a wonderful performance.

I have the opposite impression, from decades of attending concerts. For the first ten years (after I started working and could afford it), I'd go to every concert I could attend, regardless of the fame or otherwise of the pianist. Every concert then was a discovery for me, and I enjoyed comparing and contrasting different interpretations of the same works. Some of the pianists whose concerts I went to were unknown names who eventually became celebrated within a few years. I also attended as many free student recitals as I could.

Since then, I've become more picky about going to concerts that aren't free , and have come to the realization that celebrated pianists are celebrated for good reasons (I discount people like Richard Clayderman et al.....): they almost invariably have that indefinable 'wow' factor that made me prick up my ears and really, really listen. I still remember attending Mikhail Pletnev's first London concert in a small hall - he was then an unknown name in the West, just one of several Soviet pianists who won the Tchaikovsky Competition and allowed to play in the West for the first time. The almost insolent ease with which he tossed off the most fiendish difficulties (in Rachmaninoff's Etudes-tableaux), the amazing range of colour and articulation no matter how dizzying the tempi, his individual quirks and razor-sharp wit (not something Russian pianists are noted for) all pointed to real star quality. And so it proved over the next few years....

Conversely, most other young pianists I heard were very competent but nothing special. The only free student concert I'd heard that made me sit up and take notice was by someone who, a few years later, won a major competition and went on to big things.

Agreed. Yuja Wang was here this weekend with a local orchestra. She was on the news on the main channel, with the minidress and the stiletto heels. Sokolov, Kissin, Perahia, come pretty much every year and you struggle to find a review on any newspaper. This is no coincidence and definitely not down to artistry.

Sokolov, Kissin and Perahia are long-established names with long-established reputations, connections and recording contracts (except Sokolov, through every fault of his own....). Perahia has just been celebrated by Sony with a huge 67 CD + 5 DVD box containing all his CBS/Sony recordings plus Vox and BBC recordings. What any reviewer say about their concerts will have little impact on their marketability.

Yuja Wang on the other hand is still making a name for herself. (Only last year, she made her debut in London's International Piano series, not in the big Royal Festival Hall, but the smaller Queen Elizabeth Hall.) Naturally, her fashion sense will be scrutinized.....

What really would be interesting is if there's an unknown name with fabulous technique and musicianship comparable to Sokolov, Kissin and Perahia - and been around a while - but has still not been picked up by concert managements and the pianistic cognoscenti. I can't think of any.

I am sure there are. Maybe just a few but i am sure there are. Every now and then you come across recordings of unknown people that blow you away.

It's kind of tautological that you can't think of any, seems to me. How would you know about them if they were unknown?

Pogo (even thought it would probably be weird as heck)

Stan Bunin

Ben Grosvenor

Lang Lang

Ingrid Fliter (I never knew how good she is. INSANELY good. How did she lose to Yundi...)

That's because I make a point of going to as many debut (and student) recitals as I can - all those pianists are unknown, mostly (but not always) young; some have taken part in competitions, some not. I've only ever spotted one talent so far, and that person went on to bigger things, as I mentioned earlier.

Of course there may be many very talented, even great pianists out there who decided that a concert career wasn't for them, and switched to teaching (or changed career to something unrelated to music) instead, and don't even bother to perform; or maybe suffer from nerves too much to perform. But if they don't perform, one cannot say that they are concert pianists, known or otherwise.

One highly talented pianist I know of who switched career (to become a doctor) while still at the beginning of a promising concert career is Naida Cole, whose CD of French piano music (including Chabrier and Gaspard de la nuit) is still one of the best I've ever heard.

But part of your criteria was "and been around for a while".

I agree with this. I'll pick a different 'art' to explain my thoughts, since piano obviously is too close to most people's hearts in this forum.

Bruce Lee is still the greatest name in martial arts history. There are martial artists out there who say he was the best, people who will swear by it, despite never meeting the man or being able to test his abilities. "But we have his movies!" some will complain. Yes, we do. But that works more to his detriment than his benefit.

Today, there are dozens of people in nearly every MMA gym across the globe who would run circles around Bruce Lee. Nobody knows their names. But each one of them would drop Lee to the mat in the first round.

There are true masters of different arts in their native lands. Escrima, for example. There is a man in the Philippines whose name was Angel Cabales. In a stick-fight, the man was undefeated. In fact, only one person in the world lasted longer than 3-5 seconds, and that man only survived for 11 seconds. Cabales would not only beat Bruce Lee, he would kill Lee in seconds. Yet nobody outside of escrima knows who he was.


The same goes for any art. There will always be those who rise to fame, and those whom no one has ever heard of who are just as good, if not better, than the famous names.

Yes, I did mention that some of the pianists I heard in their 'debuts' aren't young (maybe late 20s to 30s), but still trying to make it as concert pianists. Whether those concerts were self-funded, I don't know, but their CVs usually attest to some previous concerts in minor venues (which only get small reviews - if any - in local papers) and maybe college prizes as students. So, in my book, they are 'unknown', except maybe to people in their home towns.

But I've never heard such pianists play to the standard of those who get engagements in the big international concert halls.

Not long ago, after a lesson, my teacher proposed to go to a friend's place. She (her friend) was practicing for a recital, it had been a while since she d last played in front of an audience, and she could do with playing the whole program in front of a few friends. So we go to her place, to a soundproofed flat that had two Steinway D face to face. We had a glass of wine and a brief talk and then she started playing.

4 mazurkas, Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, 4 scherzos and the Fantasy. She was absolutely amazing. Of course after each piece she said "that wasn´t great" or "that sucked" and that kind of stuff, but that 's her. I ve heard few interpretations at taht level, and definitely heard many inferior ones from well known pianists.

Sure, she is a pro, studied in Madrid, Warsaw (3 years) and Paris (3 years). She does have the instruction, the hopursd of practice, dedication and talent of a pro. But has never pursued a frantic concert career. She teaches. None of you know of her and i am sure you would agree with me if you ever listemed to her playing.

I think that s what bennevis meant. There are people that are pros ( i just can't see a self taught musician achieving mastery of the classical repertoire) but didn t want to/couldn t have a successful concert career. I've come across a few lesser known musicians who in my opinion are better than some of the so called stars. The comparison in classical music is immediate as they all have common repertoire.

oic - you're talking about the unknowns you do know of, not about the ones you don't.

Yes, I finally figured out that bennevis meant something other by "unknown" than what I thought he meant.

Yes, I agree, there are some amazing "unknown" pianists out there. A few years ago, a local radio station was doing a tribute to a local teacher who had recently passed away, someone who I'd never heard of. They played a recording of the Copland Variations from a recital of hers that I thought was as good or better than many things I have heard from some of the big names. It was, technically excellent, and, IMO, musically it was definitely better and more insightful than a performance I heard Stephen Hough give of the same piece, around the same time.