Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Top pianists 20th century -- how's this google result? :-)

Just for fun, I figured I'd see what would happen if I googled the phrase 'top pianists 20th century' (without quotes).

Besides the usual kinds of google matches (which included this old thread from here), I got one of those pictorial rows of images and names at the top of the page, with the heading "Music artists frequently mentioned on the web."

Here's who appeared (in this order):

Horowitz
Rachmaninoff
Richter
Rubinstein
Gilels
Argerich
Cortot
Arrau
Gould
Haskil
Schnabel
Barenboim
Michelangelil
Hess
Ashkenazy
Zimerman
Prokofiev
Kissin
Edwin Fischer
Gieseking
Pollini
Perahia
Uchida
Bolet
Guida
Backhaus
Schiff
Ogdon
Cherkassky
Tureck
Cliburn
Rudolf Serkin
Bartok
Moravec
Kapell
Katchen
Gavrilov
Anda
Pires
Francois
Pletnev
Previn
Curzon
Eschenbach
Haebler
Weissenberg
Tatum
Lupu
Kocsis
Wild
Stravinsky

.....and by the way, the order apparently isn't constant, as I learned by accident. My laptop battery ran out while I was in the middle of copying the list, and when I got back online a couple of minutes later, the order changed a little.

I don't think I need to say that there are a few surprises and funny things there....

What surprised you?

I thought for sure Liberace would be #1.

You might get that result (or Richard Clayderman) if you hit "I'm feeling lucky".

For the elderly and grizzled amongst us , Philips brought out a gigantic 200-CD box set of "Great Pianists of the 20th Century" in 1999, featuring 72 pianists, and sponsored by Steinway (though some pianists played Bechstein, Bösendorfer, Yamaha and Baldwin ). Each pianist was represented by a 2-CD set, but a few had two, or even three CD sets to their names. Some of the pianists' CDs are still around on Amazon.

There were one or two surprises on the list, like André Previn, but otherwise, it does feature all the suspects that we'd expect (if they had enough recordings to their name, that is). But good ol' Igor is most definitely not on that list. Nor Shostakovich. Not even Bartók or Prokofiev or Britten (all virtuosi as well as composers). And, of course, no jazz pianists .

When I googled it, this guy showed up
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boa...o-t_wil1-photopack-red_ruffing_-281926_r

Some surprising H names--Haskil, Hess, Haebler, rather connoisseur pianists. I'm surprised googlers know them.

Where's Joyce Hatto? She sounded like everybody! 😀

Previn is probably known most amongst the youngsters for being associated with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Daniel Müller-Schott, who are very glamorous in string-playing circles.

Where's Kempff? Yudina?

And where's Sokolov? And Stravinsky - was he much of a concert pianist?

No Cziffra?

Who is Anda? Come to think of it, I might have a CD of him playing something double or triple with Janos Starker and/or some fiddler.

Hey, how about that!

BTW, that's actually a pic of the old baseball player Red Ruffing. I use it because it actually looks more like me than him.
Or I should say how I once looked.

If any regular people look down the collection of google image matches for that phrase, they'll really wonder how the heck Red Ruffing gets matched to 'top pianists 20th century'.....

I most know him from being associated with Mia Farrow.
(Really!)

I know him second-most from having seen his LP's constantly listed among the several dozen in those ads back in the '60's for Columbia Record Club (or whatever it was; I think that was the name), where you could pick something like 6 or 10 LP's for about 5 bucks if you signed away your life.


I think he gets on there because (maybe you need to be an old-timer to think that this matters) .....because it was his playing of "the Elvira Madigan" concerto that was used in the movie. I had heard of him before that (from always seeing LP's of his in the racks at record stores), but the movie made him much more well known.

BTW, I've never seen the movie.

No love for Dino?

http://youtu.be/bDQS6Y3APZI

Ginzburg should also be there...

And i'm shocked as well, that the list didn't include the giants Cziffra and Sokolov.

Where are Hofmann, Godowsky, Lhevinne, et al?

I see Alfred Brendel did not make the list. Pity.


And if by "associated with" you mean "married to", well, except for Daniel Müller-Schott.

I know him second-most from going to a concert where he was conducting the BSO (and conducted a Mozart concerto from the piano). My wife was looking throught the program before the concert and was wondering why they could not get a better picture of him to put in the program. After he walked out on stage my wife remarked, "Wow, that is a really good picture of him." What did she expect? The guy was pushing 80 at the time.

Y'know.....I think he did, and somehow I just didn't type his name. I think it was a casualty of the thing I mentioned about losing the computer connection in the middle of what I was doing, and re-booting, and the new order being a little different. I think he just slipped through the cracks.

I tried now to get it back, to see if he's on there -- but for some reason, now the search isn't giving that strip of images at the top of the page.

.....I checked again to see if I'd have better luck -- and this time I did get that image strip at the top of the page.

And the verdict is: No, he really isn't there!!!

However, now....
is there.
Between Ivan Moravec and Andrei Gavrilov (who I don't think I heard of before this).

And of course - Victor Borge, heh

It was squeezed in between shots from the Great pianist of the 20th century Philips series. I won't pretend I know how google works but that pic must be related to your search somehow.