Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What are your "most impressive" piano moments?

For me it would be:

- The coda to the piano transcription La Valse.
- The octave runs in Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody
- The opening of Rachmaninoff's First Concerto

My most impressive piano moments? Things we've played?

I've worked for years to perfect my piano technique.

Sadly, the thing that seems to impress listeners the most is when I play a glissando.

Lot of my best piano moments is not when I play or perform something. But more so what I learned in a paradigm shifting moment or when I have a discussion about a piece's interpretation or expression in class with others. I can be very inspiring.
You may be cynical as this is a forum and we just are as credible as what we write , but the above are my best piano moments.

+1

A book of WTC done from memory

I learned and memorized the Grieg concerto in 2 weeks for a performance.

Performing 50 minutes worth of music from memory (but still failing the ARCT Performer's exam).

Playing 'my' own version of Für Elise in front of the passengers (one of whom requested it) in a ship's bar, never having seen the score of Für Elise in my life, and never having played it before, and getting a round of applause for my efforts.

Later, I found that I actually played it in the right key (but that was only because A minor is the easiest minor key to improvise in ), and got almost all the notes right in the main theme, while the other sections bore a, er........passing resemblance to what Luddy actually wrote.

Luckily, the audience was somewhat buoyed up with alcohol during my amazing performance .

Playing Tarkus from ELP on a Hammond B3 (ok not a piano) in a bar with my band in the 70's before I was old enough to drink....in the days before music transcription software, YouTube, ability to slow down music without changing the pitch in order to figure out solos, etc......

I try not to dwell on it too much, but let's see:
-Some parts of the Bach-Busoni Chaccone (I really need to get that back in shape)
-Alkan's "Allegro Barbaro"
-Baba Yaga from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition

Honestly, I'm not a fan of my Ravel Toccata performance from high school.

They seem to occur only when I'm alone with my piano.

Nor my performance of Franck's PC&F from around the same age. It is a painful listen. Got the notes pretty much correct, but what I could do with that music today, especially after studying the organ music...

Tell me about it!

But next time, use a camcorder. Even if you can't play for people as good as you play for yourself, you'll have videos to proof that you can :-)

Mine is very modest compared to the regulars here, but every couple of months while playing the WTC Prelude in C Major, I make a real connection with Old Bach. It's hard to put into words, but y'all know what I'm talking about.

Video is a great intermediary step between playing for yourself and playing for others! Pressing that record button gives me almost as much stagefright as an actual stage, hahah.

Personally: 6 months ago when I played in a very small recital arranged by my piano teacher. I had not performed in 30 years and all I had were some painful memories of terrible stage fright and humiliating failures when my hands trembled and the "music" I produced was a total disaster.
So this was a defining moment for me. I played "A Maiden's Prayer" by Tekla Badarzewska and I had it ALMOST totally memorized - I have never been good at memorizing - but I kept the sheet music just to be safe. The grand piano was a Shigeru Kawai, an absolutely lovely instrument which was sheer pleasure to play. When I played my solo piece I had already played 4 hands with my teacher and that went really well, so I was not nervous anymore, just unusually focused.
I made a few mistakes here and there but I ignored them, my hands did not tremble, I realized that it sounded terrific, and close to the end I felt a smile of triumph spread over my face. I thought something like "now, watch me!" and when I ended the piece the audience cheered and gave me a long applause. So I stood there, still smiling, and I felt "yes! THIS is how it should be!"
Because I had trained mentally for this moment. (I love mental training, but I knew nothing about it in back in the days when I last time made a recital.) I had imagined the feeling when I ended with a perfect chord and knew I had made a good performance. Oh yes ... and now it finally happened for real. It was like breaking a life-long curse ...


Another really great piano moment was just six weeks ago when I was in the audience in the Stockholm Piano Festival. The elite of Swedish pianists gathered in a very unique "battle", all the big names playing their favourite acts. And my friend Per, probably the biggest name of them all, participated. He had taken the challenge very seriously and played something that was NOT a "safe card" so to speak - the Chopin 2nd sonata. I had listened to it before in a recording with Pollini ... and Per entered the stage and totally blasted us away with a marvellous rendering of this sonata. In the third movement, the funeral march, the audience was so quiet that it was magical. Several of us started to wipe our eyes because it was so hauntingly beautiful. I think this was the greatest piano moment I have ever experienced.

God, I know exactly what you mean! Something about being recorded or watched changes everything. One day I think I'll tackle this problem, but I have no desire (or need) to do that now.

Compelled to say, that is awesome and impressive, to memorize a whole concerto in couple of weeks, having the ability to perform 50 minutes of repertoire, having learned a WHOLE book of WTC (reallY?) , and even improvising fur elise (in front of public let alone) are all impressive to say the least.

Yes, a video camera is easily accessible these days. Record yourself. and put up those impressive bits up here on for everyone to see. (please be discretionary, dont post anything , or mediocre

Glad to hear about Per he is a fantastic performer and well knowledgeable on Beethoven sonatas.

Vers la flamme...