Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner A cougher put in his place - an extraordinary vignette

An extraordinary amount of anti-Schiff sentiment in this thread.

It's only anti his personality, not his piano playing, which is the important thing.

Actually if we were genuinely interested in the music we wouldn't comment on his personality. To describe it as "only anti-personality" could be a cover for many sins.

For example, I checked to see if he was Jewish. Being a good pianist doesn't make him immune to rudeness or incapable of being rude, but then, neither does being bad, which compared to him I'm sure many of us are.

For some people, soaps with scent have a function with some similarity to the function of music - it's a matter of esthetic appreciation. I'm thinking quite a lot of people must think that way, since the range of scented soaps is vast. Many such soaps, perhaps most, don't really have much of a scent that lingers on the skin in any noticeable way. The idea is to make bathing pleasant, I think. It's not necessarily about leaving a strong scent after the bath (which might interfere with other scents the person might want to apply later), although there are some that actually are designed to do that.

On a related tangent - years ago Stephen Hough had an active blog at a Brit newspaper site, and I was somewhat surprised to learn from his entries there that he was very much into the world of perfumes and scents, and loved to talk about them. Thinking more about it, I don't know why that would be surprising to me, but it was.

At least it wasn't snoring - a common problem at many opera performances. Nothing like watching Kundry sing in Parsifal, accompanied by a sonority of someone sawing wood - at the Met, no less!

I think I've found the connection here. The performer whose concert gets coughed at by the cougher would be the coughee. The concern with fragrance would be for those audience members who wake up and smell the coughee.... ;-)

Groan. Chuckling softly.

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I think I've found the connection here. The performer whose concert gets coughed at by the cougher would be the coughee. The concern with fragrance would be for those audience members who wake up and smell the coughee.... ;-)

I think Schiff is a terrific pianist but in master classes he can be quite cruel. I have observed this in person at least twice.

That's disappointing to hear. I've only seen his master classes online and he came across as lovely. What a shame.

In this sort of instance it is probably best to go with your experience of an individual, rather than an anonymous posting on an internet forum.

I have observed this in person at least twice.....

Schiff is a superb pianist and scholarly musician and has my upmost respect an admiration. I've highly enjoyed his WTC for decades among others. His masterclasses on youtube seem benign enough and he tends to speaks slowly and deliberately during interviews whether in English or German. This incident is of little import and his respect by the public at large and colleagues are what truly represent this master.

I agree Schiff is a terrific pianist but don't you think in a masterclass that's being filmed he might act differently than a non filmed masterclass? I found his masterclass behavior so extreme that for quite a while I couldn't listen to his playing objectively. IMO major ridiculing of a student in public is not excusable no matter how great the teacher is.

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Totally agree. I observed a masterclass, not Schiff, but another big name completely humiliate an undergraduate music major. He asked her if she could even count to 4. I wonder now if she has anything to do with piano. This approach is so mean-spirited compared to another master class with Andre Watts who was so supportive.