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I think for me, it would have to be Grigory Sokolov. Take a look at this video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vA8qX_p11w
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Dominic Cheli I heard him live last year, playing Kreisleriana and Brahms Intermezzi. The sounds he was getting out of the instrument were just amazing!
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Andrea Buckland So lucky! I didn’t really know his playing until I heard Boris Giltburg in one of his tonebase classes saying Sokolov had the best color. After listening to Sokolov on YouTube, I am amazed. Listening to him live must have been a great experience!
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Dominic Cheli what a breathtaking performance! I love how he begins the emotional climax at bars 63-70 not in a trumpet-like fortississimo but "cantabile" and almost tenderly, taking back the dynamic as if uttering something that is too painful to be spoken out loud.
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Dominic Cheli Wow! Incredibly impressive! Thank you!
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Dominic Cheli You have no idea how many times I've listened to Sokolov play this etude! I have a couple of pieces I hope someday to be good enough to play. This is one. Scriabin's etude in D-sharp minor (a la Horowitz) is the other.
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Dominic Cheli
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Dominic Cheli Sokolv is one of my heros. Saw/heard him last year in Amsterdam at the Concertgebouw. My favorite recital ever. No ego - all about the music.
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Dominic Cheli I'm with you! Sokolov name came straight into mind when I read the question. His handle of tones are just incredible.
He doesn't ever seem to get tired either! Large amount of encores even after a long program.
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Too many great choices- I think I would pick Clara Schumann, completely based on the respect she had from so many important musicians of her time, including Chopin (my other favorite pianist of all with the technique I am most interested in- making the piano sing), Brahms and Mendelssohn. Clara must have had an amazing technique given her wide and challenging repertoire during her long career.
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Vidhya Bashyam That is a great choice, Vidhya!! If we are talking about this generation I might add Franz Liszt!
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Andrea Buckland Yes- I would love to be able to sight read Chopin Etudes!
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Vidhya Bashyam I can't even imagine. That would be amazing.
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That's not a difficult one for me to answer, but yes, I'd have a lot of choices also! First choice would be the incomparable Art Tatum, next, my personal classical music idol, Constance Keene, third, the master of masters, Sergei Rachmaninoff.
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And now the "Why":
Art Tatum: He had the most fertile, limber, and encyclopedic musical mind of anyone, ever, IMO, and an incomprehensively amazing technique that brought all of those traits to bear in his improvisations, which struck Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Gershwin, and virtually everyone else who heard him play with utter astonishment.
Constance Keene: in my mind, no one can match the emotional power and sweep of her playing of classical pieces, with an unbelievable technique that made it all seem effortless, always in service of the beauty and emotion of the performance rather than for display.
Rachmaninoff: Seemed to be able to control every nuance of his playing, again to deliver a performance that always seemed perfect for the musical and emotional content of the piece. He brought the mind of a composer to all of his performances.
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Peter Golemme I haven't heard of Keene. I'll have to check her out. Thank you!
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Maurizio Pollini
I'm dating myself here because as far as technique is concerned, he was the idol of my teenage years, and that sort of thing is hard to shake off. But after all these decades, I still find, for example, his "Trois Mouvements de Pétrouchka" (recorded long before every Tom, Dick and Harry started to play them)
and his 24 Chopin Études majestic peaks to strive towards and diamond-hard standards to live up to.
It's difficult to say why I admire his technique so much; maybe it's because you rarely think about it as the music just "happens", effortlessly - and what happens is beautiful, flawlessly constructed, and often deeply moving (Chopin Polonaises, Schubert late Sonatas and Drei Klavierstücke etc.).
Leon Fleisher once said in an interview with Bill McGlaughlin: "Technique is the ability to achieve what you want on the instrument - and the presupposition there is that you want something." That, I think, sums up Pollini's technique and its near-perfection.
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Martha Argerich. Everything about her playing looking so effortless. There is something so magical about her fingers. There are a few videos online of her with other pianist and it is particularly striking. I remember watching recently her duet with Daniel Barenboim and it made his playing look so labored next to hers.
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Michael Have you seen the videos of her playing with Babayan? "The best Mozart I've ever played."
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I would choose the speed with accuracy of Anthony Newman (organ, harpsichord, piano).
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I'm on team Slava Richter. Not for everything, not for everyone, but when he was right he had a tendency to make definitive versions of things. In particular. Beethoven Op 106 and later, and Prokofiev Sonatas…
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Zimerman - he makes it look so easy.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPpnUp3Vb9k&pp=ygUdQXJ0dXRvIEJlbmVkZXR0aSBNaWNoZWxhbmdlbGk%3D
For me, Michelangeli is an role model about how high you can achieved as artist and teacher.
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My choice is Emil Gilels. I particularly love his live recordings. He was fearless; you can hear that in his wrong notes, of which there are many compared to today's virtuosos. His playing is imperfect, but so alive. I prefer vitality to perfection.
Here is his interpretation of the Bach/Siloti Prelude. Dominic Cheli , compare with Sokolov's interpretation, which I think has the same implacability that makes Sokolov's interpretation of Chopin's Ocean Etude so powerful.
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Leah Olson Have you seen this incredible video of Gilels playing Prokofiev's 3rd Sonata?
https://youtu.be/BnJjUbWelAs
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