With so many pianists now available on YouTube, and after listening to some of the finest, I have decided to re-appraise Horowitz’s pianism.
As pointed out by some critics, Horowitz' command of pianism, coupled with his nuanced artistry, is comparable to Rembrandt's mastery of oil portraiture: contrasts, chiaroscuro, bold impasto, highlights to the highest level possible.
If we were to draw any literary analysis to his "pellucid pianism," I could only think of Henry D. Thoreau, the Walden Pond.
At any rate, Horowitz's unbelievable multifaceted artistry as a pianist and musician, could well reach all the aspects of the piano in all its tones, from the most crystal-cleared bells to the lovely cello-like meanderings of the cantabile-sostenuto.
But even more stunning is Horowitz' command of the "damper pedal" which, like a portal to the spirit realm of the piano, could summon up a veritable phantasmagoria of illusive "ghost notes." In other words, there is an “element of transcendentalism,” which, like the stuff of genius, sometimes verging on the demonic, may escape our comprehension.
As I listen to his rendition of Scarlatti’s and Chopin’s, the Walden Pond of Henry D. Thoreau came to my mind: at times explosive (during the Spring Season) as the ice breaks down with thundering sounds and “tumults” but also pellucid “crystalline” and “pliant” notes merging into one another, like a bevy of scudding clouds in the beautiful skies of a wondrous mind.
His diminuendo and poco rit. could be compared to the action of sunlights on a liquescent lake of marvelous beauty, self-mirrored waters and embossed with loveliest reflections!
One could also compare his hovering ghost-notes, human-like, drawn-out, lingering echoes —-resounding in the stringboard— to shafts of light passing through a prism or translucent object.
It is worth reminding the reader that Horowitz, like all the great masters, sought the greatest juxtapositions and contrasts, from the “dull-sounding tones” to the most striking “pyrotechnics” in the “bold impasto” of genius!
Indeed! Dutch painter Rembrandt and Horowitz have much in common!
When speaking of pianissimo, I would forgo speaking of ripples, eddies, foams, bubbles, spumes and suds, because Horowitz’ range of dynamics (his latter years) would require the finest ears!
Much too our delight, nonetheless, Horowitz followed his instincts, and sometimes, I would say for the most part, he proved himself to be above the snarky criticism of his contemporary.
At times, Horowitz would play Chopin like Mozart's Sonatas, or vice-versa, sometimes he would cast Mozart's piano-works in the romantic spirit of the Polish composer. Nay, it is a well-known fact that Vladimir Horowitz, whose self-confidence as the best pianist was even greater than the 9-foot Steinway piano upon which he would unleash his Herculean powers and thunderbolts, would eventually pique less talented pianists —Horowitz' range of tones, dynamics and juxtapositions are, indeed, of the greatest scope, subtlety and delicacy (latter years in his career).
Sometimes, his self-willed indulgences with the music of Chopin were not only intolerable but even narcissistic to an neurotic degree (e.g., as those occasional outbursts of paroxysm when playing Skryabin's D Sharp minor Etude) at times could provoke disapproval, awe, terror or disappointment for a more puritanical audience.
True! For the most part, Horowitz imposed his idiosyncratic personality regardless of the composer's style or any extant indications to the proper interpretation of the music in question.
Over the years, nevertheless, Horowitz's stature as a pianist has only grown into a myth, a god or poet of the well-tempered clavier, and it is doubtful whether latter pianists could claim his crown as the King of the Piano. Some pianists could play faster or with more dexterity than Horowitz, but in terms of range of dynamics, he is one of the greatest of all times.
As pointed out by some critics, Horowitz' command of pianism, coupled with his nuanced artistry, is comparable to Rembrandt's mastery of oil portraiture: contrasts, chiaroscuro, bold impasto, highlights to the highest level possible.
If we were to draw any literary analysis to his "pellucid pianism," I could only think of Henry D. Thoreau, the Walden Pond.
At any rate, Horowitz's unbelievable multifaceted artistry as a pianist and musician, could well reach all the aspects of the piano in all its tones, from the most crystal-cleared bells to the lovely cello-like meanderings of the cantabile-sostenuto.
But even more stunning is Horowitz' command of the "damper pedal" which, like a portal to the spirit realm of the piano, could summon up a veritable phantasmagoria of illusive "ghost notes." In other words, there is an “element of transcendentalism,” which, like the stuff of genius, sometimes verging on the demonic, may escape our comprehension.
As I listen to his rendition of Scarlatti’s and Chopin’s, the Walden Pond of Henry D. Thoreau came to my mind: at times explosive (during the Spring Season) as the ice breaks down with thundering sounds and “tumults” but also pellucid “crystalline” and “pliant” notes merging into one another, like a bevy of scudding clouds in the beautiful skies of a wondrous mind.
His diminuendo and poco rit. could be compared to the action of sunlights on a liquescent lake of marvelous beauty, self-mirrored waters and embossed with loveliest reflections!
One could also compare his hovering ghost-notes, human-like, drawn-out, lingering echoes —-resounding in the stringboard— to shafts of light passing through a prism or translucent object.
It is worth reminding the reader that Horowitz, like all the great masters, sought the greatest juxtapositions and contrasts, from the “dull-sounding tones” to the most striking “pyrotechnics” in the “bold impasto” of genius!
Indeed! Dutch painter Rembrandt and Horowitz have much in common!
When speaking of pianissimo, I would forgo speaking of ripples, eddies, foams, bubbles, spumes and suds, because Horowitz’ range of dynamics (his latter years) would require the finest ears!
Much too our delight, nonetheless, Horowitz followed his instincts, and sometimes, I would say for the most part, he proved himself to be above the snarky criticism of his contemporary.
At times, Horowitz would play Chopin like Mozart's Sonatas, or vice-versa, sometimes he would cast Mozart's piano-works in the romantic spirit of the Polish composer. Nay, it is a well-known fact that Vladimir Horowitz, whose self-confidence as the best pianist was even greater than the 9-foot Steinway piano upon which he would unleash his Herculean powers and thunderbolts, would eventually pique less talented pianists —Horowitz' range of tones, dynamics and juxtapositions are, indeed, of the greatest scope, subtlety and delicacy (latter years in his career).
Sometimes, his self-willed indulgences with the music of Chopin were not only intolerable but even narcissistic to an neurotic degree (e.g., as those occasional outbursts of paroxysm when playing Skryabin's D Sharp minor Etude) at times could provoke disapproval, awe, terror or disappointment for a more puritanical audience.
True! For the most part, Horowitz imposed his idiosyncratic personality regardless of the composer's style or any extant indications to the proper interpretation of the music in question.
Over the years, nevertheless, Horowitz's stature as a pianist has only grown into a myth, a god or poet of the well-tempered clavier, and it is doubtful whether latter pianists could claim his crown as the King of the Piano. Some pianists could play faster or with more dexterity than Horowitz, but in terms of range of dynamics, he is one of the greatest of all times.
These wintery and yet warm-hearted writings on pianists and composers should be read as my one-sided opinion, however subjective, may task me to further tweak any lines or comments to what is proper and praiseworthy.
I wanted to include so many great pianists, but I just chose those from the arbitrary train of circumstances, for it is quite difficult to keep pace with the ever-expanding field of the performer and virtuosi, their numbers ever-increasing, could outperform the old masters. But this is like saying that Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro painting technique has been eclipsed by a new genius, and now the old master is irrelevant.
I am of the opinion that every age has its harvest of fruits, good, bad, and commonplace, and its recurrent epigonism, however hackneyed, is often the continuation of the past as yet uninterrupted by the collapse of society.
As has been observed, every age, unfortunately, is depleted to the claim of “originality,” its wellspring soon reaches the fetid waters of stagnation, decadence and nihilism. Hence, we are forever condemned to being children of imitation, and today we wonder who was the inspiration of Phidias?
Nevertheless, some people may rise above their time, and could even claim posthumous renown to posterity. Some composers did so because their musical compositions are still extant, but recordings of such twentieth century’s pianists-composers are scarce, and in the case of the nineteenth century’s pianists, such as Chopin or Liszt, all we have is just highfalutin written records of their performances, whose incredible accounts and trustworthiness, often exaggerated, are nonetheless supported by their compositions.
Thanks to the marvel of recordings and films, we can bear witness to a new generation of virtuosic performers claiming the throne of the best pianist of all times.
As there are so many great pianists, the hall of fame has been widened to accommodate those who are believed to be among the best ever.
We do so by comparison, and it seems that the stretches far exceeded our expectations, and we are now obliged to dethroning those we once thought to “hold highest” the scepter of Zeus: V. Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Evgeny Kissin, Andre Watts, Christian Georges Cziffra, Marc Andre Hamelin, Martha Argerich, to name just a few “out of the thousands,” whose fame could still outshine the new “phenomenal pianist.”
But as I said, every generation has its geniuses, interpreters, virtuosi, imitators, et al., and the recording age already had its harvest.
Latest rising super-star, Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim touches on the angelic side of music! He is an angel of light and beauty!
His technical dexterities, brilliancy and surprising musical maturity could place him among the greatest pianists whoever lived.
Yunchan Lim (winner) Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor)
https://youtu.be/DPJL488cfRw
This phenomenon of child-prodigy is the incarnation of the piano itself!
Now that he has won the Van Cliburn competition, it is clear, as a lake reflecting the clouds and the skies, that Yunchan Lim is one of the greatest pianists of all times. But even more incredible, he is a musician of the highest order, in the order of Melchizedek, the high priest!
I heard his phenomenal rendition of the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto for piano, and I went back and forth to Vladimir Horowitz’ version, just to compare the two titans of pianism, and I have to admit that Yunchan Lim is in equal terms (perhaps better): flawless, aggressive, sensitive, explosive, transcendental, lyrical, dreamy, percussive, ineffable…
I wanted to include so many great pianists, but I just chose those from the arbitrary train of circumstances, for it is quite difficult to keep pace with the ever-expanding field of the performer and virtuosi, their numbers ever-increasing, could outperform the old masters. But this is like saying that Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro painting technique has been eclipsed by a new genius, and now the old master is irrelevant.
I am of the opinion that every age has its harvest of fruits, good, bad, and commonplace, and its recurrent epigonism, however hackneyed, is often the continuation of the past as yet uninterrupted by the collapse of society.
As has been observed, every age, unfortunately, is depleted to the claim of “originality,” its wellspring soon reaches the fetid waters of stagnation, decadence and nihilism. Hence, we are forever condemned to being children of imitation, and today we wonder who was the inspiration of Phidias?
Nevertheless, some people may rise above their time, and could even claim posthumous renown to posterity. Some composers did so because their musical compositions are still extant, but recordings of such twentieth century’s pianists-composers are scarce, and in the case of the nineteenth century’s pianists, such as Chopin or Liszt, all we have is just highfalutin written records of their performances, whose incredible accounts and trustworthiness, often exaggerated, are nonetheless supported by their compositions.
Thanks to the marvel of recordings and films, we can bear witness to a new generation of virtuosic performers claiming the throne of the best pianist of all times.
As there are so many great pianists, the hall of fame has been widened to accommodate those who are believed to be among the best ever.
We do so by comparison, and it seems that the stretches far exceeded our expectations, and we are now obliged to dethroning those we once thought to “hold highest” the scepter of Zeus: V. Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Evgeny Kissin, Andre Watts, Christian Georges Cziffra, Marc Andre Hamelin, Martha Argerich, to name just a few “out of the thousands,” whose fame could still outshine the new “phenomenal pianist.”
But as I said, every generation has its geniuses, interpreters, virtuosi, imitators, et al., and the recording age already had its harvest.
Latest rising super-star, Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim touches on the angelic side of music! He is an angel of light and beauty!
His technical dexterities, brilliancy and surprising musical maturity could place him among the greatest pianists whoever lived.
Yunchan Lim (winner) Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor)
https://youtu.be/DPJL488cfRw
This phenomenon of child-prodigy is the incarnation of the piano itself!
Now that he has won the Van Cliburn competition, it is clear, as a lake reflecting the clouds and the skies, that Yunchan Lim is one of the greatest pianists of all times. But even more incredible, he is a musician of the highest order, in the order of Melchizedek, the high priest!
I heard his phenomenal rendition of the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto for piano, and I went back and forth to Vladimir Horowitz’ version, just to compare the two titans of pianism, and I have to admit that Yunchan Lim is in equal terms (perhaps better): flawless, aggressive, sensitive, explosive, transcendental, lyrical, dreamy, percussive, ineffable…
I have remarked that the latest Van Cliburn winner (2022), Mr. Yunchan Lim, could play the 3rd Concerto for piano by Rachmaninoff better than Horowitz, but it is, of course, a one-sided opinion.
Horowitz’ (FFF) and pianissimos are his hallmark! Technically speaking, at least in the 3rd Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff, Horowitz has no equal.
Musically speaking, just listen to his chordal-melodic lines, they are not in haste, but rather, tamed and delicately harrowed by the master’s poetic infusions of self-emancipation, romanticism, intoxication, paroxysm, adventurousness!
It seems that Nietzsche’s overman has set the bars too high for a new generation of creative artists.
Now, it is very possible that Rachmaninoff came across the writings of Frederick Nietzsche, the overman, and hence, one can suspect a new generations of artists, musicians, writers and painters alike, trying to surpass the masterpieces of their predecessors.
What’s Diabolical, Mephistophelean?
if we follow Goethe’s definition of genius (Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, page 406, Wednesday, March 30, 1831, On the Demonic) then Horowitz had a demon and an angel!
This hybrid of contrasting forces, a metamorphosis, from the angelic to the demonic, is what sets Horowitz apart from other pianists.
If one is to concede a superlative adjective for a true case of greatness, in its most cogent, compelling, and bewitching powers of genius, angelic and demonic alike, then Horowitz is still the King of the piano.
Once again, deepest apology for any unwise comments.
Yunchan Lim is a tremendous pianist, an angel of beauty and light!
Personally, I would say that Rachmaninoff, Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali, and Vladimir Horowitz, are among my favorite geniuses.
Yesterday, however aware of any unwarranted censorship, I spilled a few notes (Van Cliburn Competitions) on the phenomenon of replicas in vogue, personality and the copy-cat-effects of YouTubers among pianists, and I did express myself in a language that you may call deferential and proper, but I was deleted.
I would not, of course, set me on fire by saying anything that does not conform to the establishment of the protocols of the wise elders of music.
But if you consider how strikingly imitative is the stylistic approach of one pianist to the other, especially among the oriental stock, you may conclude that in a few years the art of playing the piano, like conducting orchestras or politics, “ad infinitum,” would be one of the most repetitive learning marvels in the history of Homo sapiens.
Martin Garcia - Ballade in G minor by Chopin:
https://youtu.be/BjZsTeSvwe4
Mr. Martin García-Garcia has personality...which to me is the mark of a great pianist in the making! I find the other participants very academic, no doubt vouchsafed with the finest technique, “elan and finesse,” but those qualities alone do not make-up for a truly great pianist: “personality” has the uncanny stamp of the individual sound, the “golden sound.”
I also find that these pianists, while possessing the finest technique and finely-adjusted pianos with the lightest sensitive action, seem to be replicating themselves with the advent of YouTube.
I was quite impressed by how they tackle Chopin’s Etudes effortlessly and with panache, but when I search the aforementioned rapid-fired etudes on YouTube, there is to be found a “pianistic simulacrum ad infinitum” of the same sounds and effects, which could be due to the phenomenon of the Internet and YouTube.
This may explain why some pianists while possessing a remarkable talent to emulating and surpassing their predecessors in speed and “digital clarity,” their intelectual potency to expressing themselves at the niveau of their performance, unfortunately, is no match to the intellectual rigor and brilliancy of some one like Glen Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Marc Andre Hamelin and other great pianists, whose all-around musical intellectuality is on equal terms with their supple fingertips.
The conclusion is that the ideal pianist would be the one with “personality,” because, according to Vladimir Horowitz, personality would stamp every note with the distinct quality of Garcia!
On Pianist Yuja Wang:
Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3
https://youtu.be/JKdpEvzKoj4
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3: is a remarkable achievement for any great pianist, but with so many fine performances, replicas, simulacra and emulations after the old masters of pianism, I am not sure whether an interpreter should be accorded the hyperbolic adjectives reserved for gods or immortals: a genius.
My impression is that the post-modern, millennial pianists, unlike those raised back during the heyday-VHS-era of the 1980s' tele-vision (with the few available), could now enjoy a plethora of excellent performances on YouTube.
Knowing Homo sapiens to be a remarkable animal of imitation, no less than the chimpanzee or the parrot, could, through repetition, imitation, emulation and observations, outperform a generation of predecessors lacking the evolutionary mechanism, instinctive subtleties for the task at hand.
Therefore, if things continue at this rapid pace, the 3rd Concerto Mountain of Rachmaninov's Greatness, from a technical perspective, may soon become so numerous, so hackneyed, so commonly cloned by the contemporary great pianists, that I wouldn't be surprised if it ceases to be altogether a behemoth-artwork or benchmark upon which we may define the very limits of human potentiality and prowess.
Unquestionably, Yuja Wang is one of the greatest pianists of all times, but when I Google Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, I was left speechless by the ever-increasing quantity of excellent pianists and artists vying for supremacy. True, all these progenies are indebted to a handful of old masters, predecessors, epigonism, and in some cases, i.e., Vladimir Horowitz, Rachmaninov, Richter, Andre Watts, to me these lofty spirits once appeared as isolated gods in the Mount Olympus of the Inaccessible. Unrivaled, matchless, they once set the highest mark to any humanly possible pianistic aspirations.
Thanks to the ever distending womb of Mother Nature, fireworks such as the one here in question, may eventually produce another interesting creature, another interesting jump into the unfathomable creative stretches lying in the precipices of the human heart...
On Alexander Malofeev:
Pianist Alexander Malofeev, precociously, has already capped the most technically demanding piano concertos ever written, thus placing himself next to the greatest pianists. It is just a matter of time before he comes up with something truly original: a transcription, a composition or something so unique that it would merit the highfalutin praises accorded to an extraordinary talent.
The difference between an artist and another of high caliber may be one of subjective vs objective considerations. As a young man, the chances of stamping a work of art as "matchless and unrivaled" could be proportionate to an artist's lifespan and circumstances.
Prodigy and maturity rarely, if ever, come together, and even in the case of "genuine genius," as was the case of Mozart, Rembrandt, Dante, it is a well-known fact that "experience" is the inner-scribe behind a person's best performances and output.
Now, to be touched by the inspiration of goddess Muse, that's another mystery, because, that would depend on the person's internal spiritual fabric or the psychic constitution of the individual in question.
The secret of Vladimir Horowitz' musicality, for instance, was not simply the outcome of aesthetic sensibilities, or the outcome of a brilliant technique, but we all know that "experience" is the true inner scribe, the genius, the genie behind the greatest artistic performances. Some people may be born with surprising maturity or precocity, but life's experiences are the true checkers of our passions and emotions.
The world out there, inasmuch as novelty or any genuine work of art are concerned, has not changed. Posthumous recognition, is often proportionate to a person's unique creative powers, and it is the way it is.
Alexander is a genius of pianism, but he would need to compose, transcribe-arrange works for the piano to winning a place along the giants of the twentieth century (Hamelin, Volodos, Gyorgy Cziffra, Horowitz). While he may surpass some pianists in technical brilliance, suppleness, nimble dexterity, retaining power and musicianship, the "standard repertoire" has suffered the ever-increasing numbers of excellent interpreters:
Alexandеr Malofeev -- Saint-Saens. Piano Concerto No 2, G-moll, Op.22:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ndbwuyt_0g
Mother Nature is generous to allowing seeds to grow in their proper lands and milieu, but only the right soil and season would produce a phenomenal pianist like Alexander Malofeev. Russian Pianists, like baseball players in the Dominican Republic, are products of the soil, milieu and clime. I doubt any Caribbean musician would daily practice 10 to 12 hours as the Russian pianist of our wonder!
In the case of extremely gifted talents, humility is always the winner, because, at some point, another great pianist would be born, and countless contemporary ones (e.g., Horowitz, Richter, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, Kissin, Hamelin, etc.) would be eclipsed by the new rising star. They are all great pianists, but the living pianists, especially if they are young, could cast into obscurity the predecessors.
Alexander Malofeev is not so famous because talent and genius will always suffer resistance by the envious contemporaries. In my opinion, Alexander is perhaps the best pianist of his age. To adding insults to injuries, Mr. Malofeev is also a knock-out good looking young man, whose brilliant head is gilded by a cascade of smooth flaxen hairs resembling pure gold.
Horowitz’ (FFF) and pianissimos are his hallmark! Technically speaking, at least in the 3rd Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff, Horowitz has no equal.
Musically speaking, just listen to his chordal-melodic lines, they are not in haste, but rather, tamed and delicately harrowed by the master’s poetic infusions of self-emancipation, romanticism, intoxication, paroxysm, adventurousness!
It seems that Nietzsche’s overman has set the bars too high for a new generation of creative artists.
Now, it is very possible that Rachmaninoff came across the writings of Frederick Nietzsche, the overman, and hence, one can suspect a new generations of artists, musicians, writers and painters alike, trying to surpass the masterpieces of their predecessors.
What’s Diabolical, Mephistophelean?
if we follow Goethe’s definition of genius (Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, page 406, Wednesday, March 30, 1831, On the Demonic) then Horowitz had a demon and an angel!
This hybrid of contrasting forces, a metamorphosis, from the angelic to the demonic, is what sets Horowitz apart from other pianists.
If one is to concede a superlative adjective for a true case of greatness, in its most cogent, compelling, and bewitching powers of genius, angelic and demonic alike, then Horowitz is still the King of the piano.
Once again, deepest apology for any unwise comments.
Yunchan Lim is a tremendous pianist, an angel of beauty and light!
Personally, I would say that Rachmaninoff, Albert Einstein, Salvador Dali, and Vladimir Horowitz, are among my favorite geniuses.
Yesterday, however aware of any unwarranted censorship, I spilled a few notes (Van Cliburn Competitions) on the phenomenon of replicas in vogue, personality and the copy-cat-effects of YouTubers among pianists, and I did express myself in a language that you may call deferential and proper, but I was deleted.
I would not, of course, set me on fire by saying anything that does not conform to the establishment of the protocols of the wise elders of music.
But if you consider how strikingly imitative is the stylistic approach of one pianist to the other, especially among the oriental stock, you may conclude that in a few years the art of playing the piano, like conducting orchestras or politics, “ad infinitum,” would be one of the most repetitive learning marvels in the history of Homo sapiens.
Martin Garcia - Ballade in G minor by Chopin:
https://youtu.be/BjZsTeSvwe4
Mr. Martin García-Garcia has personality...which to me is the mark of a great pianist in the making! I find the other participants very academic, no doubt vouchsafed with the finest technique, “elan and finesse,” but those qualities alone do not make-up for a truly great pianist: “personality” has the uncanny stamp of the individual sound, the “golden sound.”
I also find that these pianists, while possessing the finest technique and finely-adjusted pianos with the lightest sensitive action, seem to be replicating themselves with the advent of YouTube.
I was quite impressed by how they tackle Chopin’s Etudes effortlessly and with panache, but when I search the aforementioned rapid-fired etudes on YouTube, there is to be found a “pianistic simulacrum ad infinitum” of the same sounds and effects, which could be due to the phenomenon of the Internet and YouTube.
This may explain why some pianists while possessing a remarkable talent to emulating and surpassing their predecessors in speed and “digital clarity,” their intelectual potency to expressing themselves at the niveau of their performance, unfortunately, is no match to the intellectual rigor and brilliancy of some one like Glen Gould, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Marc Andre Hamelin and other great pianists, whose all-around musical intellectuality is on equal terms with their supple fingertips.
The conclusion is that the ideal pianist would be the one with “personality,” because, according to Vladimir Horowitz, personality would stamp every note with the distinct quality of Garcia!
On Pianist Yuja Wang:
Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3
https://youtu.be/JKdpEvzKoj4
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3: is a remarkable achievement for any great pianist, but with so many fine performances, replicas, simulacra and emulations after the old masters of pianism, I am not sure whether an interpreter should be accorded the hyperbolic adjectives reserved for gods or immortals: a genius.
My impression is that the post-modern, millennial pianists, unlike those raised back during the heyday-VHS-era of the 1980s' tele-vision (with the few available), could now enjoy a plethora of excellent performances on YouTube.
Knowing Homo sapiens to be a remarkable animal of imitation, no less than the chimpanzee or the parrot, could, through repetition, imitation, emulation and observations, outperform a generation of predecessors lacking the evolutionary mechanism, instinctive subtleties for the task at hand.
Therefore, if things continue at this rapid pace, the 3rd Concerto Mountain of Rachmaninov's Greatness, from a technical perspective, may soon become so numerous, so hackneyed, so commonly cloned by the contemporary great pianists, that I wouldn't be surprised if it ceases to be altogether a behemoth-artwork or benchmark upon which we may define the very limits of human potentiality and prowess.
Unquestionably, Yuja Wang is one of the greatest pianists of all times, but when I Google Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, I was left speechless by the ever-increasing quantity of excellent pianists and artists vying for supremacy. True, all these progenies are indebted to a handful of old masters, predecessors, epigonism, and in some cases, i.e., Vladimir Horowitz, Rachmaninov, Richter, Andre Watts, to me these lofty spirits once appeared as isolated gods in the Mount Olympus of the Inaccessible. Unrivaled, matchless, they once set the highest mark to any humanly possible pianistic aspirations.
Thanks to the ever distending womb of Mother Nature, fireworks such as the one here in question, may eventually produce another interesting creature, another interesting jump into the unfathomable creative stretches lying in the precipices of the human heart...
On Alexander Malofeev:
Pianist Alexander Malofeev, precociously, has already capped the most technically demanding piano concertos ever written, thus placing himself next to the greatest pianists. It is just a matter of time before he comes up with something truly original: a transcription, a composition or something so unique that it would merit the highfalutin praises accorded to an extraordinary talent.
The difference between an artist and another of high caliber may be one of subjective vs objective considerations. As a young man, the chances of stamping a work of art as "matchless and unrivaled" could be proportionate to an artist's lifespan and circumstances.
Prodigy and maturity rarely, if ever, come together, and even in the case of "genuine genius," as was the case of Mozart, Rembrandt, Dante, it is a well-known fact that "experience" is the inner-scribe behind a person's best performances and output.
Now, to be touched by the inspiration of goddess Muse, that's another mystery, because, that would depend on the person's internal spiritual fabric or the psychic constitution of the individual in question.
The secret of Vladimir Horowitz' musicality, for instance, was not simply the outcome of aesthetic sensibilities, or the outcome of a brilliant technique, but we all know that "experience" is the true inner scribe, the genius, the genie behind the greatest artistic performances. Some people may be born with surprising maturity or precocity, but life's experiences are the true checkers of our passions and emotions.
The world out there, inasmuch as novelty or any genuine work of art are concerned, has not changed. Posthumous recognition, is often proportionate to a person's unique creative powers, and it is the way it is.
Alexander is a genius of pianism, but he would need to compose, transcribe-arrange works for the piano to winning a place along the giants of the twentieth century (Hamelin, Volodos, Gyorgy Cziffra, Horowitz). While he may surpass some pianists in technical brilliance, suppleness, nimble dexterity, retaining power and musicianship, the "standard repertoire" has suffered the ever-increasing numbers of excellent interpreters:
Alexandеr Malofeev -- Saint-Saens. Piano Concerto No 2, G-moll, Op.22:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ndbwuyt_0g
Mother Nature is generous to allowing seeds to grow in their proper lands and milieu, but only the right soil and season would produce a phenomenal pianist like Alexander Malofeev. Russian Pianists, like baseball players in the Dominican Republic, are products of the soil, milieu and clime. I doubt any Caribbean musician would daily practice 10 to 12 hours as the Russian pianist of our wonder!
In the case of extremely gifted talents, humility is always the winner, because, at some point, another great pianist would be born, and countless contemporary ones (e.g., Horowitz, Richter, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, Kissin, Hamelin, etc.) would be eclipsed by the new rising star. They are all great pianists, but the living pianists, especially if they are young, could cast into obscurity the predecessors.
Alexander Malofeev is not so famous because talent and genius will always suffer resistance by the envious contemporaries. In my opinion, Alexander is perhaps the best pianist of his age. To adding insults to injuries, Mr. Malofeev is also a knock-out good looking young man, whose brilliant head is gilded by a cascade of smooth flaxen hairs resembling pure gold.
Another young pianist-violinist and composer, Alma Deutscher is often compared to the Old Masters, but the chartered territory of tonal music has been overly explored to the outermost limits of dissonance (e.g. Richard Wagner, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Skryabin), and there are few nooks and crannies still left untouched for anything new, let alone original or ground-breaking...
https://youtu.be/kURlp17F1wo
To claim originality in tonal music is as crazy as would be any pretension of thoughts and ideas surpassing those of Plato's, or Aristotle's in the fields of metaphysics, aesthetics and poetry.
Every period in human history, is marked by the spirit of the epoch, the Zeitgeist, and the best harvest of music belongs to the old masters (between sixteenth century and twentieth century).
Unlike the visual arts, which reached the pinnacle of perfection during the glorious years of the Ancient Greeks, and then again during the Renaissance, but between these two epochs, humanities have suffered the eternal recurrence of the dark ages.
Unfortunately, every great civilization, as evinced in the great golden age of people long gone in the backyard of history, will come to an end, and with it, Johann Sebastian Bach will be remembered anymore than an ancient deity in the Parthenon of the great spirits.
It is heartbreaking that the fate of great souls, such as Bach, Carl Orff, Chopin, Beethoven, among others, is already written in the wailing winds of history.
O Fortuna, the great Germany of Bach is long gone…
The glorious time of tonal music is gone. Some nooks and crannies, unturned stones, may remain untouched, hither and thither, for the few inspired composers who may claim to have composed “something new” (as it is the case of child prodigy Alma Deutsche).
Sergei Rachmaninoff and Carl Orff, are perhaps the last serious composers of tonal music, and much of their output, if original could be called in earnest “variations,” has been but further elaboration (pastiches) based on the works and loins of previous composers.
Indeed! Tonal music is limited, its wellspring of infinite number of melodies and harmonies is limited, what is not limited is the agreeable effects, their boundless scope in which they impress our imagination, and “how and why” this musical experience is felt in our mind and heart is one of the profoundest mysteries of consciousness and sentience.
We know that the lower pitches and timbres, bass-line, percussion, tumbas, drums, brass, et. al., could remind us of the lower brushstrokes and struggles in this universal will to exist, becoming and being: low-sounding, inorganic matter with their peculiar lifelessness, the lowest biological dynamics in the whole scheme of things, may remind us of the netherworld.
As we ascend through the kingdom of plants and animals, the registration of musical instruments seems to speak of a greater, indeed richer multiplicity and multifariousness in all life-forms, where we, human beings (possessing intelligence, consciousness and sentience) may appear like the crowning achievement.
The highest timbres and pitches (such as in the music of Wagner), the melody-line, as the upper strings and piccolos, ever piercing our hearts and minds with strangest feelings of elation and well-being, may remind us the felicitous triumph of consciousness and sentience in all the biological dynamics of Mother Nature.
Every epoch may produce its harvest of geniuses, and in some cases, their achievements may remain unrivaled for centuries and millennia.
Genius, like the striking, happy coincidences to producing a strong oak-tree standing on the ideal soil, is a phenomenon of time and circumstances, more precisely speaking, milieu is the underlying key to understanding the remarkable works of genius.
Below I have written some fair comments on a gifted child-prodigy believed to be a genius of the first order. In so doing, I would also like to touch upon the other side of genius, brilliance and fire, as the outcome of hardships and sufferings, the raw materials for some of the most celebrated artists of all times.
On Alma Deutscher, a blessed soul!
Superlative adjectives I would forego when describing Alma's astonishing creative puissance into things divine and beautiful!
However an admirer of her beautiful music and afflatus, I hope she will venture into the "sublime" after the writings of Edmund Burke or Goethe's Dr. Faust.
Her music is indeed beautiful: tonality in its pristine form and purity, but I hope she will contrive for greater juxtaposition and chiaroscuro (the thrill of dread through dissonances and modulation into foreign keys) and thus rightfully claim an equal place with Mozart's latter mature works, or Rachmaninov's frightening juggernaut of altered chords and incidents, finally seeking a felicitous "homeward return to the tonic-key."
Of course, we all know that music is an inner revelation, an epiphany, seeking footing or a comprehensive experience to the question of existence, and like the Smile of Gioconda of Leonardo Da Vinci, an elusive woman's smirk hovering in the unfathomable stretches of darkness, space and time, so we are compelled to admire such beautiful although so enigmatic a countenance juxtaposed against waste lands of dread, jagged rocks, crags and gullies!
Alma is indeed a great composer in fruition, but I am not sure whether genius and experience (the sad side of Nietzsche's philosophy) could, as today, converge to producing the phenomenon of some one like Mozart or Beethoven?
These men and women are the results of time and season, and like the eggs of dinosaurs, few are those who could survive to enjoy the approval of posterity.
If you believe the phenomenon of genius to be unaffected by the unrolling scroll of circumstances, the melancholy side of music, then you are perhaps underestimating the other experiences so necessary in the chiaroscuro of our inquiries: pains and sufferings, for according to F. Nietzsche, so evinced in the writings of Thomas Mann (Doctor Faustus, the brilliant composer Adrian Leverkuhn, and his recurrent ailments) —so reminiscent of Schopenhauer’s pessimism— these are the raw materials, the furnace of hardships and trials, which the blessed artist, long trained in the fleeting scenes of a life full-fraught with challenges and troubles, could then transform into the eternal fire-works of genius: from hell to heaven, so did Dante reach his Paradiso in the Divine Comedy!
The greatest artists, much to our surprise, did not receive their due recognition but only posthumously, and in some cases, they had to experience seven solitudes...
As a last note on Alma's creative potencies, one would say that she is an anachronistic composer, but I am not sure whether music could be bind up to our subjective notion of time, for like anything good or classic, such works, in the words of Plato, may be the stuff of divinity, and hence, could transcend the well-known fleetingness and transiency of our decadent epoch so marked by a crisis in fixed tonics, nihilism and downright deconstructionism ---lacking any harmonious scheme of things in the definition of existence.
If this is true of Alma Deutscher, as a remarkable composer on Tonal Music in the Twentieth First Century, then she is a greater phenomenon than W.A. Mozart or Liszt, for she would need to rise above this toxic alluvium of our times into the blessed heaven of harmony, beauty, goodness and perfection in this strange music, whose uncanny melodies and strains, may speak so eloquently across the stately pavilions of Millennia and Immortality.
https://youtu.be/kURlp17F1wo
To claim originality in tonal music is as crazy as would be any pretension of thoughts and ideas surpassing those of Plato's, or Aristotle's in the fields of metaphysics, aesthetics and poetry.
Every period in human history, is marked by the spirit of the epoch, the Zeitgeist, and the best harvest of music belongs to the old masters (between sixteenth century and twentieth century).
Unlike the visual arts, which reached the pinnacle of perfection during the glorious years of the Ancient Greeks, and then again during the Renaissance, but between these two epochs, humanities have suffered the eternal recurrence of the dark ages.
Unfortunately, every great civilization, as evinced in the great golden age of people long gone in the backyard of history, will come to an end, and with it, Johann Sebastian Bach will be remembered anymore than an ancient deity in the Parthenon of the great spirits.
It is heartbreaking that the fate of great souls, such as Bach, Carl Orff, Chopin, Beethoven, among others, is already written in the wailing winds of history.
O Fortuna, the great Germany of Bach is long gone…
The glorious time of tonal music is gone. Some nooks and crannies, unturned stones, may remain untouched, hither and thither, for the few inspired composers who may claim to have composed “something new” (as it is the case of child prodigy Alma Deutsche).
Sergei Rachmaninoff and Carl Orff, are perhaps the last serious composers of tonal music, and much of their output, if original could be called in earnest “variations,” has been but further elaboration (pastiches) based on the works and loins of previous composers.
Indeed! Tonal music is limited, its wellspring of infinite number of melodies and harmonies is limited, what is not limited is the agreeable effects, their boundless scope in which they impress our imagination, and “how and why” this musical experience is felt in our mind and heart is one of the profoundest mysteries of consciousness and sentience.
We know that the lower pitches and timbres, bass-line, percussion, tumbas, drums, brass, et. al., could remind us of the lower brushstrokes and struggles in this universal will to exist, becoming and being: low-sounding, inorganic matter with their peculiar lifelessness, the lowest biological dynamics in the whole scheme of things, may remind us of the netherworld.
As we ascend through the kingdom of plants and animals, the registration of musical instruments seems to speak of a greater, indeed richer multiplicity and multifariousness in all life-forms, where we, human beings (possessing intelligence, consciousness and sentience) may appear like the crowning achievement.
The highest timbres and pitches (such as in the music of Wagner), the melody-line, as the upper strings and piccolos, ever piercing our hearts and minds with strangest feelings of elation and well-being, may remind us the felicitous triumph of consciousness and sentience in all the biological dynamics of Mother Nature.
Every epoch may produce its harvest of geniuses, and in some cases, their achievements may remain unrivaled for centuries and millennia.
Genius, like the striking, happy coincidences to producing a strong oak-tree standing on the ideal soil, is a phenomenon of time and circumstances, more precisely speaking, milieu is the underlying key to understanding the remarkable works of genius.
Below I have written some fair comments on a gifted child-prodigy believed to be a genius of the first order. In so doing, I would also like to touch upon the other side of genius, brilliance and fire, as the outcome of hardships and sufferings, the raw materials for some of the most celebrated artists of all times.
On Alma Deutscher, a blessed soul!
Superlative adjectives I would forego when describing Alma's astonishing creative puissance into things divine and beautiful!
However an admirer of her beautiful music and afflatus, I hope she will venture into the "sublime" after the writings of Edmund Burke or Goethe's Dr. Faust.
Her music is indeed beautiful: tonality in its pristine form and purity, but I hope she will contrive for greater juxtaposition and chiaroscuro (the thrill of dread through dissonances and modulation into foreign keys) and thus rightfully claim an equal place with Mozart's latter mature works, or Rachmaninov's frightening juggernaut of altered chords and incidents, finally seeking a felicitous "homeward return to the tonic-key."
Of course, we all know that music is an inner revelation, an epiphany, seeking footing or a comprehensive experience to the question of existence, and like the Smile of Gioconda of Leonardo Da Vinci, an elusive woman's smirk hovering in the unfathomable stretches of darkness, space and time, so we are compelled to admire such beautiful although so enigmatic a countenance juxtaposed against waste lands of dread, jagged rocks, crags and gullies!
Alma is indeed a great composer in fruition, but I am not sure whether genius and experience (the sad side of Nietzsche's philosophy) could, as today, converge to producing the phenomenon of some one like Mozart or Beethoven?
These men and women are the results of time and season, and like the eggs of dinosaurs, few are those who could survive to enjoy the approval of posterity.
If you believe the phenomenon of genius to be unaffected by the unrolling scroll of circumstances, the melancholy side of music, then you are perhaps underestimating the other experiences so necessary in the chiaroscuro of our inquiries: pains and sufferings, for according to F. Nietzsche, so evinced in the writings of Thomas Mann (Doctor Faustus, the brilliant composer Adrian Leverkuhn, and his recurrent ailments) —so reminiscent of Schopenhauer’s pessimism— these are the raw materials, the furnace of hardships and trials, which the blessed artist, long trained in the fleeting scenes of a life full-fraught with challenges and troubles, could then transform into the eternal fire-works of genius: from hell to heaven, so did Dante reach his Paradiso in the Divine Comedy!
The greatest artists, much to our surprise, did not receive their due recognition but only posthumously, and in some cases, they had to experience seven solitudes...
As a last note on Alma's creative potencies, one would say that she is an anachronistic composer, but I am not sure whether music could be bind up to our subjective notion of time, for like anything good or classic, such works, in the words of Plato, may be the stuff of divinity, and hence, could transcend the well-known fleetingness and transiency of our decadent epoch so marked by a crisis in fixed tonics, nihilism and downright deconstructionism ---lacking any harmonious scheme of things in the definition of existence.
If this is true of Alma Deutscher, as a remarkable composer on Tonal Music in the Twentieth First Century, then she is a greater phenomenon than W.A. Mozart or Liszt, for she would need to rise above this toxic alluvium of our times into the blessed heaven of harmony, beauty, goodness and perfection in this strange music, whose uncanny melodies and strains, may speak so eloquently across the stately pavilions of Millennia and Immortality.
Why we all love F. Chopin despite the heartbreaking melodies?
True, we seem to be edified with the pruning experiences of pains, loss and disappointment. Hence why Thomas Mann, like Frederic Nietzsche, saw a revitalizing element of strength and creativeness in the furnace of sufferings, which, in some cases, could produce a melancholy composer like Chopin.
We are alike saddened and delighted in the disheartening narratives of Chopin’s music.
Chopin’s true merit lies in his fondness for folk-music, heartfelt music, simple but very beautiful, warm-hearted melody-lines, which, he would then infuse with “life and spirit” with the soul of the piano: the damper pedal.
With adroit manipulation of the damper pedal (sustain pedal) chords are therein spread-out through long intervals or whirling clusters of hovering notes (ghost notes, an army of shadows), or made resonant and sonorous with stunning plangent echoes, as though surging from a seance with the spirit realm.
If truth were told, the piano instrument, well-tempered clavier, in its most supernal qualities, “the stringboard” as set free by the soul of the damper pedal, should reproduce the “ghost-notes” of its surroundings, analogous to the phenomena of “magnetism” in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Will in Nature) which, according to the “law of affinity” may echo back with the baffling, indeed uncanny, sibylline echoes from the “spirit world” a rather atavistic seance to avoiding the dry terminology of quantum physics, “other dimensions.”
Here lies the difference between an electronic keyboard and a sonorous piano.
Rapid Chromaticism: may remind us a doleful outcry from the unfathomable depths of the soul, hence why it seems to register the widest range of human emotions, often verging on paroxysm, agitation, despair, sadness, et al., or a sense of total immersion into the darkly realms of incomprehensibility or immeasurableness. At this point, I am at a loss for words.
As we get older, so we seem to recast ourselves in the conceptualization of time, “precious memories,” and this is why we all love Chopin despite all the heartbreaking oxymorons: gloomy delight, doleful happiness, blissful sadness, viz., a persisten nostalgia, the “Paradise Lost” of those “queer souls” with a penchant for the melancholy side of life.
Therefore, it is not surprising that such souls, however in possession of an inner heaven in the music of yesterday, are said to be admirably endowed with the most feverish, indeed piercing feelings for life’s thrilling moments, but ours is —much to the detriment of such incorrigible romantics of Elysian worlds, idyllic scenes and platonic love— a world of stones and steel” to quoting Irene Cara, what a feeling!
And so we are told that even Sergie Rachmaninoff, in spite of his well-known chromatic binges amidst a juggernaut of altered chords and one thousand meandering melodies, had to seek out the help of a psychologist! Bravo! And what should I say of Robert Schumann?
I shall forgo any line on Byron’s penchant for mountaintops in Faust Part II by Goethe!
At any rate, Aristotle says that the philosopher’s forehead is often stamped with a melancholy frame of mind. Thanks goodness, some souls can reach the Mount Parnassus of joy and bliss as though aided by the lofty spirits of yore!
Chopin was alike feminine (check his Nocturnes) and forcibly masculine in his heroic Polonaises (In A flat). His strength was often the results of ailment and frailty. What a contradiction! Like most geniuses, he was a man of contradictions.
Take for instance the cheerful Waltzes, and how they ring with the fleeting moments of joy and nostalgia, could be ideal for a drawing room, a salon, a soirée in the snug, intimate gathering of kindred souls.
Good heaven! Nothing like remembering a boisterous party, Vals Brillante, is still lodged in my heart, like the cheeky smile of a beautiful woman!
The same transport of joy unto the nursing hands of sadness could be found in his incurably fickle Mazurkas, whose capricious daintiness and jauntiness could drive me mad for the subtle flirtatiousness of that Polish woman.
A Catholic, yes, but, my goodness, she can drive me nut! I am sure Chopin never got the apple’s reciprocity, and as a queer bird, a genius, a loner, he ended up hooking up with with a sullen matron: George Sand.
Though I have not said anything new, some lines may excuse me from ever experiencing any "gloom or dejection" while immersed in the ineffable music of Chopin, for he was neither a nihilist, nor a fatalist, but a lovable man.
If I were to appraise Chopin's afflatus by the candor of his frailty in stark contrast to the winged puissance of his feverish passions, then one would admit this music as the quintessential condition of human existence, for, after all these centuries, we have not yet reached the Parnassus of Nietzsche.
To the baseless accusation that Chopin was "an effeminate composer," I would say that his heroic Polonaises are as Herculean and Thunderous as any orchestral work done in the grandest scale. True, no one would deny that Chopin’s music, overall, may have a lovely feminine side that may require some due virility!
Any tentative orchestration of Chopin's piano works has been no more admissible than any Wagner's Tannhauser‘s transcriptions for the limited range of the harpsichord or clavichord: for, genius and medium, like two kindred soulmates, are sometimes inseparable from each other.
Therefore, Chopin's greatness ought to be measured and scaled but in the preferable vehicle of his expression: the piano-forte.
Dr. Wright's criticism of Chopin's (his essay on Chopin may still be found online, and I would prefer to use a pseudonym to avoiding any gibe from him) is one of blinkered taste and predilection than of purely objective assessment on the limited nature of the means, "the medium," than of the-end-results of such configuration or instrumentation.
In other words, Dr. Wright, fails to understand that the piano, like the pipe organ, however lacking the ethereal nature of the strings or wind instruments, is but an adumbration of the larger orchestra.
Viva Poland! Viva Frédéric Chopin!
Some things could be said to be true, because every composer has a mediocre share of rubbish, gibberish and junks (even Mozart and Beethoven composed some silly, uninspired minuets) but Chopin's universal place as a great architect to engineering master piano works with substance, notwithstanding the century-old prejudice against the people of Poland, is perhaps the best way to approaching his aristocratic genius and legacy.
The Polish people of yore, like the Ancient Greeks, were simply "a rare species of aristocracy and culture."
Ever since I heard Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, my heart has been with the Polish people, and as we celebrate their Day of Independence, I wish to send them a garland of warmest greetings in precious memories to their most celebrated composer.
Frederic Chopin's incomparable beautiful music is still wining hearts, all over the world, because, like a great writer, he captured every fleeting moment an infused
it with a universal timelessness, brilliancy, heroic grandeur, as only possible to the most gifted minds.
Genius is to capture in one bold brushstroke of brilliance, the same recurrent events and incidents in the fascinating drama of existence, and here, Frederick Chopin shines as a daystar, transforming all our sorrows into glorious music.
With Chopin, I may endure one thousand blows, because with the power of music, even suffering could be made tolerable, pain has meaning and purpose, and one would gladly embrace life as worth living.
And here Arthur Schopenhauer was correct when conceding classical music, like religion, or mysticism, a far greater intuitive understanding to the meaning of existence.
The melancholy side of Chopin could be said to be delightfully gloomy but only when one wonders on the peculiar nature of his personality, which, like Mozart in his somber Requiem, rarely admits any abrupt desultoriness, awkwardness or digression from the ever-flowing stream of his mind.
This is not the case with many famous composers, whose cobbled-up compositions, like an artwork mottled with variegation and uneven shades, seem to strike me but as a patchwork of the most incompatible materials and disjointed elements.
At some point in my life, I was cautious of these Avant Garde composers, the powers that be, for the most part, the brood of Darwinism, have been trying to shovel all these indigestible patchworks down our throats. Later on, one may feel not only squeamish but also queasy.
That Chopin dwelt for too long preening himself of any calamity would not make him a lesser composer than R. Wagner or J. S. Bach, because as a gifted poet of the first order, Chopin could embellish anything, even the trivial and banal into veritable master pieces.
It is worth reminding ourselves that even Franz Liszt revered Chopin's genius as "one in a million."
True, Chopin, unlike Rachmaninov who knew the registration and pitch for almost every instrument, did not master the art of orchestration as did Wagner or Verdi.
Nevertheless, Chopin, as evinced by his Balad in F minor, mastered his craftsmanship, albeit in a "basic pianistic form," not only the finest thematic development ever achieved by any human being, he stretched the streamy shores of his favorite instrument as one of the greatest invention of all time.
What is Bach to the pipe organ, so is Chopin to the piano-forte!
A man or a woman may exceed in proportion to available means, tools and materials, and one should not belittle anyone's accomplishments on the basis of shortcomings, milieu and circumstances.
Chopin, The Piano-Man!
We admire the artist, the oeuvre, vis-a-vis the circumstances and limitations, and would thus take the essentials, "the gist," the melody, the more valuable to me but only when the latter is stripped of anything superficial, superfluous or gaudily decorous...at that point, we may say is Chopin good or bad—?
Even Frederick Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, goes on to eulogize Chopin as an exceptional case, "genii extraordinaire," to admitting this irrefutable fact about humanity: that some people are just born noble and aristocratic, just like "dogs and cats of the finest pedigree," could give me enough reasons to complain about the hierarchical order of Mother Nature, and whether we like them or not, some remarkable souls have plenty of reasons to loathing this world so full of sufferings, filthy junks, noise and bad composers.
This is the main reason why Chopin has been accused of misanthropy, a “delusional snub.”
His melancholy music, nonetheless, is said to strike kindred with the best of our humanity: love and compassion!
Chopin's Self-Conceited Aristocracy!
In the last analysis, even when I simplify Chopin's Music as the outcome of an illiterate musician, "a dandy narcissistic boy," there is much to marvel on the beauty of melody, harmony and rhythm.
Frederic Chopin, like Henry D. Thoreau, was simply a god!!!
So many bad recordings and writings on Chopin's music, could distort the composer as though totally obsessed with speed and effeminate melodies.
You listen to Waltz in A flat Major, by many great pianists mimicking Evgeny Kissin, and the tempo is not only done with little pathos to the music in question, it is simply too fast, "machine-sounding and digital, " as though computed with a mechanical device.
"...The other problems were that Chopin only had only two interests, music and pretty women, although he was also sexually drawn to men, and one in particular, as he admitted in his letters. But his shallow, illogical thinking and pride led him to absolutely hate Liszt eventually, because Liszt was a far greater composer and also a great philosopher, an intellectual, a brilliant and versatile composer and ..." (these are the lines of Dr. Wright).
I do not envy people who just play the piano over and over, time, and time again, and are forever imitating other pianists.
Excellent recordings of Chopin and Liszt, like books, have already placed limitation for any conceivable attempts to surpassing them.
To the accusation that Chopin was just an effeminate composer, I would say that he possessed a frightening genius for "the thrill of dread and the paranormal."
In 1995, I wrote a moving poem to a gnarled tree! I praised him for his long-endurance, fortitude and perseverance!
“My! After all these long-years, are you still standing there, defiant, resolute and strong?”
If you well remember Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz? He played better as he got older. And so for me Horowitz is remembered as an old man, a sage, a master, an oak-tree buffeted by the long-winters of life.
Finally, winter is almost here in New York, and it seems to bring me the fondest memories of my former self.
True, we seem to be edified with the pruning experiences of pains, loss and disappointment. Hence why Thomas Mann, like Frederic Nietzsche, saw a revitalizing element of strength and creativeness in the furnace of sufferings, which, in some cases, could produce a melancholy composer like Chopin.
We are alike saddened and delighted in the disheartening narratives of Chopin’s music.
Chopin’s true merit lies in his fondness for folk-music, heartfelt music, simple but very beautiful, warm-hearted melody-lines, which, he would then infuse with “life and spirit” with the soul of the piano: the damper pedal.
With adroit manipulation of the damper pedal (sustain pedal) chords are therein spread-out through long intervals or whirling clusters of hovering notes (ghost notes, an army of shadows), or made resonant and sonorous with stunning plangent echoes, as though surging from a seance with the spirit realm.
If truth were told, the piano instrument, well-tempered clavier, in its most supernal qualities, “the stringboard” as set free by the soul of the damper pedal, should reproduce the “ghost-notes” of its surroundings, analogous to the phenomena of “magnetism” in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Will in Nature) which, according to the “law of affinity” may echo back with the baffling, indeed uncanny, sibylline echoes from the “spirit world” a rather atavistic seance to avoiding the dry terminology of quantum physics, “other dimensions.”
Here lies the difference between an electronic keyboard and a sonorous piano.
Rapid Chromaticism: may remind us a doleful outcry from the unfathomable depths of the soul, hence why it seems to register the widest range of human emotions, often verging on paroxysm, agitation, despair, sadness, et al., or a sense of total immersion into the darkly realms of incomprehensibility or immeasurableness. At this point, I am at a loss for words.
As we get older, so we seem to recast ourselves in the conceptualization of time, “precious memories,” and this is why we all love Chopin despite all the heartbreaking oxymorons: gloomy delight, doleful happiness, blissful sadness, viz., a persisten nostalgia, the “Paradise Lost” of those “queer souls” with a penchant for the melancholy side of life.
Therefore, it is not surprising that such souls, however in possession of an inner heaven in the music of yesterday, are said to be admirably endowed with the most feverish, indeed piercing feelings for life’s thrilling moments, but ours is —much to the detriment of such incorrigible romantics of Elysian worlds, idyllic scenes and platonic love— a world of stones and steel” to quoting Irene Cara, what a feeling!
And so we are told that even Sergie Rachmaninoff, in spite of his well-known chromatic binges amidst a juggernaut of altered chords and one thousand meandering melodies, had to seek out the help of a psychologist! Bravo! And what should I say of Robert Schumann?
I shall forgo any line on Byron’s penchant for mountaintops in Faust Part II by Goethe!
At any rate, Aristotle says that the philosopher’s forehead is often stamped with a melancholy frame of mind. Thanks goodness, some souls can reach the Mount Parnassus of joy and bliss as though aided by the lofty spirits of yore!
Chopin was alike feminine (check his Nocturnes) and forcibly masculine in his heroic Polonaises (In A flat). His strength was often the results of ailment and frailty. What a contradiction! Like most geniuses, he was a man of contradictions.
Take for instance the cheerful Waltzes, and how they ring with the fleeting moments of joy and nostalgia, could be ideal for a drawing room, a salon, a soirée in the snug, intimate gathering of kindred souls.
Good heaven! Nothing like remembering a boisterous party, Vals Brillante, is still lodged in my heart, like the cheeky smile of a beautiful woman!
The same transport of joy unto the nursing hands of sadness could be found in his incurably fickle Mazurkas, whose capricious daintiness and jauntiness could drive me mad for the subtle flirtatiousness of that Polish woman.
A Catholic, yes, but, my goodness, she can drive me nut! I am sure Chopin never got the apple’s reciprocity, and as a queer bird, a genius, a loner, he ended up hooking up with with a sullen matron: George Sand.
Though I have not said anything new, some lines may excuse me from ever experiencing any "gloom or dejection" while immersed in the ineffable music of Chopin, for he was neither a nihilist, nor a fatalist, but a lovable man.
If I were to appraise Chopin's afflatus by the candor of his frailty in stark contrast to the winged puissance of his feverish passions, then one would admit this music as the quintessential condition of human existence, for, after all these centuries, we have not yet reached the Parnassus of Nietzsche.
To the baseless accusation that Chopin was "an effeminate composer," I would say that his heroic Polonaises are as Herculean and Thunderous as any orchestral work done in the grandest scale. True, no one would deny that Chopin’s music, overall, may have a lovely feminine side that may require some due virility!
Any tentative orchestration of Chopin's piano works has been no more admissible than any Wagner's Tannhauser‘s transcriptions for the limited range of the harpsichord or clavichord: for, genius and medium, like two kindred soulmates, are sometimes inseparable from each other.
Therefore, Chopin's greatness ought to be measured and scaled but in the preferable vehicle of his expression: the piano-forte.
Dr. Wright's criticism of Chopin's (his essay on Chopin may still be found online, and I would prefer to use a pseudonym to avoiding any gibe from him) is one of blinkered taste and predilection than of purely objective assessment on the limited nature of the means, "the medium," than of the-end-results of such configuration or instrumentation.
In other words, Dr. Wright, fails to understand that the piano, like the pipe organ, however lacking the ethereal nature of the strings or wind instruments, is but an adumbration of the larger orchestra.
Viva Poland! Viva Frédéric Chopin!
Some things could be said to be true, because every composer has a mediocre share of rubbish, gibberish and junks (even Mozart and Beethoven composed some silly, uninspired minuets) but Chopin's universal place as a great architect to engineering master piano works with substance, notwithstanding the century-old prejudice against the people of Poland, is perhaps the best way to approaching his aristocratic genius and legacy.
The Polish people of yore, like the Ancient Greeks, were simply "a rare species of aristocracy and culture."
Ever since I heard Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, my heart has been with the Polish people, and as we celebrate their Day of Independence, I wish to send them a garland of warmest greetings in precious memories to their most celebrated composer.
Frederic Chopin's incomparable beautiful music is still wining hearts, all over the world, because, like a great writer, he captured every fleeting moment an infused
it with a universal timelessness, brilliancy, heroic grandeur, as only possible to the most gifted minds.
Genius is to capture in one bold brushstroke of brilliance, the same recurrent events and incidents in the fascinating drama of existence, and here, Frederick Chopin shines as a daystar, transforming all our sorrows into glorious music.
With Chopin, I may endure one thousand blows, because with the power of music, even suffering could be made tolerable, pain has meaning and purpose, and one would gladly embrace life as worth living.
And here Arthur Schopenhauer was correct when conceding classical music, like religion, or mysticism, a far greater intuitive understanding to the meaning of existence.
The melancholy side of Chopin could be said to be delightfully gloomy but only when one wonders on the peculiar nature of his personality, which, like Mozart in his somber Requiem, rarely admits any abrupt desultoriness, awkwardness or digression from the ever-flowing stream of his mind.
This is not the case with many famous composers, whose cobbled-up compositions, like an artwork mottled with variegation and uneven shades, seem to strike me but as a patchwork of the most incompatible materials and disjointed elements.
At some point in my life, I was cautious of these Avant Garde composers, the powers that be, for the most part, the brood of Darwinism, have been trying to shovel all these indigestible patchworks down our throats. Later on, one may feel not only squeamish but also queasy.
That Chopin dwelt for too long preening himself of any calamity would not make him a lesser composer than R. Wagner or J. S. Bach, because as a gifted poet of the first order, Chopin could embellish anything, even the trivial and banal into veritable master pieces.
It is worth reminding ourselves that even Franz Liszt revered Chopin's genius as "one in a million."
True, Chopin, unlike Rachmaninov who knew the registration and pitch for almost every instrument, did not master the art of orchestration as did Wagner or Verdi.
Nevertheless, Chopin, as evinced by his Balad in F minor, mastered his craftsmanship, albeit in a "basic pianistic form," not only the finest thematic development ever achieved by any human being, he stretched the streamy shores of his favorite instrument as one of the greatest invention of all time.
What is Bach to the pipe organ, so is Chopin to the piano-forte!
A man or a woman may exceed in proportion to available means, tools and materials, and one should not belittle anyone's accomplishments on the basis of shortcomings, milieu and circumstances.
Chopin, The Piano-Man!
We admire the artist, the oeuvre, vis-a-vis the circumstances and limitations, and would thus take the essentials, "the gist," the melody, the more valuable to me but only when the latter is stripped of anything superficial, superfluous or gaudily decorous...at that point, we may say is Chopin good or bad—?
Even Frederick Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, goes on to eulogize Chopin as an exceptional case, "genii extraordinaire," to admitting this irrefutable fact about humanity: that some people are just born noble and aristocratic, just like "dogs and cats of the finest pedigree," could give me enough reasons to complain about the hierarchical order of Mother Nature, and whether we like them or not, some remarkable souls have plenty of reasons to loathing this world so full of sufferings, filthy junks, noise and bad composers.
This is the main reason why Chopin has been accused of misanthropy, a “delusional snub.”
His melancholy music, nonetheless, is said to strike kindred with the best of our humanity: love and compassion!
Chopin's Self-Conceited Aristocracy!
In the last analysis, even when I simplify Chopin's Music as the outcome of an illiterate musician, "a dandy narcissistic boy," there is much to marvel on the beauty of melody, harmony and rhythm.
Frederic Chopin, like Henry D. Thoreau, was simply a god!!!
So many bad recordings and writings on Chopin's music, could distort the composer as though totally obsessed with speed and effeminate melodies.
You listen to Waltz in A flat Major, by many great pianists mimicking Evgeny Kissin, and the tempo is not only done with little pathos to the music in question, it is simply too fast, "machine-sounding and digital, " as though computed with a mechanical device.
"...The other problems were that Chopin only had only two interests, music and pretty women, although he was also sexually drawn to men, and one in particular, as he admitted in his letters. But his shallow, illogical thinking and pride led him to absolutely hate Liszt eventually, because Liszt was a far greater composer and also a great philosopher, an intellectual, a brilliant and versatile composer and ..." (these are the lines of Dr. Wright).
I do not envy people who just play the piano over and over, time, and time again, and are forever imitating other pianists.
Excellent recordings of Chopin and Liszt, like books, have already placed limitation for any conceivable attempts to surpassing them.
To the accusation that Chopin was just an effeminate composer, I would say that he possessed a frightening genius for "the thrill of dread and the paranormal."
In 1995, I wrote a moving poem to a gnarled tree! I praised him for his long-endurance, fortitude and perseverance!
“My! After all these long-years, are you still standing there, defiant, resolute and strong?”
If you well remember Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz? He played better as he got older. And so for me Horowitz is remembered as an old man, a sage, a master, an oak-tree buffeted by the long-winters of life.
Finally, winter is almost here in New York, and it seems to bring me the fondest memories of my former self.
On Mikhail Pletnev plays Scriabin Preludes no. 1-8 op. 11 at Eglise de Verb...
https://youtu.be/PWWLiebLKmo?si=Qh-IywibDyBlfn7a
https://youtu.be/PWWLiebLKmo?si=Qh-IywibDyBlfn7a
These preludes are so scenically descriptive that I can just enjoy them as visualized landscapes of iridescent beauty, that is to say, they are serene lakes scarcely ruffled by errant gales….blissful transcendence, for the most “unperturbed” by the earthly tugs and pricks of desires and ennui.
With these preludes, the nexus (between the subjective and objective) is quite at home in my most intimate reflections.
Devoid of such pictorial imageries, nonetheless, the preludes are still very enjoyable, but I think Robert Schumann or Franz Liszt would have baptized them with the most mystical escapades (e.g., pilgrimages, fantasies, reveries, andante religioso, and so on) into the unfettered paths of the “otherworldly.”
Most interesting is the fact that Skryabin’s preludes cannot be said to be eerily haunting or gloomy, but there is something “sibylline” about them that can give me the goose-bumps.
They have been described as being “Chopinesque” and I can hardly dispute the striking similarities between the two composers, but the latter seems to stray away from the established key as though verging on the fringe of the unknown, darkly and forbidden.
The scintillating tones seem to lure us forward into other worlds, twilights, web of dreams, mythical places smacking of fairy tales, elemental forces and spirits as though enlivened by some magical influence.
It is so true that Skryabin, a self-avowed mystic, when composing these preludes, was probably dabbling with the apocryphal teachings of gnosticism and theosophy!
His tragic end with blood-poisoning has cast a spell of mysteries, a curse and mischief for those who dare play Dr. Faust with the supernatural genies of creativeness.
Esoteric vs Exoteric!
His fate has been sealed to the same extent that his music, however deeper than Chopin’s most celebrated compositions, will remain “esoteric” and perhaps unsuitable for what is intrinsically and essentially a music for sojourners from beyond, or at least “a music for new ears,” to quoting F. Nietzsche.
Sadly, such listeners are often pianists themselves, listeners of rarest breed, his proselyte, the novice, the newly initiated disciple.
Crazy enough, one may frown-upon some of the grisly titles (Satanic Poems) purposely chosen to his poetic liberties, for he had no qualms to admitting an irresistible element of Faustian beauty in the demonic.
Rightly so, dangerous music, like the B minor Sonata of Franz Liszt, is often stretched so far so as to go beyond the cannon of the dried-up wellspring of the orthodox, the diatonic and conventional. And as has been pointed out, Skryabin was the maverick of classical music.
In earnest he was a colorist!
Therefore, it is fair to say that Alexander Skryabin, like Debussy, is the master of colors par excellent, and one ought to define him, first and foremost, as a visual-composer.
With these preludes, the nexus (between the subjective and objective) is quite at home in my most intimate reflections.
Devoid of such pictorial imageries, nonetheless, the preludes are still very enjoyable, but I think Robert Schumann or Franz Liszt would have baptized them with the most mystical escapades (e.g., pilgrimages, fantasies, reveries, andante religioso, and so on) into the unfettered paths of the “otherworldly.”
Most interesting is the fact that Skryabin’s preludes cannot be said to be eerily haunting or gloomy, but there is something “sibylline” about them that can give me the goose-bumps.
They have been described as being “Chopinesque” and I can hardly dispute the striking similarities between the two composers, but the latter seems to stray away from the established key as though verging on the fringe of the unknown, darkly and forbidden.
The scintillating tones seem to lure us forward into other worlds, twilights, web of dreams, mythical places smacking of fairy tales, elemental forces and spirits as though enlivened by some magical influence.
It is so true that Skryabin, a self-avowed mystic, when composing these preludes, was probably dabbling with the apocryphal teachings of gnosticism and theosophy!
His tragic end with blood-poisoning has cast a spell of mysteries, a curse and mischief for those who dare play Dr. Faust with the supernatural genies of creativeness.
Esoteric vs Exoteric!
His fate has been sealed to the same extent that his music, however deeper than Chopin’s most celebrated compositions, will remain “esoteric” and perhaps unsuitable for what is intrinsically and essentially a music for sojourners from beyond, or at least “a music for new ears,” to quoting F. Nietzsche.
Sadly, such listeners are often pianists themselves, listeners of rarest breed, his proselyte, the novice, the newly initiated disciple.
Crazy enough, one may frown-upon some of the grisly titles (Satanic Poems) purposely chosen to his poetic liberties, for he had no qualms to admitting an irresistible element of Faustian beauty in the demonic.
Rightly so, dangerous music, like the B minor Sonata of Franz Liszt, is often stretched so far so as to go beyond the cannon of the dried-up wellspring of the orthodox, the diatonic and conventional. And as has been pointed out, Skryabin was the maverick of classical music.
In earnest he was a colorist!
Therefore, it is fair to say that Alexander Skryabin, like Debussy, is the master of colors par excellent, and one ought to define him, first and foremost, as a visual-composer.
Liszt - Sonata in B Minor - Marc‐André Hamelin - Live - 2013 ~ Some Comments On The Diabolical and Angelic in Liszt’s Latter Compositions:
This morning, while leafing through Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann, I had a listen to Liszt’s most famous Sonata in B minor.
As I am getting older, it is natural that my ears are beginning to itch, further and further, for a music “unbounded by the gravitational tug of the keynote,” and even the clashes of dissonances do not strike me as jarring, as “ugly” or anything of the sort.
Such tritones may toll with the jangling bells of Satan, but one has to win him over, one has to rescue the inner-child in the music of Fr. Franz Liszt. At the end, he became a priest, an exorcist! Alleluia!
Perhaps there is something, however an integral part, that has changed within me.
Thank Goodness this is not so with my early studies of the Holy Writ (Holy Scriptures).
The self-indulgent liberties of the Gnostic, however alluring and promising, have not yet won my approval, and I would rather die for this simple melody…perhaps verging on childish corniness, but still rubbing my heart with sweetest mirth.
At times, I have also raved like a madman for having lost an inner heaven in the prime of my youth, and of late, have come to grips with the hellish stuff of genius.
Nevertheless, from time to time, my bosom is visited with loveliest feelings, and sighs, bubbles of joy, redolent of the innocent apple-tree in heaven.
Fr. Liszt could never dispense of such religious simplicity, that “naïveté” that binds us all at the feet of the great master.
And though he may torture my soul with some incomprehensibly brilliant devilries, a metonym for some Devil’s treacherous virtuosity, he would, likewise, soothe my wounds with loveliest doses of religious strains, hymns, meditations, and reflections —praise be to God!
My goodness! There is to be found such peace, such mirth and joy, when setting limits to our ever-journeying Faustian quest...
Marc Andre Hamelin’s superb rendition of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, when compared with other fine pianists’ highest strivings to matching the olden composer‘s dramatic juxtapositions, alike diabolical and angelic, could be said to be one of the best so far.
With so many super-virtuosic pianists taking the stage by storm, it is quite difficult to say who is the king of all?
I also payed a hearing to Vladimir Horowitz’ rendition of the said Sonata in B minor, reminiscent of the legend of Dr. Faustus, and the legendary pianist, well-known for his Herculean FFF, but also for his mellifluous cantabile-line, struck me as somewhat “harsh and banging” as though his indomitable potencies, his inner devils, could not be tamed by the soothing instances of Fr. Franz Liszt’s penchant for religious meditations.
Thank Goodness! Horowitz played much better in the 1980s.
His lifelong struggle to lassoing his bugbear from within (e.g., his legendary Concert in Moscow, 1986, and in Vienna 1987) catapulted him as one of the greatest pianists of all time.
Therefore, when all is said, good or bad about pianists, dead or alive, whether in technical prowess, or musicality, Marc Andre Hamelin should be asked to take the throne among the best pianists of the last 34 years.
Much respect to Marc Andre Hamelin, and though he surpasses Horowitz’ dexterity, his pianism seems to lack the multilayered crusts (barks and rinds) of the old-oaken master tree of yore.
As I said earlier, fate is intrinsically bound-up to the bud of genius, and I think Vladimir Horowitz lived long enough to mitigating the setbacks of unleashing such devils of fortissimo (pyrotechnics) without the angelic sweetness and mirth of “pianism”.
Laugh out loud, for there was a time when technical prowess could make you a celebrity overnight, and most pianists, at least back in the 1990s, would rather sacrifice the prime of youth to resolving all the technical hurdles of pianism.
But making music, whether we like or not, whether we excoriate ourselves for any such sillines and banality (once razzed as “feminine daintiness”) is to sing with our finger-tips, víz., the piano instrument’s foremost end, despite its percussive plangent sounds, is to be an expressive medium in the gentle touch of the artist.
Rembrandt’s bold impasto is great, and one could hung the painting by the hook nose, but Vermeer’s delicacy and traceless brushstrokes, are no less powerful to winning my praise.
You choose your favorite!
Judging from his early recordings, at times, Horowitz was very successful at finding a pleasant blending between these two extremes, but I think art is a long journey, and the latter Horowitz, the old man, is generally considered to be more musical than the former.
As I am getting older, it is natural that my ears are beginning to itch, further and further, for a music “unbounded by the gravitational tug of the keynote,” and even the clashes of dissonances do not strike me as jarring, as “ugly” or anything of the sort.
Such tritones may toll with the jangling bells of Satan, but one has to win him over, one has to rescue the inner-child in the music of Fr. Franz Liszt. At the end, he became a priest, an exorcist! Alleluia!
Perhaps there is something, however an integral part, that has changed within me.
Thank Goodness this is not so with my early studies of the Holy Writ (Holy Scriptures).
The self-indulgent liberties of the Gnostic, however alluring and promising, have not yet won my approval, and I would rather die for this simple melody…perhaps verging on childish corniness, but still rubbing my heart with sweetest mirth.
At times, I have also raved like a madman for having lost an inner heaven in the prime of my youth, and of late, have come to grips with the hellish stuff of genius.
Nevertheless, from time to time, my bosom is visited with loveliest feelings, and sighs, bubbles of joy, redolent of the innocent apple-tree in heaven.
Fr. Liszt could never dispense of such religious simplicity, that “naïveté” that binds us all at the feet of the great master.
And though he may torture my soul with some incomprehensibly brilliant devilries, a metonym for some Devil’s treacherous virtuosity, he would, likewise, soothe my wounds with loveliest doses of religious strains, hymns, meditations, and reflections —praise be to God!
My goodness! There is to be found such peace, such mirth and joy, when setting limits to our ever-journeying Faustian quest...
Marc Andre Hamelin’s superb rendition of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, when compared with other fine pianists’ highest strivings to matching the olden composer‘s dramatic juxtapositions, alike diabolical and angelic, could be said to be one of the best so far.
With so many super-virtuosic pianists taking the stage by storm, it is quite difficult to say who is the king of all?
I also payed a hearing to Vladimir Horowitz’ rendition of the said Sonata in B minor, reminiscent of the legend of Dr. Faustus, and the legendary pianist, well-known for his Herculean FFF, but also for his mellifluous cantabile-line, struck me as somewhat “harsh and banging” as though his indomitable potencies, his inner devils, could not be tamed by the soothing instances of Fr. Franz Liszt’s penchant for religious meditations.
Thank Goodness! Horowitz played much better in the 1980s.
His lifelong struggle to lassoing his bugbear from within (e.g., his legendary Concert in Moscow, 1986, and in Vienna 1987) catapulted him as one of the greatest pianists of all time.
Therefore, when all is said, good or bad about pianists, dead or alive, whether in technical prowess, or musicality, Marc Andre Hamelin should be asked to take the throne among the best pianists of the last 34 years.
Much respect to Marc Andre Hamelin, and though he surpasses Horowitz’ dexterity, his pianism seems to lack the multilayered crusts (barks and rinds) of the old-oaken master tree of yore.
As I said earlier, fate is intrinsically bound-up to the bud of genius, and I think Vladimir Horowitz lived long enough to mitigating the setbacks of unleashing such devils of fortissimo (pyrotechnics) without the angelic sweetness and mirth of “pianism”.
Laugh out loud, for there was a time when technical prowess could make you a celebrity overnight, and most pianists, at least back in the 1990s, would rather sacrifice the prime of youth to resolving all the technical hurdles of pianism.
But making music, whether we like or not, whether we excoriate ourselves for any such sillines and banality (once razzed as “feminine daintiness”) is to sing with our finger-tips, víz., the piano instrument’s foremost end, despite its percussive plangent sounds, is to be an expressive medium in the gentle touch of the artist.
Rembrandt’s bold impasto is great, and one could hung the painting by the hook nose, but Vermeer’s delicacy and traceless brushstrokes, are no less powerful to winning my praise.
You choose your favorite!
Judging from his early recordings, at times, Horowitz was very successful at finding a pleasant blending between these two extremes, but I think art is a long journey, and the latter Horowitz, the old man, is generally considered to be more musical than the former.