Great classical pianists

As he is affectionately known in Russia, Vanya-Van Cliburn.

Certainly, there are many masters of the keyboard. But Vanya’s deeply emotional interpretations stand out as one-of-a-kind. He was in a category all by himself.

Mitsuku Uchida is one of my favorites, particularly for Mozart but her style translates well to other composers. I also like Maria Joao Pires--her Nocturnes are fabulous as are her Wigmore Hall chamber recordings. 

apr records released a series of recordings entitled The Russian Piano Tradition. Lot’s of Soviet Era recordings in this catalogue. I used to believe the Russian school to be mostly psychological but right after the Orange Revolution, I visited a friend in Odessa, Ukraine. We went to the Philharmonia Concert Hall and I saw a Juilliard schooled pianist who also studied under the Soviet system. After seeing and hearing that, I had a new appreciation for Russian musical training.

Anyway, the apr recordings are out of print but they are scattered about on the internet. I have a couple originally recorded in the early to mid 1950’s and the remastering is excellent.

I just acquired a 2 LP album of Khatia Buiatishvili playing Chopin. I must say it is a superb recording. 

These days, I listen to Josep Colom a lot, I think he's great. But in general for me too, it's Glenn Gould who first comes into mind among the many others. I tend to be forgiving with respect to the idiosyncrasies of geniuses like him (like his singing, etc.), I find that "part of the package", and it doesn't bother me. Genius often comes with very strong opinion about others, and thus "unorthodox" interpretation of their works -- I guess we all know that about Gould. One of my favourite recordings by him is Haydn's late piano sonatas, escpecially the C Major Hob. XVI:48. If it could be quantified at all, I wouldn't be sure how many percents are Haydn in that recording, and how many are Gould, but I have a feeling that it's about as much Gould as it is Haydn (of course, just like none of us can know how a recorded music sounded live, unless you were there [and even then...], we may never know how Haydn played that sonata to himself one late night back in those days, whether Schiff is closer to him than Gould, etc; so I would say the piece is up to strong interpretations -- as long as you enjoy it).