A treat for those who like classical piano


'Tamar Beraia play's Rameau'. Just outstanding. Look on YouTube. :-)

newbee

Gilbert Rowland is the harpsichordist on the Naxos albums that I referenced earlier 

mahgister, OT. I've noticed you often speak highly of Scriabin. I have Maria Lettberg's complete set.  I find them rewarding.  Am I missing anything? 
 
 
Yes and no...
 
Most pianists cannot do it at all for me...
 
Even great names i will not mention here ...
 
Lettberg do it safe and well...I kept it.... I tried 32 versions almost none i kept ...😁
 
But it is not my favorite version...
 
Most pianist cannot play it as it must be done anyway : at the border between spirit and the abyss...
 
Scriabin do not wrote music for salon and leisure but progressively go toward the goal of writing music to save and transform human heart...
 
This music cannot be understood but felt more than any other... The melody grows toward spirit and fall into the abyss each moment , harmony must be explosive or calmed beyond anything at the same moment ...
 
Sofronitsky, Zhukov are my favorite... Neuhaus father recorded a few at the top, Neuhaus son Stanislas can do it also...
 
Some others can play him all unknown Russian giants...
 
Michael Ponti is my best non Russian but the recording is beyond atrocious...Low cost but it gives an idea of a different successful interpretation ... It is in my third favorite...
 
Music matter me the most with Scriabin, sound dont matter because this music is not beautiful as much as powerfully impactful...
 
I discovered after Scriabin by Sofronitsky long ago why i never loved Liszt piano so much.... Almost no pianist can play it as Liszt was able to do and i did not like much most of them with very few exceptions...
 
i revisioned and reevaluated my Liszt understanding completely with a controversial pianist : Ervin Nyiregyházi
 
Now i adore Liszt and consider him a giant pianist over most and a giant composer... ( Christus is my favorite works)

With Scriabin,each chord of the keyboard each harmony deployed must boil like molten lava and not flow only like a calm and melodious river.. This is why most pianist struggle to play it with heart it is not only difficult technically but more difficult poetically ...

With Scriabin  writings musical time is used as an hologram of eternity, his timing is spiralling , not linear and is really an image of the beating heart out of mundane time but immersed and suffering in it  and delivered from linear time at the same moment , we must enter in a vertigo near ectasy ... How pianist can play it as such ? No technician, nevermind how great they are can , it takes a supreme poet on the keyboeard...

 

 

Sofronitsky concert :

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxNOfFdkcKs

 

 

Here in this Liszt piece each note is a bullet in the heart :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLk6vqaxU1Y

 

This piece is well recorded and give an idea about Ponti genius in Scriabin :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBxMKwZB2cA

 

The son is less than the father Heinrich but is also a giant :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyVHCLRT0fI

The father Heinrich Neuhaus is beside Sofronitsky :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1hHPu9e8bI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kegxB1aBllM

The best version ever of this piece of Scriabin by Neuhaus father and even Horowitz dont even compare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMWx-F35awQ

 

And on par with my favorite the great Zhukov 2 hours :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-BbYY41UIk

 

 

 
 

 

 

Scriabin is one composer that just never clicked with me.  It puzzles me because Chopin, Debussy, and Rachmaninov are 3 of my essentials, but outside of the odd bit from a Horowitz recital, he bores me

Mahgister, you mention one of my long time favorite composers (and transcribers) of music for solo piano. Liszt! Too many  performers and recordings to mention but I started with Annees De Pelerinage played by Berman on DG. Great performance, I think, but not the best recording (what's new, with DG!) and I went from there. So many of his greatest tunes are, I think, therein. And if you want to hear it all there is always Leslie Howard's extensive collection on Hyperion. Of current performers I like Louis Lortie in this and his Chopin as well.

If a person has nothing better to do he could survey all of the available Sonata In B recordings and rate them. :-)