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Your favourite pianists that aren't the old stalwarts

Alex S

Alex S

carbon based lifeform
I'll kick off with Beatrice Rana. Fabulous technically but also well considered, virtually anything she touches turns to gold.
 
I’m really enjoying Steven Osborne’s Beethoven Sonata cycle on Hyperion. Very clean and dynamic but at the same time he gets to the heart of the music with a very sensitive touch. My favourite Beethoven cycle is on forte piano, played by Ronald Braughtigam; stunning stuff and all the more surprising in that previously I didn’t like forte piano!
 
Chitose Okashiro - really erotic Scriabin.
Dmitri Alexeev - some of the most satisfying late Brahms I’ve heard ever
Kaoru Bingham - I love her Szymanowski mazurkas. Her husband John was an excellent Chopinist.
Yuki Matsuzawa - just love her Chopin etudes
Alexander Gavryliuk. I discovered him on YouTube, this is wonderful I think. He’s giving a concert soon in London.
François Frederic Guy - got interested in him through a recent performance of Chopin sonata 3. Went to see him in concert and was impressed by what he made of Debussy and Murail and Liszt. This guy knows how to use piano resonances really effectively. I’m going to see him again in a couple of weeks play four handers with Jean Efflam Bavouzet.
 
When I was living in Switzerland, and buying LPs, I bought several on the luna label featuring a Swiss pianist, Michael Studer, in standard repertoire (Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, etc) - his interpretations are outstanding, in my view, and deserve a wider audience. I don't know if they have ever made it to CD.

In Messiaen, I think both Peter Hill and Anatol Ugorski are outstanding in the Catalogue d'Oiseaux, with interpretations that are quite different from each other.

Noriko Kawai, particularly for her recording of Dillon's The Book of Elements.

In Scriabin, Evelyne Dubourg's recordings on the Tudor label are excellent and a match for the better known pianists.

He's much better known, but I'll also mention John Ogdon's recording of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum as the work is quite obscure. Fredrik Ullén's recordings of Sorabji's Transcendental Etudes are also very much worth listening to.

There are several others whose focus is more on contemporary music, and I may mention some of them when I have more time.
 
As great as the titans of old are, we live in the true Golden Age of pianism today. For practical purposes, the first dozen or so from my list count as old stalwarts since I am more likely to listen to their recordings than recordings made from 1925-1995.

Living:
Arcadi Volodos
Herbert Schuch
Andrea Lucchesini
Ragna Schirmer
Behzod Abduraimov (phenomenal in person)
Yeol Eum Son
William Youn
Francois Frederic Guy
Bertrand Chamayou
Michail Lifits (criminally underrecorded)
Alexander Lonquich (criminally underrecorded)
Dong Min Lim
Paavali Jumpannen
Yu Kosuge
Joseph Moog
Benjamin Grosvenor
Oliver Schynder
Enrico Pace (phenomenal accompanist)
Francesco Piemontesi (like Moravec, he more or less sounds the same on disc as in person)
Evgeny Bohzhanov (infinite gradations of pianissimo)
David Fray
Ivo Kahanek
Kevin Kenner (he deserved a bigger international career, assuming he wanted one)


Lesser known artists of days past:
Michel Block
Esteban Sanchez
Jean Rodolphe Kars (still alive, but a different career now)
Naida Cole (still alive, but a different career now)
 
I’ll kill some time with a list of contemporary music piano players I like, just the first ones which pop into my head - all playing more or less conventionally (I mean, they’re mostly making music by using the keys and pedals.)

Eve Egoyan (for Alvin Curran and Michael Finnissy )
Alessandra Ammara (for Scelsi, the preludes, a recent discovery for me.)
Dominique My for Dufourt and Murail . She leads ensemble music but also plays solo pieces by spectral composers, IMO very well.
Pavlos Antoniadis (for Radulescu and Feldman and Walter Zimmermann and Wieland Hoban, on soundcloud)
Annie Li, for Finnissy’s History of Photography, on YouTube, bad sound but more poetic IMO than Pace or Knoop in challenging music.
Tania Caroline Chen - her Music of Changes is the one I can listen to with most pleasure.
Udo Falkner - for Stockhausen and Rihm. Outstanding sound quality too.
John Snijders - for Christopher Fox
 
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Tantris said:
In Scriabin, Evelyne Dubourg's recordings on the Tudor label are excellent and a match for the better known pianists.

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That's quite a distinctive approach in late Scriabin there, I've just heard the 9th sonata and it seems to find a delicacy and lyricism which I haven't heard so clearly in this music before, and a lovely piano tone too. Thanks -- there are lots of ways to make sense of late Scriabin and this is an attractive one.

I'd like to hear her play Vers la Flamme!

Tantris said:
Noriko Kawai, particularly for her recording of Dillon's The Book of Elements.
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I've never got into it, and I think it's mainly because of the sound quality of the recording. But I will try again.

Tantris said:
Peter Hill
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He is my favourite modern piano player in Bach and probably in Schoenberg and the Diabelli Variations too. I listened to him play La Rousserole Effarvatte a couple of weeks ago and thought it was outstanding.

Tantris said:
When I was living in Switzerland, and buying LPs, I bought several on the luna label featuring a Swiss pianist, Michael Studer, in standard repertoire (Chopin, Brahms, Schubert, etc) - his interpretations are outstanding, in my view, and deserve a wider audience. I don't know if they have ever made it to CD.

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I can see Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Liszt on Qobuz -- so I shall check it out soon.
 
Alex S said:
I'll kick off with Beatrice Rana. Fabulous technically but also well considered, virtually anything she touches turns to gold.
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Beatrice Rana for me too. She is utterly extraordinary, and very much not what you might expect from an Italian. She seems to just let the music flow through her in a profound way without any flash. I first listened to her cd of the Goldbergs, it is superb, and somehow lets you hear both the music and her joyous, thoughtful, caring interpretation. Then I went to her music festival in Lecce a couple of times - a concert or more a day for a week, very relaxed, with lots of young musicians, and have seen her elsewhere a few times. All her CDs are good, you can’t go wrong with the Tchaikowsky/Prokofiev. Have tickets to hear her play Liszt in October.
 
mandryka said:
That's quite a distinctive approach in late Scriabin there, I've just heard the 9th sonata and it seems to find a delicacy and lyricism which I haven't heard so clearly in this music before, and a lovely piano tone too. Thanks -- there are lots of ways to make sense of late Scriabin and this is an attractive one.

I'd like to hear her play Vers la Flamme!



I've never got into it, and I think it's mainly because of the sound quality of the recording. But I will try again.



He is my favourite modern piano player in Bach and probably in Schoenberg and the Diabelli Variations too. I listened to him play La Rousserole Effarvatte a couple of weeks ago and thought it was outstanding.




I can see Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Liszt on Qobuz -- so I shall check it out soon.
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I agree, but it's not on the two Tudor double LPs on which Dubourg plays Scriabin, and I don't know if there are other recordings extant. Maybe something will surface on YouTube.

I heard Noriko Kawai play the entire Book of Elements in Huddersfield in the mid-2000s - an excellent late night concert - and had the pleasure of a conversation with both Dillon and her on some aspects of the piece. The much more recent piano piece, echo the angelus, is also worth hearing, but I'm not sure if a commercial recording is yet available.

Did you see Peter Hill in concert? I thought he had retired from public concerts, but if he is playing Messiaen, I will make an effort to go and hear him.

I meant to mention a few more pianists. These would include Aki Takahashi (for Xenakis, and contemporary Japanese composers such as Akira Nishimura & Maki Ishii), Ursula Opens (for Elliott Carter), and Nicolas Hodges.
 
Thanks Andy. Actually I have cousins in Padova and Taranto so I could probably do either or both. Do you live in actual Venice?
 
Another vote for Francois Frederic Guy. I have heard him in concert, and he extracted such calm clarity from super familiar repertoire (Beethoven 4th ) as to make it sound totally new.
 
Boris Berezovsky. Amazing mix of stunning expression/energy with Slavic lyricism.

Once I said close to him and saw how a brake locking piano went off. He continued playing like nothing happened despite piano moving after every stronger attack of his hands on the keys. Here and there he pulled it back with his left leg.

I doubt you will every see him again nearby since his statements about Ukraine war.
 
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