Ignaz Friedman (above) gave some valuable advice to Australian pianist Mack JOst:

"The way you create it is to hear the sound in the heavens, then try to reproduce it in your arm. The only way is to free them [the arms], and I can always remember him saying 'draw out the sound on the last one... think of drawing out the tone.' Not hitting the key. You're really thinking of hauling it out."

Recent repertoire discoveries

One of the great things about playing and teaching piano is the enormous repertoire that is out there just waiting to be discovered. Several centuries of music, with every piece and every composer telling a story.

Take the Russian composer Alabiev, for example. Born into a wealthy family in Siberia in 1787, he fought as an officer in the Napoleonic wars.  Aged 38 he was arrested on the charge of murdering a man he had gambled with. Though the evidence was not conclusive he was imprisoned for 6 years, during which time he composed this song "Solovey' (Nightingale).

The song eventually became so famous that it entered mainstream Russian consciousness as a folk song. (somewhat the reverse of the Bartok effect where folk music entered the classical repertoire).

Here's a wonderful performance of Liszt's transcription of Alabiev's "The Nightingale" performed by Ignaz Friedman

And here's a Glinka variation on Alabiev's  Nightingale performed by a 12-year old wunderkind from Russia, Syuzanna Rudanovskaya who demonstrates for us how to play the piano.

Alabiev's  "Nightingale" makes a fabulous addition to the bird repertoire within piano music, along with Janacek: The Barn Owl has not Flown Away; Balakirev's The Lark; Schumann The Prophet Bird, etc etc.

PIano Playing Awards 2009

Piano music is " An international language that every nation knows and feels. Schumann calls it the language of soul to soul"
(Simon Barere, radio interview, New Zealand, 1947).
Here are a few highlights for you to enjoy. In the next couple of months I will turn this into a competition for you to vote on your favourite item in different categories.

Best Composer's Piano Playing

First Prize: The Master of Twentieth Century Piano Playing
Rachmaninoff performs his own Elegie Op3:3. Genius Comes Into Your Living Room

Grieg plays his own PIano Sonata. Such naturalness of heartfelt expression, such alive phrasing.

Best Live Performance
Josef Hofmann, Chopin G Minor Ballade, Carnegie Hall 50th Birthday recital.
"There is a technique which liberates and a technique which represses the artistic self. All technique should be a means of expression". (Hofmann, "Piano Playing' 1909, publ. Doubleday).

Best piano playing
Vladimir Sofronitzky plays Scriabin. Married to the daughter of Scriabin after the composer's death. It sounds as if the music is being revealed for the first time, spun out by some mysterious alchemy.

Best transcription performance, three entries:
Josef Lhevinne plays Schulz-Evler's transciption of Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz. Such flawless and musical virtuosity. Those who claim the modern pianist is superior technically to the golden age pianists should study Josef Lhevinne.

Myra Hess plays Bach
A world war 2 legend: while england was at war, London's cultural activity immediately ceased; but pianist Myra Hess persuaded the National Gallery to open its doors to allow weekly lunchtime recitals of music.

Percy Grainger plays Tchaikovksy "Sugar plum fairy". Wonderful playing from the pianist beloved by Grieg.
When on tour, he used to jog from one american city to the next. Didn't he even care about air miles?

How to Play the Piano
Such freedom of the upper arm! Such naturalness! Such breath! Such lovely printed fabric! We bow.
Magda Tagliaferro Saint Saens Concerto 5

Most disturbing recorded fragment
Bela Bartok playing Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor
Did a minor key ever sound this spooky? Did the bogeyman abduct the musician?

Loveliest tone award: after 0.50.
Alexander Siloti's was a favourite pupil of Liszt. Some said he was more than equal to the great Rachmaninoff, and this playing has such a warm, living tone, like the golden voice of a tenor, characteristic of the finest Russian-school pianism.

Erwin Nyiereghazy (at 6.53) Liszt Legend 2. I believe this is how Liszt himself performed - free, full of imagination, wild, strong, passionate, individual, spiritual, heartfelt, with never a care for the judgemental bourgeoisie.

Best virtuoso playing: (three contestants)
Alfred Cortot playing Saint-Saens Etude en forme de Valse
Horowitz went to him for a lesson but Cortot would not reveal the secrets of his lightness within power!

Ignaz Friedman playing Chopin Etude in C at 3.05

Dinu Lipatti making light work of Liszt

Best Chopin Nocturne
Moriz Rosenthal Chopin D flat major. Rosenthal studied with Liszt AND with a favourite pupil of Chopin's; so his style deserves to be treated with the greatest respect, even though it may appear too personal for the modern ear.
Ideal for the moonlit reverie with your beloved (and/or hot water bottle).

Best Folk-Style Playing
Ignaz Friedman Chopin Mazurka
Such rhythm and mood! Spot on! 100%. Now if this spirit and lifetime's learning could be sold in a bottle...

Bela Bartok plays his own Rumanian Folk Dances
How wonderful! How humble! How truly civilised! Such musical phrasing! Bravo Hungary! (And Rumania).

Best 2-piano Playing: Arensky, Waltz from Suite, played by Harold Bauer and Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Wow! Did you know that Ravel dedicated Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit to Harold Bauer?

Best Left Hand
Simon Barere plays Blumenfeld's Etude for the Left Hand in A flat major opus 36 at 2.45