Your Favorite Pianists and Great Composers?

My favorite pianists are: Martha Argerich, Valentina Lisitsa, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Evgeny Kissin, Georges Cziffra and Arthur Rubinstein.

Favorite composers: Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninoff. these are my narrow preferences because I would have others, perhaps slightly lesser, but always noteworthy

I do not allow myself to express a judgment on the performers ... because I am not capable of it! 😕

I can say, however, who my favorite composers are (it is only a matter of personal "taste", nothing to do with importance or greatness): Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi.

Hi!

Well, I would be undecided... how can I comment on a "Great" one and "rank it" in the list of "my favorites"? Every composer has (or had 😕) their own style: Mozart was "light, brilliant, genius and elegant" (the rhyme to define him that I learned from my music Professor), Chopin (a whole other period) is "the Pianist of Sentiment" ... who knows 😉!

In any case, if you asked me "Which composer do you enjoy listening to most?" I would answer:

1. Chopin
   
2. Beethoven
   
3. Mozart
   
4. Liszt
   
5. Verdi
   
6. Vivaldi
   
7. Bach
   
8. ...
   
9. ...
   
10. And, for "absolute last" on the list: myself 😉!
    

Bye!! Francesco 1797

There is a pianist and composer, little appreciated in his time, a very peculiar person, about whom it is not easy for me to speak; I can only say that I like him immensely. Erik Satie is his name.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie

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Another pianist and composer whom I also like very much, a highly original and very particular composer, just like Satie, is John Cage.

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Satie takes me back in time. Thank you.

I have performed a lot of Satie's four-hand music. I feel a pleasant admiration for him. Parade is a fundamental Dadaist "manifesto". Cocteau and Picasso also participated in the project. I recommend you listen to it.

Satie's music is truly whimsical. He used to say "enough with music to listen to with your head in your hands!" (even if this Gnossienne makes us do just that)

He wore the same outfit for thirty-two years and wrote letters to himself... sending them to his own house! He was a very close friend of Debussy... but the latter flew into a rage and broke off the friendship because he discovered that Satie was his friend not because he loved his music... but because he cooked well!!!!! What a character!!!!

On the other hand, I wasn't familiar with this piece by Cage, which I find very interesting and suggestive... I would say "evocative"

Hi Paolo, I am very pleased to read your words, it makes me very happy to see that you know and appreciate Satie: I believe in synchronicity, meaning I believe that in life nothing happens by chance, and being "casually" entered into this site, I believe that in reality it was not accidental. It is not easy to meet people who love Satie, neither among those expert in classical music, nor among the "extravagant" people who love pop, modern, or contemporary music (John Cage was someone who loved Satie; in fact, I have the impression he was very inspired by him). Satie was very particular, almost mad, just as you described so well, dear Paolo, just like the Dadaist movement was "mad," or the other madness of Van Gogh, or John Cage, a "madman" himself. I love them, and it pleases me when I meet other people who love these "madmen." Ah, another madman I have always loved is John Lennon. We talked about pianists, we talked about Cage: about his compositions for prepared piano, what do you think?

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Another piano composition that I like, and quite a lot too, is this Piano Phase by Steve Reich.

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Of course. Nothing happens by chance.

Satie was a moment in my musical life, a very happy one. I even presented Satie's Parade on the occasion of a French music cycle. The Cultural Attaché of the French Embassy in Rome was also there, and the concert was very successful.

Let it be known that Satie was unique. He attempted many experiments, but perhaps he was not understood, as happens to the Greats, because the Greats are ahead of their time and do and say things that do not belong to their historical moment. It is also for this reason that they become eternal. They do not die. They do not fade away.

He composed a quartet and presented it during a painting exhibition. The performance was supposed to consist of "non-listening". The musicians would play, but the audience was not supposed to pay attention to them.

The musicians entered, they started playing..... immediately everyone sat down. The critics wrote: "It was a failure"

Geni are not understood precisely because they are one step ahead of their contemporaries:

they have their heads in the future while walking in the present (take the history of Galileo Galilei, for example).

It is true that Debussy cooked very well; in fact, his friend, and another "freeloader," was Igor Stravinsky, who wrote about Satie:

"Debussy often invited me to his house and one day I met Erik Satie, whom I already knew by name."

"I liked him from the very first moment. He was a sharp character, full of cunning, and intelligently wicked."

What a type!!!

John Cage, on the other hand, wrote:

"To take an interest in Satie, one must begin by having no interests, listening only to a man being a man,"

"letting go of our illusions about the idea of order, of the expression of feelings"

"and all the aesthetic embellishments of which we are heirs."

It is not a matter of knowing if Satie is valid. He is indispensable."

In the following video, from 1924, one year before his death, it is possible to catch a glimpse of our beloved and playful Satie, a "sharp character" as

Stravinsky wrote of him.

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