I've finally managed to learn all the notes in the Bach-Busoni Chaconne. That isn't to say that I can play them, or that I ever will be able to play them. Just that I have the piece memorized, and through practice and with the providential development of new piano skills, I might someday be able to play it. My skills in double thirds are sadly lacking, and I have yet to devise a way in which to play chords that span a tenth+, in which either the top or the bottom note (but not both) is on a black key, convincingly (even with arpeggiation). Some of my scales want polishing, too. But other than that, it looks like I could be playing this a month or two from now. People are likely to be impressed by it, too, since it's a lot easier than it looks or sounds. I have never played a more pianistic piece, except perhaps Vallée D'Obermann. Busoni seems to have shared Liszt's enormous skill for writing pianistic music. Chopin is surprisingly unpianistic for someone whose primary medium was the piano, though I suppose with him, as with Beethoven, the music came first, and the medium afterwards. I still can't get past the insuperable technical barriers in the Chopin Ballades and Scherzi, whereas in the Chaconne and Vallée D'Obermann, I can get away with my meager technique with enough effort.
Phrasing seems to be a lost art. Look at Lang Lang. He stutters through his phrases like someone learning a second language late in life - in some pieces, at least, like the Liszt-Horowitz Rácózi March and other virtuoso showpieces; in others he is excellent. helenE grimauD (a pianist so foul that her name does not deserve their usual diacritics, and only the final letters ought to be capitalized) is the musical equivalent of a person attempting to play the piano without any limbs or functioning sense organs. It's sad that she has any following at all. But we have only to wait until the first wrinkle appears on her emotionally inert face. I thought Valentina Lisitsa a semi-decent pianist when listened to from the next room, but she has lately proven something of a madwoman, and got herself thrown out of a concert hall (so to speak) in Canada recently, because she had taken to posting obscene things on Twitter.
Come to think of it, why is Twitter permitted to exist in this day and age? What purpose does it serve other than to bring to light scandals that befall celebrities of whom you have never heard?
In ending, I would like to mention how completely blown away I am by Marc-André Hamelin. He just leaves me speechless. I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming when I listen to him. Here is a pianist with one of the best techniques of all time who is also a consummate musician (this can't be emphasized enough), and who is in his prime right now. Right now. That means I could, if I procured enough money for the purpose, listen to him live in concert, and be part of an experience that people will read about a hundred years from now with the sort of unmitigated fascination with which people read about Liszt or Anton Rubinstein today.
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