Whose solo piano music floats your boat?

[vinteuil]

As for Liszt, I have a lot of time for his arrangements of other people's music...

... yes : especially for me his Bach and Schubert

[MickyD]

Haydn..especially ever since Ronald Brautigam's lovely set.

And Grieg's miniatures, too. I would love a recording of them on an early piano - though I seem to recall that Andnes recorded some on the composer's own piano, or am I wrong?

[Pianorak]

Haydn..especially ever since Ronald Brautigam's lovely set.

And Grieg's miniatures, too. I would love a recording of them on an early piano - though I seem to recall that Andnes recorded some on the composer's own piano, or am I wrong?

Andnes did indeed.
How could I forget Haydn sonatas recorded by Andras Schiff - Joyful and uplifting performances.

[cloughie]

Debussy, Ravel and Schubert are probably top of my list but Rachmaninov thereabouts as is Satie. I had for a long time not been very keen on Chopin, but two things changed this. One was hearing Samson Francois interpretations which are probably idiosyncratic but I like them. The other is that since starting piano lessons in the last couple of years attempting to play them has attracted me to his music, although my attempts are nowhere near perfect.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have to add to my list Scriabin and Sciarrino, and, most embarrassingly, Xenakis, I can't imagine what made me omit his name previously, although he didn't write very much for solo piano, although actually neither did Janáček and if I include him I should also include Berio (Sonata and Sequenza IV), Stravinsky (principally for his Concerto for two pianos), Barraqué (Sonata), La Monte Young (Well-Tuned Piano), Kagel (An Tasten), I expect others will occur to me...

On the other hand my omission of Boulez, Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, Ligeti and Bartók isn't accidental - I just don't get much out of their piano music in comparison with other elements of their output. As for Liszt, I have a lot of time for his arrangements of other people's music, but when he's using his own material it seems to me to fall short of his inventiveness with the instrument (like Schumann in reverse one could say).

I really agree with that - Liszt - in common with other forum favourites whose names I won't mention! - seemed capable of writing either music of sheer brilliance or utter banality, disguised by his undoubted contributions to advancing both orchestral and pianistic technique. I'd have to disagree with you on Bartok, some of whose most daring advances in form and musical language being found in his comparatively early piano works - the Bagatelles, the 3 Burlesques, the 7 Sketches Op 9, all from 1908/9; and the extraordinary 3 Piano Studies Op 18 of 1918. We are fortunate that much of Bartok's piano music was recorded by him, and that the recorded quality of those 78s was remarkably good. I really should also give mention of the Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs of 1920, extraordinary in their juxtaposition of the melodies, modally harmonised, and the complexity in terms of chromatic and rhythmic elaboration, not to mention the psychological depths, with which they are developed. For me the strong Stravinsky influence, from both the post-Rite "Russian" period of Renard and Les Noces , together with the early Neo-classical era of the latter's Piano Concerto, detract somewhat from the otherwise brilliance and matching of spontaneity and form of the few later solo piano works, from the Sonata and Out of Doors onwards.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Sorry, but at least I'm honest.

My stars! You've lived in Yorkshire for all of twenty minutes, and already you're telling everyone "I speak as I find"!

[Pulcinella]

My stars! You've lived in Yorkshire for all of twenty minutes, and already you're telling everyone "I speak as I find"!

I fear that I always have, sometimes not with the best of consequences.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would certainly go for Schubert and Debussy, but find it odd that nobody so far has mentioned Schumann, surely one of the great poets of the keyboard. Richter's mono DG of Fantasiestucke and Waldscenen is a desert island disc for me.

I limited myself to the essential two, not realizing we were allowed to gorge ourselves by naming everybody who's ever written anything for the instrument! Had I shared my fourteen, Schumann would've been there, no problem.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Messiaen, in particular Catalog d'Oiseaux. And Thelonius Monk.

Debussy and Beethoven used to be the tops, but these days I hardly listen to them at all. In fact I seem to have gone off the piano altogether, and would rather listen to a harpsichord.

Messiaen on harpsichord? Well, if people will insist on citing Bach as a composer of "solo piano Music" ...

Good call for Monk, though - if we include Jazz masters, that might well increase my own list even further.

[Serial_Apologist]

Messiaen on harpsichord? Well, if people will insist on citing Bach as a composer of "solo piano Music" ...

Good call for Monk, though - if we include Jazz masters, that might well increase my own list even further.

That's why I drew my particular line at Art Tatum...

[Pulcinella]

Well, if people will insist on citing Bach as a composer of "solo piano Music" ...

But I did qualify my choice by saying

If we are allowed to include keyboard works played on the piano, then undoubtedly JSB tops my list.

[Lat-Literal]

Lat

Some very original music here, available in fine recordings. Ohlsson in Scriabin and Griffes (Hyperion), Grasbeck on Sibelius's own piano at Ainola (BIS), Hamelin in Rzewski (Hyperion), Hastings in Pann (Naxos), Osborne in Messiaen (Hyperion), Loeb in Joplin (Naxos) and, best of all, Philip Martin's complete Gottschalk (Hyperion). BTW Hamelin's own Etudes are mighty impressive, too (Hyperion).

Thank you ever so much mahlerei. I should have added Hamelin's Busoni Concerto to my list and will look out for his Etudes. On Gottschalk, I only have "A Night in the Tropics" so will certainly seek more. I also have what I think was a very cheap disc called "American Impressions" on "The Gift of Music" which features piano music by Griffes and MacDowell.

Scriabin is a difficult one currently along with Magnard and Nielsen. I had a sudden burst of huge enthusiasm for their symphonies and then got a touch of cold feet, not that I have dismissed them. The Scriabin piano music may be the next step there to see the symphonies in a broader context. The Rzewski is, of course, very entertaining with a serious point.

[Serial_Apologist]

Would an Italian describe his or her favourite piano music as pianissimo???

[Beef Oven!]

Would an Italian describe his or her favourite piano music as pianissimo???

Being half Italian, I can tell you that I constantly refer to my favourite piano music as mezzo-pianissimo.

[jayne lee wilson]

I would certainly go for Schubert and Debussy, but find it odd that nobody so far has mentioned Schumann, surely one of the great poets of the keyboard. Richter's mono DG of Fantasiestucke and Waldscenen is a desert island disc for me.

Well I'm very used to being treated as a nobody round here, of course.... (see #8....)...

There ought to be a law! "Thou shalt not post till thou hast read th'entire thread".... or summat. Might be tough with some of the Bruckner ones thou, I mean, though.
Anyway as one who blows hot, cold and very subjectively picky about piano music, Schumann is indeed the indispensable, mercurial poet of the keyboard for me. All those mentioned - Kreisleriana, Symphonic Studies, OP.12 Fantasiestucke, Carnaval, and one I left out - the sublime Op.17 Fantasy. (One of the-symphonic masterpieces for pianoforte, as much a great sonata as "Overture, Scherzo & Finale" are an almost-great-symphony).... I'd play them every week if days were 36 hours long. Which planet was that again?

Yet I might never have fallen in love with this music if I hadn't first fallen in love with how Sofronitsky or Richter address their respective keyboards...
There are few more joyful moments, in any music, than the Allegro Brillante finale of Op.13, at least if Sofronitsky or Richter are singing it, shouting it aloud!

I'm very performer-led with classical piano solo.... once I'd heard Richter in Schubert - d894 (the 1st movement is..how long...?!)., 664 (the ineffable serenity of those opening measures...!), 575 and others (see above), when I got the Kempff intégrale I found it hard to sustain my interest despite perceiving their own relative loveliness...
Listen to that 1979 RFH Schubert recital: no-one else could do anything like that. And Richter's playing on that 1950s Melodiya I mentioned, d845/ d850, is exactly what turns you into an addict, worshipper at the shrine of, devotee....

Michelangeli could do it for me too - especially in that Op. Post. D75 Sonata of Schubert, but above all the Brahms Op.10: with any of his performances of those, I'm...somewhere else, I am nothing and I want for nothing....
I hear someone else do it... it doesn't work.
The live Aura disc of Schubert d75 and Brahms Op.10 is...... the silence that music bestows upon our chattering minds... ... ... ...