Young pianists worth following
Posted by: EJS on 28 April 2012
All,
Picking up from another discussion, perhaps time to start a new thread on the best up and coming pianists currently active on the podia and recording?
My first stab:
- Anna Vinnitskaya: three official discs so far, including a promising debut recital, and a great follow-up (Ravel and Prokofiev concertos). Her recent disc with Ravel solo piano music shows her finding her way in this repertoire, interesting but as of yet I think slightly out of her league.
- Rafal Blechacz: one of the great sets of Chopin préludes was followed by good but rather anonymous discs of sonatas and Chopin piano concertos. However, his recent Debussy/Szymanowski is brilliant.
- Joseph Moog: I'm bowled over by his recent Rubinstein 4 / Rachmaninov 3 disc. Both performances up there with the best I know
- David Fray: the new Pogorelich? Certainly as idiosyncratic, I highly recommend all his recordings, the highlight being his jazzy Bach concerto disc
Look forward to your views!
Cheers,
EJ
Lang Lang
Yuja Wang
Claire Desert
Lisa de la Salle
Ingrid Fliter
Emmanuelle Swiercz
Alice Sara Ott
Olga Scheps
Sa Chen
Anna Gourari
Lisa Smirnova
Grace Francis
Katya Apekisheva
Olga Kern
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Steven Osborne
Paul Lewis
Jean-Frederic Neuburger
(A whole bunch of Neuburger is in the mail to me at the moment including this one. Anyone who records Czerny gets my full support. (For those who don't know Czerny wrote tons of studies and finger exercises that every piano player who studied would have been exposed to. Czerny was Beethoven's piano teacher and gave the premiere of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto.) I can't wait as I'm going through piles of Czerny on the piano at the moment reliving my childhood along with my son who is starting to gobble this stuff up too!)
Martin Stadfeld
Leif Ove Andsnes
Helene Grimaud
Yuja Wang!
Who cares how she plays.
She's soooooo cuuuuuute!!
Jean-Frederic Neuburger
(A whole bunch of Neuburger is in the mail to me at the moment including this one. Anyone who records Czerny gets my full support. (For those who don't know Czerny wrote tons of studies and finger exercises that every piano player who studied would have been exposed to. Czerny was Beethoven's piano teacher and gave the premiere of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto.) I can't wait as I'm going through piles of Czerny on the piano at the moment reliving my childhood along with my son who is starting to gobble this stuff up too!)
Poor guy, I couldn't stand those endless exercises, distinctly remember when I was allowed to progress to Mozart and Beethoven 
EJ