Ivan Moravec

I'll join you in that -- Moravec was a wonderful pianist, of a particular kind. It would be easy to make him sound boring if I were to say that he cared greatly for a kind of perfection in performance -- he was fastidious in the sound he produced and in the controlled and careful accuracy of his technique. But that was all in the service of his thoroughly musical and imaginative response to the notes on the page and his performances all seem to me to be deeply illuminating. Like CFMF, I'm going through a bit of a binge of listening to various of his recordings, picked up over the years, or available on Spotify. I'm particularly conscious of his approach as a contrast to that other, very different pianist to whom I'm also listening a lot at the moment -- John Ogdon. Chalk and cheese?

I had tickets, twice in the last decade, for planned Moravec concerts at the Edinburgh Festival -- and twice he cancelled due to illness. But his records -- not that there seem to be all that many of them -- present him clearly enough.

DSR

You will unfortunately not be able to see him life anymore. He passed away in July this year.

Yes, I know. I was saddened but not surprised by the news.

One of the things I admire most about Moravec is that he felt no compulsion to record complete cycles of works. Virtually every pianist records the Well Tempered Clavier, or the 32 Beethoven sonatas to give only 2 examples. This most likely has to do with recording contracts and is dictated by the music label. Moravec recorded those works that he felt he had an affinity for, or at least something to "say" about the particular composition.

Few musicians have impressed me as much as Moravec, and his death was a great loss to the music world.

BBM