Best Piano Music : Classical or Jazz

(also, I think its quite tough to maybe distinguish one sax player from another by just playing a note but it prob would be easier overall)

Even with compositions that are so well structured they're a guarenteed good listen, it's tough to find a quality recording. Took forever for me to find truly great versions of Ives' Concord Sonata.

Messiaen's 'Vingt Regards' can be excruciating or total timeless amazement. The Anton Batagov recording on Melodiya is performed at about 60% of the indicated tempo; it normally fits on 2 CDs, his requires three. It also seems like the microphones are on the other side of the theatre from the piano; it sounds like a haunted wreck. Batagov grew up heavily influenced by Cage and Eno; he plays Messiaen like '1/1' off 'Airports'. It's like no other recording of Messiaen I've heard. He also does my favorite Ravel and does a bizarre one-note-at-a-time ambient version of 'art of the fugue'.

Gould's done 4 recordings of the Goldberg Variations, 1954, 1955, 1959, 1981. All very different. I like 1955 & 1959 overall for happiness, 1954 for pure fury, 1981's good when I'm in a very grim mood. I mean, he really was dying.

I love Ciccolini's Satie to tears. (Though Alan Marks did the definitive 'Vexations', one full 60 minute disc of it. If anyone has a copy of this, e-mail me.)

La Monte Young's 'Well Tuned Piano' is incredible, and Riley's 'Harp of New Albion' is the accessible pop version. I mean, many great pieces named above, nearly everything I love except Chopin makes me feel wrong, but I've got to check out that African Brand disc...

Totally drunk, no one's yet mentioned one of my three favorite composers, Scott Joplin. I like the Joshua Rifkin.

Yet to hear Comprovisation. But I did attend one of the recitals on which this recording is based on. He omitted the Cardew perf (which had some London Underground related recordings, can't quite remember). Also omitted are the transcriptions of Derek Bailey's guitar music. You could def hear certain riffs, but I felt - inevitably perharps - that Derek easy flow ws lost when transferred to the keyboard. Didn't see him doing 'Variations II' so I'm looking forward to that.

This is an excellent program - 'Jazz', a riotous 6 mins; Obermayer, an improviser in the group Furt, matches those contrasts and sheer physicality of the Finnissy. Mick Beck (a blind improv bassonist) wrote a 'piece', this is the one where I'm thinking 'could he pull it off on a recording', v fluxus-y, I think its so visually depedant - funnily this is the one where you might have to see it. Burn is a noted performer of Henry Cowell's music and I think that rubs off on his piece. The Simon Fell piece ws exhausting, plenty of stops and starts, and programmed as the last piece of that evening (over a year ago now). Hardcore!

Anyway, this ws one of the few times I thought this is how solo piano recitals ought to be done - the pieces are diff and varied enough, however you get a common goal and purpose throughout, no audible links are lost, with enough risks (Bailey transcriptions/Beck/). Will find out whether some of that comes across or not.

Maurice Ravel - Gaspard De La Nuit

This is intense! If I learn even the first movement before I die, I'll be thrilled.

I just played piano publicly for the first time in at least six years for my friend's wedding. A couple rough spots, but the nice thing is that wedding audiences have their attention fixated elsewhere. I stuffed as much French stuff as I could into the program...

Frédéric Chopin, “Prélude No. 17 in A-flat major” (Op. 28)
Ludwig van Beethoven, “Piano Sonata No. 8, Mvt. 2: Adagio cantabile” (Op. 13)
Claude Debussy, “Clair de lune” from Suite Bergamasque
Maurice Ravel, “Mouvement de menuet” from Sonatine
Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim, “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story
J.S. Bach, “Air on the G String”
Erik Satie, “Gymnopédie No. 1”
Claude Debussy, “Serenade for the Doll” and "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" from Children’s Corner

Nice. I just bought the Hanon book I used to practice from when I was a kid. I'm hoping to start playing again, but.. discipline, etc.

I like a lot of what's been mentioned here, especially the Messiaen, Scriabin, Satie, and Chopin. Schubert has a lot of great sonatas, and Schumann and Brahms have a lot of unsung solo piano work. my favorite keyboard works that I never see mentioned anywhere else are Janacek's, especially 'In the Mist.' Andras Schiff has a great collection on ECM.

I've learned the first page and a half of Gaspard. The easy part.

Bud Powell's name oughta turn up in more discussions about mindblowing pianists because he was the man

You mean he doesn't?

I know of at least discussion in which someone said:

Every hip stud
Really dug Bud
Soon as he hit town.

Takin' that note
Nobody wrote.
Putting it down.

well, he wasn't named on this thread prior to my post, I mean.

Hey have you listened to his A Portrait of Thelonious album? That is a sick album. You can feel the love he has for Thelonious, who actually for a drug bust to save him a jail term.

copped for a drug bust

Scott Cossu's REUNION stuns me. Listen to "Shepherd's Song"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L6FL1bedwe4

He would come up in any discussion of the greatest jazz pianists among jazzheads. Maybe doesn't have a lot of love outside that world though.