Happy World Piano Day!
This celebratory day is held on the 88th day of the year (nice idea, since the piano has 88 keys), which is usually March 29 – but since we had Leap Year in 2020, February 29 shifted the date this year and it takes place on March 28.
On my Facebook, Patreon, and Twitter pages today I’ve shared a couple of interesting links – both of which I’ve featured before (and will add further down this page). But I also decided to have my first Facebook ‘Live’ Video presentation, a live talk that I gave via computer with subscribers to my page. I had a few topics I wanted to discuss and also answered a few questions that subscribers were typing in the feed on Facebook. Here is the video (and don’t worry – you don’t need a Facebook account to watch it):
Today was also Rudolf Serkin’s birthday – he was born in 1903 – so I featured a recording to celebrate him. He was never one of my favourite pianists, to be honest – there’s a nervous quality to most of the records that I’ve heard… but about a decade ago, a colleague alerted me to a CD of private recordings issued with his biography that show a very different side to his playing: bold, passionate, intensely Romantic, with monumental rhythmic propulsion and soaring phrasing. The readings on that CD are simply beyond anything I’ve ever heard of this pianist… Enjoy this stellar performance:
And there’s no better day than today than to celebrate the best documentary featuring historical pianists to have been made thus far, The Art of Piano. Unfortunately the upload of the complete documentary has been geo-blocked on YouTube, but this upload features a chunk of it: this cut unfortunately doesn’t include the Edwin Fischer and Alfred Cortot sections). While I don’t agree with all of the choices made in the film, it is the finest of its kind to have been made thus far. I met the director/producer in London a couple of times over the last decade (a very interesting man who has also written a comprehensive biography about Roald Dahl) – he explained that Lipatti was not included because there was no film footage of him (there is silent footage of Rachmaninoff, even though he isn’t playing in it), though I don’t agree that this was strong enough a reason to exclude him, as photographs could have been used just as effectively. We met again a bit over a year ago and I showed him the newly discovered Lipatti footage, which he was thrilled to see (and there are steps being made to get that presented in a documentary – steps currently slowed by CoVid, unfortunately…)
So while this film and this particular edit of it might be less than perfect, this is absolutely worth watching and owning – a great tribute to the piano and some of its greatest proponents: Paderewski, Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Moiseiwitsch, Hess …
Happy Piano Day! And long may we enjoy this instrument and its greatest performers!