Piano Playing Notes

Van Cliburn’s legendary 1958 performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no.1 with Kirill Kondrashin conducting the RCA Symphony Orchestra (New York Philharmonic Orchestra?) still remains remarkably fresh as if it had only just recently been recorded live in concert. This was his first recording on returning to the US from winning the first Moscow Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in March 1958 and it became the first classical record ever to sell over a million copies.

No prizes for predicting that this Liszt B minor Sonata is technically flawless and beautifully structured. What may come as more of a shock (though not to those who have followed Pollini's career closely) is its sheer passion. To say that he plays as if his life depended on it is an understatement, and those who regularly accuse him of coolness should sit down in a quiet room with this recording, a decent hi-fi system and a large plateful of their own words. The opening creates a sense of coiled expectancy, without recourse to a mannered delivery such as Brendel's on Philips, and Pollini's superior fingerwork is soon evident. His virtuosity gains an extra dimension from his ability at the same time to convey resistance to it—the double octaves are demonstrably a fraction slower than usual and yet somehow feel faster, or at least more urgent.

It wasn’t until the end of the 1920s that professional duo-piano teams became a regular part of the concert scene with the emergence of Bartlett and Robertson, followed by Vronsky and Babin a bit later, and finally, in 1936, Luboshutz and Nemenoff.