I don't know much Liszt, aside from the Hungarian Rhapsody and La Campanella (particularly,
Arthur Rubinstein's rendition), what else of his would you recommend? Do you have a favourite version of The Rhapsody?
Personally, I've always loved Chopin. Especially his Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, particularly
Rubinstein's (again) rendition. I find that his dynamics feel perfectly placed, and his timing is just right. His trills especially seem to have perfect timing. Yundi does an alright rendition, but his trills seem rushed and slightly off time sometimes. And he places dynamics in the actual trills, which bothers me a bit. The only other real gripe I have about his performance of it is that his left hand is a bit heavy, where Rubinstein's feels controlled and lets the music convey the emotion, rather than the playing. And I can't say I like Rachmaninoff's rendition of it at all. And I must say I'm a fan of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I'm not a huge fan of orchestral arrangements for some reason though. I find I prefer solo piano or string arrangements, so that would definitely bias me.
And yes, I do have a thing for Rubinstein's playing. It always feels like he's playing the piece with such a technical mastery that its not his playing that you feel, but the beauty of the composition itself. I've always felt that when you hear someone's rendition of a piece, and they play it a bit differently, that you were listening to a unique piece of music and that the way the song was played had a huge effect on the emotion that you felt from it, but he seem to make his playing transparent, so that the original intent of the piece shows through. Well, that's what it feels like to me anyway.
Other than that, I absolutely love Erik Satie. Technically we're really getting out of the "classical" waters with him, but he basically introduced minimalism to music, as well as broke so many rules about composing, that it's hard not to like him. His music just has a weird haunting quality to the odd choices of harmony, especially in his Gymnopedies.\\
Out of curiocity, have you heard of Maksim Mrvica? If so, what do you think of what he's doing to classical music pieces. He's basically trying to "make classical music cool", but in the process, tends to "dumb down" the tracks, and leave out a lot of stuff. I don't think he's quite as talented as he's made out to be... Though I still think he is a hell of a pianist.
