In the world of classical music performance, the artist is often given equal billing to the composer. After all, it’s the player that shapes our understanding of a work, that interprets a composer’s intentions. South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho’s playlist, Piano Archives, delves deep into our recorded heritage to showcase some of the piano world’s greatest players. “This selection includes performances that hold historical significance and have influenced me as a pianist,” says Cho. “Piano Archives is a small insight into solo piano works performed by prominent pianists from the past we are fortunate to have on record.”
We begin with Wilhelm Kempff’s magical performance of Liszt’s fluttering musical portrait of St Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds, made in 1975 when the great German pianist was already in his 80th year. We then hear two products of the Soviet piano school: Emil Gilels, masterful in Beethoven, and Maria Yudina, who brings poise and strength of spirit to Bach. There’s the great Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in crystal-clear recordings of the piano rolls he made between 1919 and 1929, and another Russian, this time the legendary Vladimir Sofronitsky in thrilling account of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes captured live at the Moscow Conservatory in 1959.
Other legendary names in this thrilling playlist include Alfred Cortot (magical in Chopin), and Alicia de Larrocha playing a movement from Granados’ Goyescas with joyful abandon and technical brilliance. Artur Schnabel, Vladimir Horowitz and Radu Lupu all feature, and we end with one of the earliest greats to be captured on record: the incomparable Edwin Fischer, whose mesmerising performance of Beethoven’s Op. 110 Sonata dates from 1938.
