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TOP 10 (MANLY) CLASSICAL PIANISTS Sophistication CAN be Manly
Piano is inarguably the most sophisticated instrument out there… no not the toy one your emo band bought at Guitar Center. There have been many great piano virtuosi over the last couple of centuries, and this article is dedicated to naming the top ten manliest of them. First, there must be some criterions (yes…criterions, it emphasizes that criteria is also plural… I hate when inbred illiterates use criteria as a singular noun) which these manly pianists must satisfy in order to make this prestigious list. It is difficult to narrow this list down to just ten, and there are many great pianists who will not make the cut, but with my faultless rating system that I will soon describe, you will see that my list is irrefutable.
There are four criteria that I will be using to make my list: Fame/recognition, technical skill, a rating of manliness, and my own personal rating of how much I like each pianist. An 11% weight will be given to fame/recognition, 20% to technical skill, 30% to manliness, and 39% to my own personal rating. These may seem arbitrary, but let me explain. Fame gets 11% because although being famous can be manly, doing something just to be famous and not because you have a passion for it is not manly. 20% goes to technical skill because anyone who makes this list obviously has technical skill, and among these elite pianists, being able to play a bit faster than the other is not going to help you much on this list…these are supposed to be musicians, not robots.
The manliness criterion (you thought I was going to say criteria, didn’t you?) may seem redundant because being the best at what you do is already manly, but this is more of a personal characteristic that I am assigning to each player, perhaps even a Je ne sais quoi, (do not worry, there are no Frenchmen on this list) that is not really related to his piano playing. My own subjective rating gets a 39% weight because I am your mental superior and correct and it should therefore be reflected in the rating. One thing you will notice is that the last two (and most important) criteria (manliness and my rating) have weights that conveniently add up to 69...because that is what I did with your mom last night while your dad was at night school getting his GED. I digress…so as to avoid any further prolixity, here is the list (with a YouTube link demonstrating each pianist’s technical prowess and interpretative talent).
This man was a truly gifted pianist who performed concerts from a very young age. Other than being an awesome pianist, there is nothing about him that particularly stands out to me…so it’s probably a good reason I have him as number ten on this list. He was originally from Chile, making him one of two South Americans to make the list (I hope you can guess the other without looking ahead).
I am sure some (or many) of you were expecting this man to appear higher up on the list. Horowitz is a great pianist to be sure, but overrated in my opinion. I can’t think of anything particularly manly about Horowitz, but he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. For such a famous pianist, I find myself at a loss for words. He was a very good all around pianist but nothing in particular about him sticks out to me. I leave you with a recording that he is very famous for, an étude by Scirabin.
This pick is probably the least expected on the list, mostly due to his relative lack of fame in comparison with the other pianists. The reasons he makes this list is because I believe he has the best recordings of all time of all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. I know some of you are probably thinking how much you like Kempff’s renditions...but he is highly overrated and mediocre when compared to Oppitz. Oppitz also has a beard and speaks like seven languages, so he is pretty damn manly. The first recording I ever heard from Oppitz was his recording of the third movement of Beethoven’s 17th piano sonata (The Tempest), and every other interpretation which I have heard pales in comparison to his. Sadly, there are very few recordings of Oppitz up on YouTube, but the one I did find is a good one.
A native Russian, this man is probably best known as a composer, but he is also a great pianist. Rachmaninoff had massive and powerful hands, and was therefore a very adept pianist. He had great accuracy and a great memory as well, which scores him high in the technique department. If manliness and my opinion were not factors, he would undoubtedly be higher up on this list, as he is obviously very famous and talented, in fact, if you have not heard of him you are probably a degenerate retard. Enough of pointing out this man’s greatness and your shortcomings, listen to him play one of his own pieces.
In terms of interpretations, Barenboim is one of my favorites, and he is the second of the South American pianists, being born in Argentina. Barenboim is not only a great pianist, but also a great conductor. His manliness score is due to the fact that he conducted a performance of Wagner (who was anti-Semitic) in Israel, ha ha, and considering that Barenboim himself is Jewish that is pretty hilarious. In my opinion, his best piano works are Beethoven’s piano sonatas (which are undoubtedly some of the most important piano works ever written). The video I’m including is a particularly famous piece, but I am using it mainly because there is an HD version of it so it looks good.
You may see one number of this pianist jumping out, his ten in manliness. There are a couple of reasons for this. First and foremost, he became an American citizen (he was born in Poland), and any European that leaves there for the greatness of America is a man. Second, he was a badass inventor. I will not go into detail of the things he invented, but they were rather eclectic and made him a ton of money. He was a gifted pianist, and despite having very small hands he still managed to play incredibly. He had a prodigious memory and could apparently hear a composition played once and have it memorized. With all these manly qualities, there is no question as to why he emigrated from Europe and made his permanent home here.
Our next man on this esteemed list is a truly great pianist from Poland. He made his performing debut with one the world’s premiere orchestras, Die Berliner Philharmoniker (the Berlin Philharmonic), at the age of thirteen. If that isn’t manly, I don’t know what is. He also lived to be ninety-five. With a lifespan like that, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if had a quotidian habit of eating a ton of meat. He left his wife when he was ninety for another woman. That in itself isn’t particularly manly, but the fact that the his new woman was like sixty years his junior is, considering that Viagra wasn’t around yet. Enough about his personal life. Rubinstein was perhaps best known for his recordings of Chopin, which were terrific and is what I will be providing in the listening sample. So, put down your liquid estrogen supplement (soymilk), and listen to this great man perform.
The next man on this list hails from Russia. Richter had a vast repertoire which is certainly a fine quality in top notch pianist. He was able to share this vast repertoire with many, due to the fact that he was a proponent of giving free concerts, and this willingness to spread his craft to anyone who wanted to hear it was a commendable and manly trait. He had a long and successful career, playing up until not long before his death. Richter was also gay, which has nothing to do with his piano playing, but that has to score him at least some man points in a roundabout way…I’d be afraid to be gay in Soviet Russia (it was illegal) out of fear that Stalin would show up at my doorstep and castrate me or something. Due to his massive discography, the links I will be providing (he also gets two) demonstrate his virtuosity and his musicality.
Glenn Gould was born in Canada, so that already puts him a leg up from all these European/Russian guys. Gould was quite an eccentric individual, which is what makes him manly. He didn’t care what others thought of him, and he criticized composers he didn’t like (which is very apparent in his recordings of those composers). Gould had some fast fingers and great articulation, shit, I bet women in the audience had orgasms just watching what his fingers could do to the piano keys. Gould was also a very prolific recorder, which certainly has contributed to his widespread fame. I love Gould’s playing and while many people are not large fans of his non-Bach recordings…I love them all. Two peculiar things about Gould (going back to his eccentricity) are his chair that his father built for him when he was a young boy that he always played on, and his “humming” during recordings, which you can hear quite well on a lot of his recordings. Gould is most well known for his superb Bach playing, but since he is my favorite pianist on this list, he is getting two recording samples.
Bach:
Non-Bach:
1. Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886)
Fame: 10
Technical Skill: 10
Manliness: 9.5
Me: 7.5
Overall: 8.875
Liszt’s spot at number one is a no brainer. Gould had a higher score than Liszt because I like Gould more, but there is no way Liszt could be anything but number one. No other person in history has contributed as much to piano as Liszt. He has obviously been dead for 123 years, almost to the date, so no living person has ever heard him play, but based on historical accounts…he could fucking shred on the piano, so that is why he is getting a 10 for technical skill. His fame is unsurpassed, both as a performer and composer of piano music and the piano would not be where it is today without him. Liszt always had women chasing after him, he performed thousands of times throughout his life, and he made massive amounts of money playing the piano…making him the man. I do like many of Liszt’s works, but they are not my favorite, which is why he is only getting a 7.5 from me. The link being provided for Liszt is of an etude being performed by the great Evengy Kissin. Liszt's works are not always the most pleasing things to listen to in my opinion, but they do demonstrate his virtuosic compositions.
Well, there you have it, the ten manliest pianists of all time. There are undoubtedly numerous other talented pianists out there, and I encourage you to seek them out. This article was not intended for your musical edification, but rather to make you aware of these great men if you were already not. I therefore encourage you to go read more about these great men, and listen to many more of their recordings.
