all add their lovely personal flair. kocsis is very clean. in this video horowitz and lisitsa are my favorites. horowitz for his sound that is somehow both dry and cataclysmic, lisitsa for the bass chords at the end that are like a thunderstorm in the deep sea
Lugansky!!! He really had fantastic shape. It wasn't just a technical exercise for him. Honestly, though, I think they're all amazing. For Aleksandr Malofeev, how old is he there? Wow! Excellent list of pianists. Some might say, they all...Rach. 😜
I love the chromatic line that Horowitz added at the end. Instead of the bass pounding out 6 b-flats (which is what Rachmaninoff wrote) the f,g-flat,g,a-flat,a, and finally b-flat line that Horowitz added is FANTASTIC!!!! Horowitz also combined the best aspects of the 1913 original edition and the 1931 revision of the sonata creating, in my opinion an ideal version of what Rachmaninoff composed.
From these definitely Kocsis, also one of the few pianists to play the 1913 version. There was also an amazing live recording by Avdeeva on the chopin Institute channel which unfortunately seems to have been removed, which was by far my favourite performance of the sonata
Considering Horowitz was almost 80 years old when he performed this and the fact that he had such an incredibly unique technique (flat palms - fingers extended straight - wrists almost below the keyboard) on these passages is truly remarkable.
I'm biased, because my first recording was Horowitz, but no one has matched his blend of clarity and romanticism. Every note of every chord is balanced, and the voice comes through so beautifully, but you don't hear virtuosity. Just beautiful and powerful melody.
Kocsis for me too - for the same reasons as given below by mcintertz5593 - ie musically and technically the best. What a stupendous and versatile musician he was. (I sympathise with the Horowitz fan in the comments a bit further down the list, but I think he is somewhat off form in this particular live recording.)
Based on this roster and watching it several times, it's Horowitz for me. Simply because he never loses the singing tone even with the flurry of fortissimo runs, chords and octaves. You can still pick out the shape of the phrases. Second here is Shishkin for me for the same qualities.
I'm sorry, unfortunately there are so many interpreters that it is very difficult to select the ones that everyone can appreciate, with the exception of Lang Lang🤣🤣
@@khurshid_piano that is also pretty untrue despite what you personally believe . I may elaborate on that . While indeed Hamelin recorded a lot of alkan . Let's not forget the great and speedy performance of Kocsis on Rachmaninov concertos and the whole Bartok discography of his .
Apart from the sound quality,this is my favourite -extract from 6.24 .and he creates tension in the climaxes .and stretches the final chords to add to this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0Dodm7QB0rM.html
horowitz e’ di un altro pianeta , il resto e’ un compromesso.. non si suonera’ mai piu’ con un onesta’ musicale e tecnica e culturale come quella di horowitz..
Many of these performers sound like they are just trying to play as fast as possible, but they can’t really do it. Terribly rhythm, choppy and bad sound production - not to mention that the musical idea is simply not there.
@@Daniel-qx6bg I don’t know who plays the piece the *best* but in this little snippet of the piece, I think I like the Lugansky recording the most. He has the most control and his hands are together, and his sound production is probably the overall best. Plus his playing is not vertical, and his lines have shape, particularly within the triplet runs. What I don’t like about any of these recordings though are the accented staccato basses, which would (in my opinion) sound way better with pedal. Rachmaninov didn’t write pedal anywhere in the piece, but he certainly didn’t write staccato in this passage either. I remember liking the John browning recording though - particularly the first movement. He plays the original version though.
