This site represents one pianophile’s ongoing mission to listen to, rate, and document his thoughts on as many of the pianists of the past and their recordings as possible. While many comprehensive pianist discographies exist—particularly for more celebrated artists such as Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, or Glenn Gould—few (if any) of these are accompanied by an in-depth critical evaluation, listening guide, and rating scale all in one. For each pianist, the guide will include a static page containing the pianist’s complete discography (or as complete as possible, since no entry will be included for recordings I have not obtained or listened to) and a separate blog post (or possibly several posts for certain artists with more extensive discographies) containing commentary on the pianist’s recordings, relative to those of his or her peers, in five specified areas. The only criterion for a pianist’s inclusion in this guide is to be deceased so that the pianist’s full life’s “work” is open to examination.
I hope this guide will serve the dual purpose of reference source and listening companion. The discography tables are, I believe, more interactive than most discographies since they contain thoroughly compiled instant-listening links (if available)1YouTube and even Amazon links are, of course, subject to change or removal without notice, though I’ve found most to be fairly stable, particularly if the pianist has his or her own YouTube topic. I will also be running a broken-link checker periodically. Please also don’t hesitate to notify me about any links that don’t work or go to the wrong place. to the performances discussed in the blog commentaries in addition to specific details about them. My plan is to update the site for one new pianist a month on average, give or take, depending on various factors such as workload, schedule, and discography size. Please also see “About the Pianist Rating Scale” for further details on my criteria and scale for rating pianists and “About the Discography Tables” for details on the information contained in these tables.
No doubt certain readers may ask me the age-old question demanded of those who assume the role of “critic”: who am I to judge? To which I respond: no one in particular. But as a well-trained amateur pianist who has studied in detail many staples of the piano literature (and, I daresay, has even come close to “mastering” a few), I speak as one who continually sees this king of instruments from the inside. Outside my desk-job career as an editor and writer, my primary avocation for the past 25 years has been playing the piano, thinking about its lore, and listening awestruck to the vintage-era masters who understood best how to make it sound.
—Joseph Renouf
