On Friday, August 23, 2002 at 11:41:31 AM UTC-10, Hat NYC 62 wrote:
> I have heard him live and he is not faking anything on his recordings.
> Let's suppose we asked all of the world's living pianists to practice ONE of
> Hamelin's specialties by Alkan or Godowsky 10 hours a day for 10 years.
> 99.99% of them would still not be able to play that work as fluently or
> flawlessly than Hamelin on any given day, without special practice or
> preparation. Virtually all of them would not even be within a close enough
> league to be called comparable.
> I suspect that would also hold true for all the dead pianists as well.
> Probably 99% of the world's PROFESSIONAL pianists (after all, that's what he
> is) wouldn't be able to do it either.
> I suspect that includes everyone in this group also?
> The rest, I suppose, you can argue about (well, not his sense of rhythm or
> general musicianship). But when someone does something as well as Marc-Andre
> Hamelin plays the piano, I find it most disquieting to see the pure abuse that
> some have toward him.
> There is a level of excitement that is added to musical performance by the
> 'struggle' of the musician to perform something difficult. It seems to me that
> when someone masters his/her instrument to the point where they hardly struggle
> even with monster works, some listeners confuse the lack of struggle with a
> lack of emotional involvement (See Heifetz).
> David Hattner, NYC
> www.northbranchrecords.com

(Upcoming radio program):

https://www.wfmt.com/2022/05/22/virtuoso-pianist-marc-andre-hamelin

On Monday, May 9, 2022 at 9:16:23 AM UTC+2, gggg gggg wrote:
> On Friday, August 23, 2002 at 11:41:31 AM UTC-10, Hat NYC 62 wrote:
> > I have heard him live and he is not faking anything on his recordings.
> > Let's suppose we asked all of the world's living pianists to practice ONE of
> > Hamelin's specialties by Alkan or Godowsky 10 hours a day for 10 years.
> > 99.99% of them would still not be able to play that work as fluently or
> > flawlessly than Hamelin on any given day, without special practice or
> > preparation. Virtually all of them would not even be within a close enough
> > league to be called comparable.
> > I suspect that would also hold true for all the dead pianists as well.
> > Probably 99% of the world's PROFESSIONAL pianists (after all, that's what he
> > is) wouldn't be able to do it either.
> > I suspect that includes everyone in this group also?
> > The rest, I suppose, you can argue about (well, not his sense of rhythm or
> > general musicianship). But when someone does something as well as Marc-Andre
> > Hamelin plays the piano, I find it most disquieting to see the pure abuse that
> > some have toward him.
> > There is a level of excitement that is added to musical performance by the
> > 'struggle' of the musician to perform something difficult. It seems to me that
> > when someone masters his/her instrument to the point where they hardly struggle
> > even with monster works, some listeners confuse the lack of struggle with a
> > lack of emotional involvement (See Heifetz).
> > David Hattner, NYC
> > www.northbranchrecords.com
>
> (Upcoming radio program):
>
> https://www.wfmt.com/2022/05/22/virtuoso-pianist-marc-andre-hamelin

Looks a program played from the wfmt archive...?