0:00:02 > 0:00:05For the last 60 years, the BBC has been broadcasting performances
0:00:05 > 0:00:09from the great names in history of the piano.
0:00:09 > 0:00:11From Horowitz to Hess.
0:00:11 > 0:00:15From Richter to Rubinstein.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18Lupu to Lang Lang.
0:00:18 > 0:00:22Tonight, I'm going to show you some of the finest of them,
0:00:22 > 0:00:24our Perfect Pianists.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34There couldn't be a better place to think about pianists than here
0:00:34 > 0:00:37at Hatchlands in Surrey, home to the Cobbe collection
0:00:37 > 0:00:39of keyboard instruments.
0:00:39 > 0:00:42With gems like this Broadwood grand,
0:00:42 > 0:00:48on which Frederic Chopin played his last recital in London in 1848.
0:00:48 > 0:00:52Every piano has its own distinctive voice and every pianist is unique.
0:00:52 > 0:00:54APPLAUSE
0:00:54 > 0:00:58We're going to start with a pianist who for some was the greatest of all time -
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Vladimir Horowitz.
0:01:01 > 0:01:03He would travel the world with his own piano
0:01:03 > 0:01:06and sell-out halls across the globe.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11The BBC filmed his last recital in London in 1982.
0:01:13 > 0:01:17Horowitz was famous for playing with flattish fingers,
0:01:17 > 0:01:20but I notice more how he tucks in his little fingers
0:01:20 > 0:01:23and only unfurls them when he needs them.
0:01:23 > 0:01:24Kissin does the same.
0:01:24 > 0:01:27What a sport's scientist would make of it, I can't imagine,
0:01:27 > 0:01:29but it doesn't seem too slow them down.
0:03:21 > 0:03:22APPLAUSE
0:03:25 > 0:03:29Vladimir Horowitz was still playing in public well into his eighties,
0:03:29 > 0:03:32as was our next perfect pianist, Arthur Rubinstein,
0:03:32 > 0:03:34the embodiment of the great tradition,
0:03:34 > 0:03:39the long unbroken line of pianists going back to the 19th century.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43Here he is in the Royal Festival Hall in 1968 at the age of 81
0:03:43 > 0:03:46playing the A-flat Polonaise by his fellow countryman Chopin.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51This is Chopin's own piano, by the way.
0:03:56 > 0:04:00Look out for Rubinstein's relaxed hands.
0:05:49 > 0:05:52Here's Rubinstein in conversation with Bernard Levin,
0:05:52 > 0:05:55explaining how our great pianist keeps a piece fresh every time.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01How do you work into the music while you're playing?
0:06:01 > 0:06:03I mean, work which is entirely familiar to you,
0:06:03 > 0:06:07the notes themselves are deep buried in your subconscious,
0:06:07 > 0:06:10you don't need to think about them - how does it come?
0:06:10 > 0:06:14- Well, you used the word familiar, but you shouldn't have used. - I'm sorry. I know, I know.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18- You know what I mean?- Yes, I do. - That's just the one thing I'm not. - Yes?
0:06:18 > 0:06:20The work are not familiar with me.
0:06:20 > 0:06:24- I never, never treated them in a familiar way.- Mm-hm.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28You see, I played hundreds of times the Polonaise of Chopin A-flat.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31I played very many times the Appassionata of Beethoven.
0:06:31 > 0:06:35I played most of Chopin's ballades or Scherzo.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38I mean, works of Chopin very, very, very much.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40But I...
0:06:40 > 0:06:44I mean, knowing them well - I mean, well in my head,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47I never play them through. Never.
0:06:48 > 0:06:53I go to the concert with a feeling of the little heart beating -
0:06:53 > 0:06:57do I own the piece, or not? I mean, what will happen?
0:06:57 > 0:07:00And this, "what will happen?" is all for the good,
0:07:00 > 0:07:04because that prompts that new approach,
0:07:04 > 0:07:09that same mystery about it that the public feels.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12That makes it alive, that makes it alive.
0:07:12 > 0:07:16You'll get a good view of the famous Rubinstein long little finger
0:07:16 > 0:07:19sliding from a black note to a white note.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22It's an aspect of technique that's sometimes forgotten these days,
0:07:22 > 0:07:25but, you know, that's why the black notes have sloping ends.
0:10:29 > 0:10:31CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:10:33 > 0:10:37One of the reasons we can put together a programme like this at the BBC
0:10:37 > 0:10:39is that so many pianists choose to live in London,
0:10:39 > 0:10:42Uchida and Perahia, for instance.
0:10:42 > 0:10:45The 1970s were a particular heyday.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47Here's the German-American Andre Previn
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu on his trademark kitchen chair
0:10:51 > 0:10:53taking us back to those hairier days in London
0:10:53 > 0:10:56with the Grieg Concerto - best loved of all.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59Think 1973.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03Some aspects of the great tradition - white tie and tails, for instance -
0:11:03 > 0:11:06right out of the window, though back with us mainly these days.
0:11:06 > 0:11:09But the playing is firmly in the tradition.
0:11:09 > 0:11:12Except, watch for Lupu's technical innovation,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15when instead of bothering with both hands for the arpeggios
0:11:15 > 0:11:18all the way up the keyboard, he just leaves it to the right hand on its own.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03A pianist I much admire is Sviatoslav Richter.
0:14:03 > 0:14:04APPLAUSE
0:14:04 > 0:14:08There's a story that when he was invited to Paris to record Chopin's ballades,
0:14:08 > 0:14:12he spent days on end in bed smoking while the money ticked away
0:14:12 > 0:14:14and then one day he turned up at the recording studio
0:14:14 > 0:14:17and gave the most wonderful performance and vanished.
0:14:17 > 0:14:21He was very much more than just a keyboard lion -
0:14:21 > 0:14:23he was a wonderful Debussy player -
0:14:23 > 0:14:26but I can't resist showing you two films, maybe 20 years apart,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28of Chopin's C-sharp minor study.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31And if you think it's fast at the beginning - you wait.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26Richter - always associated with those dazzling fingers.
0:16:31 > 0:16:33Our next perfect pianist, Alfred Brendel,
0:16:33 > 0:16:37is more generally associated with his dazzling intellect.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43Here he is playing Schubert's G-flat Impromptu,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47with the plasters that he always wears on his finger ends.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51One of my favourite melodies. Schubert, the great song composer,
0:16:51 > 0:16:55found the secret of making the piano sing, too.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40In the 20th century, people came to think about tradition in different ways.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42Not just handing it on, or inhabiting it,
0:22:42 > 0:22:45but inventing new ones or rediscovering forgotten ones.
0:22:45 > 0:22:49Take the music of JS Bach, for instance.
0:22:49 > 0:22:53Dame Myra Hess, still famous for her morale-building
0:22:53 > 0:22:55wartime concerts in the National Gallery,
0:22:55 > 0:23:00made an arrangement of the chorale Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
0:23:00 > 0:23:02And it practically became her signature tune.
0:24:59 > 0:25:02Myra Hess, with her own arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
0:25:03 > 0:25:08Every virtuoso will interpret music in a personal way.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10And one of the most personal of Bach interpreters
0:25:10 > 0:25:12became one of the most charismatic
0:25:12 > 0:25:15and controversial pianists of the 20th century.
0:25:15 > 0:25:17The Canadian, Glenn Gould, who was on a mission
0:25:17 > 0:25:20to free performance from unnecessary clutter.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23His performance of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier
0:25:23 > 0:25:28was considered so exquisite that they put it on Voyager 1 in 1977
0:25:28 > 0:25:30so that some alien civilisation would see
0:25:30 > 0:25:34the best of what the human race could do.
0:25:35 > 0:25:37Here's the youthful Humphrey Burton,
0:25:37 > 0:25:40to whom British music on television became to owe so much,
0:25:40 > 0:25:42interviewing Glenn Gould.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46First of all, Gould explains his whole philosophy of performance.
0:25:46 > 0:25:49Pretty startling, Humphrey found it, as you'll see.
0:25:49 > 0:25:54So let me give you one example, the Allemande from Partita.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57Now, this is the way, as I recall, I played it back in 1957,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00on recording, if you can believe it.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21Would you like a dose of smelling salts now, or later?
0:26:21 > 0:26:23- A dose of smelling salts? - Yes. I mean, it's disgraceful.
0:26:23 > 0:26:26One has to be revived after hearing Bach played like that.
0:26:26 > 0:26:28- On the other hand...- Play it how you think it should be played.
0:26:28 > 0:26:31How I think it should be...? Well, it's obvious.
0:26:31 > 0:26:33JAUNTY RECITAL
0:26:48 > 0:26:50This is not a piece about which one can have doubts.
0:26:50 > 0:26:53What I sacrificed in version number one, in the recorded version,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56was the spine of the music. The whole backbone was gone.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59And it was gone precisely because I knew perfectly well,
0:26:59 > 0:27:01as a travelling pro, so to speak,
0:27:01 > 0:27:03that if, in fact, I kept that backbone,
0:27:03 > 0:27:05it would sound a little tedious in a concert hall.
0:27:05 > 0:27:09Because that great, vast thing that needs to be absorbed out there,
0:27:09 > 0:27:12um...was going to ruin... It wasn't going to project
0:27:12 > 0:27:15the clarity that I wanted people to live off.
0:27:15 > 0:27:17You're really a recording pianist, aren't you?
0:27:17 > 0:27:19Totally a recording pianist, I'm happy to say now.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22Why so much love for recordings?
0:27:22 > 0:27:26Because it's the future. The concert hall as we know it is dead.
0:27:26 > 0:27:28It's dead.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31The Festival Hall's doing quite good business,
0:27:31 > 0:27:32as is the New York Philharmonic Hall.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35I don't know if you're a gambling man, but don't put money on it
0:27:35 > 0:27:38that it will still be doing good business in the year 1999.
0:27:38 > 0:27:39You mean, the people won't want to go
0:27:39 > 0:27:42and listen to a Tchaikovsky concert, even, or...?
0:27:42 > 0:27:45I'll be very disappointed in the audience I think is growing up now
0:27:45 > 0:27:47if they do want to go and listen to a Tchaikovsky concert.
0:27:47 > 0:27:49CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:27:50 > 0:27:52Well, here are thousands of people
0:27:52 > 0:27:55listening to Tchaikovsky in the Royal Albert Hall.
0:27:55 > 0:27:57A big disappointment to Glenn Gould, I dare say.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01Lang Lang delighting the unrepentant crowd.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44The founder of modern piano technique was Franz Liszt,
0:31:44 > 0:31:46with his Etudes of Transcendental Execution.
0:31:48 > 0:31:50And it was Liszt who catapulted the brilliant British pianist
0:31:50 > 0:31:55John Ogdon to fame when he won the London Liszt competition in 1961.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00That same year, aged 24, he came into the BBC to record
0:32:00 > 0:32:03Liszt's phenomenally-challenging Dante Sonata.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05This little piano, built in London in 1778,
0:34:05 > 0:34:08bears the signature of Johann Sebastian Bach's youngest son,
0:34:08 > 0:34:10Johann Christian, who came to live in London
0:34:10 > 0:34:15after he'd been the organist of the cathedral in Milan.
0:34:15 > 0:34:18It was in northern Italy that the pianoforte was invented
0:34:18 > 0:34:22at the beginning of the 18th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori.
0:34:22 > 0:34:25The harpsichord with little hammers, they called it at first.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28And the first great composer to write for it was an Italian, too.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33Domenico Scarlatti. An exact contemporary of JS Bach.
0:34:33 > 0:34:35People used to think Scarlatti's sonatas
0:34:35 > 0:34:38were written for the harpsichord, but we pianists know better.
0:34:38 > 0:34:41Here's Murray Perahia, fresh from his triumph
0:34:41 > 0:34:44in the 1972 Leeds piano competition,
0:34:44 > 0:34:47with Scarlatti's Sprightly G major Sonata.
0:34:47 > 0:34:50Pure and clear, with the left hand just as good as the right.
0:36:56 > 0:36:58Murray Perahia with Scarlatti from the 18th century,
0:36:58 > 0:37:00like this little instrument.
0:37:00 > 0:37:03And believe it or not, it was this tiny sort of instrument
0:37:03 > 0:37:06for which the world's first piano concertos were written.
0:37:06 > 0:37:08In London, about the year 1770,
0:37:08 > 0:37:12with an orchestra of just two violins and a cello,
0:37:12 > 0:37:14so as not to drown it.
0:37:14 > 0:37:16HE PLAYS
0:37:20 > 0:37:23Everything's got a lot bigger since then.
0:37:23 > 0:37:25When Rachmaninov wrote his second piano concerto,
0:37:25 > 0:37:27he was a master of the rich textures
0:37:27 > 0:37:31and colours of the symphony orchestra as we know it today.
0:37:31 > 0:37:32At the first performance,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35Rachmaninov played the solo part himself.
0:37:35 > 0:37:37And 100 years later, another Russian-born pianist,
0:37:37 > 0:37:40Evgeny Kissin, played it at the Proms.
0:37:40 > 0:37:43The full panoply of the Russian tradition.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16Evgeny Kissin is a celebrated interpreter of Rachmaninov's music,
0:40:16 > 0:40:20but our next perfect pianist actually knew the great composer.
0:40:20 > 0:40:22His name was Benno Moiseiwitsch.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25And Rachmaninov even called him his spiritual heir.
0:40:25 > 0:40:30Here's Moiseiwitsch in 1954 playing Traumes Wirren, Confused Dreams,
0:40:30 > 0:40:33by Robert Schumann,
0:40:33 > 0:40:36a composer whose own dreams of becoming a virtuoso pianist
0:40:36 > 0:40:38were spoilt by injury.
0:40:38 > 0:40:43Look at Moiseiwitsch's lovely, level, balanced hands.
0:40:43 > 0:40:45Although he must have played this piece hundreds of times,
0:40:45 > 0:40:47he manages to make those little hesitations
0:40:47 > 0:40:50that he decides to introduce between the phrases
0:40:50 > 0:40:52sound perfectly spontaneous.
0:43:17 > 0:43:19During the 1950s,
0:43:19 > 0:43:23the BBC regularly broadcast recitals from great classical musicians.
0:43:25 > 0:43:28In 1956, they invited a pianist from the East End of London
0:43:28 > 0:43:33who was so famous that he needed just a single name - Solomon.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28No programme on perfect pianists could be complete
0:45:28 > 0:45:31without the music of Mozart.
0:45:31 > 0:45:32In fact, in his time,
0:45:32 > 0:45:35he was as famous a pianist as he was a composer.
0:45:35 > 0:45:41Here's Ingrid Fliter with the A major Concerto (K.488).
0:48:07 > 0:48:10Piano concertos are always vehicles for virtuosos.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13Mozart wrote his piano concertos to show the people of Vienna
0:48:13 > 0:48:15what a marvellous pianist he was.
0:48:15 > 0:48:20And when Beethoven arrived there in his turn, he followed suit.
0:48:20 > 0:48:22The great moment in a concerto is always the cadenza,
0:48:22 > 0:48:24when the orchestra puts its instruments down
0:48:24 > 0:48:27and the spotlight's just on the soloist.
0:48:27 > 0:48:32Beethoven wrote some marvels for his fourth piano concerto in G.
0:48:32 > 0:48:34And Dame Mitsuko Uchida's performance of it
0:48:34 > 0:48:37alternates between delicacy and power.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
0:51:08 > 0:51:13And now to Beethoven's piano sonatas, the core of the repertoire.
0:51:13 > 0:51:16Beethoven's pianistic diary all through his life.
0:51:16 > 0:51:20Here's Claudio Arrau from Chile with an intense performance
0:51:20 > 0:51:24of what many of us regard as Beethoven's greatest piano sonata,
0:51:24 > 0:51:27Opus 111 in C minor.
0:51:27 > 0:51:31You'll notice how Arrau makes his famously magisterial tone
0:51:31 > 0:51:34by pressing down the notes more slowly.
0:51:34 > 0:51:35Even the fast ones.
0:55:10 > 0:55:12The piano offers us such variety.
0:55:12 > 0:55:16From a thread of half-heard melody to a peal of clanging chords.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20No wonder it has such a special place in the musical world,
0:55:20 > 0:55:22and our perfect pianists along with it.
0:55:22 > 0:55:26Let's end with the BBC Proms and Stephen Hough,
0:55:26 > 0:55:28certainly one of today's most perfect pianists.
0:55:28 > 0:55:32With the final two variations from Rachmaninov's masterpiece,
0:55:32 > 0:55:34Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
0:57:32 > 0:57:34RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
0:57:39 > 0:57:41Good night
0:57:41 > 0:57:43and bonsoir.
0:57:43 > 0:57:46Bonsoir and good night
0:57:46 > 0:57:49to all my friends here and abroad.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53Good night and bonsoir.
0:57:53 > 0:57:55PIANO RECITAL
0:57:55 > 0:57:57APPLAUSE