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For the last 60 years, the BBC has
been broadcasting performances

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from the great names in history
of the piano.

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From Horowitz to Hess.

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From Richter to Rubinstein.

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Lupu to Lang Lang.

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Tonight, I'm going to show you
some of the finest of them,

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our Perfect Pianists.

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There couldn't be a better place to
think about pianists than here

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at Hatchlands in Surrey,
home to the Cobbe collection

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of keyboard instruments.

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With gems like this Broadwood grand,

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on which Frederic Chopin played his
last recital in London in 1848.

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Every piano has its own distinctive
voice and every pianist is unique.

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APPLAUSE

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We're going to start with a pianist
who for some was the greatest of
all time -

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Vladimir Horowitz.

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He would travel the world
with his own piano

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and sell-out halls across the globe.

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The BBC filmed his last recital
in London in 1982.

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Horowitz was famous for playing with
flattish fingers,

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but I notice more how he tucks in
his little fingers

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and only unfurls them
when he needs them.

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Kissin does the same.

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What a sport's scientist would make
of it, I can't imagine,

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but it doesn't seem too
slow them down.

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APPLAUSE

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Vladimir Horowitz was still playing
in public well into his eighties,

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as was our next perfect pianist,
Arthur Rubinstein,

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the embodiment of
the great tradition,

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the long unbroken line of pianists
going back to the 19th century.

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Here he is in the Royal Festival
Hall in 1968 at the age of 81

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playing the A-flat Polonaise by his
fellow countryman Chopin.

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This is Chopin's own piano,
by the way.

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Look out for Rubinstein's
relaxed hands.

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Here's Rubinstein in conversation
with Bernard Levin,

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explaining how our great pianist
keeps a piece fresh every time.

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How do you work into the music
while you're playing?

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I mean, work which is entirely
familiar to you,

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the notes themselves are deep buried
in your subconscious,

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you don't need to think about them
- how does it come?

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Well, you used the word familiar,
but you shouldn't have used.
I'm sorry. I know, I know.

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You know what I mean? Yes, I do.
That's just the one thing I'm not.
Yes?

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The work are not familiar
with me.

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I never, never treated them
in a familiar way. Mm-hm.

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You see, I played hundreds of times
the Polonaise of Chopin A-flat.

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I played very many times the
Appassionata of Beethoven.

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I played most of Chopin's ballades
or Scherzo.

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I mean, works of Chopin
very, very, very much.

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But I...

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I mean, knowing them well -
I mean, well in my head,

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I never play them through. Never.

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I go to the concert with a feeling
of the little heart beating -

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do I own the piece, or not?
I mean, what will happen?

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And this, "what will happen?"
is all for the good,

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because that prompts
that new approach,

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that same mystery about it
that the public feels.

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That makes it alive,
that makes it alive.

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You'll get a good view of the famous
Rubinstein long little finger

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sliding from a black note
to a white note.

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It's an aspect of technique that's
sometimes forgotten these days,

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but, you know, that's why the black
notes have sloping ends.

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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One of the reasons we can put
together a programme like this
at the BBC

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is that so many pianists
choose to live in London,

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Uchida and Perahia, for instance.

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The 1970s were a particular heyday.

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Here's the German-American
Andre Previn

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and the Romanian pianist Radu Lupu
on his trademark kitchen chair

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taking us back to those hairier
days in London

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with the Grieg Concerto -
best loved of all.

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Think 1973.

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Some aspects of the great tradition
- white tie and tails,
for instance -

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right out of the window, though
back with us mainly these days.

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But the playing is firmly
in the tradition.

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Except, watch for Lupu's technical
innovation,

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when instead of bothering with both
hands for the arpeggios

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all the way up the keyboard,
he just leaves it to the right hand
on its own.

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A pianist I much admire
is Sviatoslav Richter.

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APPLAUSE

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There's a story that when
he was invited to Paris to record
Chopin's ballades,

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he spent days on end in bed smoking
while the money ticked away

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and then one day he turned up
at the recording studio

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and gave the most wonderful
performance and vanished.

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He was very much more than
just a keyboard lion -

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he was a wonderful Debussy player -

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but I can't resist showing you
two films, maybe 20 years apart,

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of Chopin's C-sharp minor study.

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And if you think it's fast
at the beginning - you wait.

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Richter - always associated
with those dazzling fingers.

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Our next perfect pianist,
Alfred Brendel,

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is more generally associated
with his dazzling intellect.

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Here he is playing Schubert's G-flat
Impromptu,

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with the plasters that he always
wears on his finger ends.

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One of my favourite melodies.
Schubert, the great song composer,

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found the secret of making
the piano sing, too.

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In the 20th century, people
came to think about tradition
in different ways.

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Not just handing it on,
or inhabiting it,

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but inventing new ones
or rediscovering forgotten ones.

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Take the music of JS Bach,
for instance.

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Dame Myra Hess, still famous
for her morale-building

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wartime concerts
in the National Gallery,

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made an arrangement of the chorale
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

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And it practically became
her signature tune.

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Myra Hess, with her own arrangement
of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

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Every virtuoso will interpret music
in a personal way.

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And one of the most personal of
Bach interpreters

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became one of the most charismatic

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and controversial pianists
of the 20th century.

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The Canadian, Glenn Gould,
who was on a mission

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to free performance
from unnecessary clutter.

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His performance
of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier

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was considered so exquisite that
they put it on Voyager 1 in 1977

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so that some alien
civilisation would see

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the best of what the human race
could do.

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Here's the youthful Humphrey Burton,

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to whom British music on television
became to owe so much,

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interviewing Glenn Gould.

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First of all, Gould explains
his whole philosophy of performance.

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Pretty startling,
Humphrey found it, as you'll see.

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So let me give you one example,
the Allemande from Partita.

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Now, this is the way, as I recall,
I played it back in 1957,

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on recording,
if you can believe it.

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Would you like a dose of
smelling salts now, or later?

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A dose of smelling salts?
Yes. I mean, it's disgraceful.

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One has to be revived after
hearing Bach played like that.

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On the other hand... Play it
how you think it should be played.

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How I think it should be...?
Well, it's obvious.

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JAUNTY RECITAL

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This is not a piece about which
one can have doubts.

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What I sacrificed in version
number one, in the recorded version,

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was the spine of the music.
The whole backbone was gone.

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And it was gone precisely
because I knew perfectly well,

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as a travelling pro, so to speak,

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that if, in fact,
I kept that backbone,

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it would sound a little tedious
in a concert hall.

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Because that great, vast thing that
needs to be absorbed out there,

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um...was going to ruin...
It wasn't going to project

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the clarity that
I wanted people to live off.

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You're really a recording pianist,
aren't you?

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Totally a recording pianist,
I'm happy to say now.

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Why so much love for recordings?

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Because it's the future. The
concert hall as we know it is dead.

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It's dead.

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The Festival Hall's
doing quite good business,

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as is the New York
Philharmonic Hall.

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I don't know if you're a gambling
man, but don't put money on it

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that it will still be doing
good business in the year 1999.

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You mean, the people
won't want to go

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and listen to a Tchaikovsky concert,
even, or...?

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I'll be very disappointed in the
audience I think is growing up now

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if they do want to go and listen
to a Tchaikovsky concert.

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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Well, here are thousands of people

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listening to Tchaikovsky
in the Royal Albert Hall.

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A big disappointment
to Glenn Gould, I dare say.

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Lang Lang delighting
the unrepentant crowd.

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The founder of modern piano
technique was Franz Liszt,

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with his Etudes of Transcendental
Execution.

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And it was Liszt who catapulted
the brilliant British pianist

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John Ogdon to fame when he won the
London Liszt competition in 1961.

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That same year, aged 24,
he came into the BBC to record

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Liszt's phenomenally-challenging
Dante Sonata.

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This little piano,
built in London in 1778,

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bears the signature of Johann
Sebastian Bach's youngest son,

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Johann Christian,
who came to live in London

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after he'd been the organist
of the cathedral in Milan.

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It was in northern Italy
that the pianoforte was invented

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at the beginning of the 18th century
by Bartolomeo Cristofori.

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The harpsichord with little hammers,
they called it at first.

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And the first great composer to
write for it was an Italian, too.

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Domenico Scarlatti.
An exact contemporary of JS Bach.

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People used to think
Scarlatti's sonatas

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were written for the harpsichord,
but we pianists know better.

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Here's Murray Perahia,
fresh from his triumph

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in the 1972 Leeds piano competition,

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with Scarlatti's
Sprightly G major Sonata.

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Pure and clear, with the left hand
just as good as the right.

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Murray Perahia with
Scarlatti from the 18th century,

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like this little instrument.

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And believe it or not,
it was this tiny sort of instrument

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for which the world's first
piano concertos were written.

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In London, about the year 1770,

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with an orchestra of just
two violins and a cello,

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so as not to drown it.

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HE PLAYS

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Everything's got a lot bigger
since then.

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When Rachmaninov wrote
his second piano concerto,

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he was a master of the rich textures

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and colours of the symphony
orchestra as we know it today.

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At the first performance,

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Rachmaninov played the solo part
himself.

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And 100 years later,
another Russian-born pianist,

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Evgeny Kissin,
played it at the Proms.

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The full panoply
of the Russian tradition.

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Evgeny Kissin is a celebrated
interpreter of Rachmaninov's music,

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but our next perfect pianist
actually knew the great composer.

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His name was Benno Moiseiwitsch.

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And Rachmaninov even called him
his spiritual heir.

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Here's Moiseiwitsch in 1954 playing
Traumes Wirren, Confused Dreams,

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by Robert Schumann,

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a composer whose own dreams
of becoming a virtuoso pianist

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were spoilt by injury.

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Look at Moiseiwitsch's lovely,
level, balanced hands.

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Although he must have played
this piece hundreds of times,

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he manages to make
those little hesitations

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that he decides to introduce
between the phrases

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sound perfectly spontaneous.

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During the 1950s,

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the BBC regularly broadcast recitals
from great classical musicians.

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In 1956, they invited a pianist
from the East End of London

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who was so famous that he needed
just a single name - Solomon.

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No programme on perfect pianists
could be complete

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without the music of Mozart.

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In fact, in his time,

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he was as famous a pianist
as he was a composer.

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Here's Ingrid Fliter with
the A major Concerto (K.488).

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Piano concertos are always
vehicles for virtuosos.

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Mozart wrote his piano concertos
to show the people of Vienna

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what a marvellous pianist he was.

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And when Beethoven arrived there
in his turn, he followed suit.

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The great moment in a concerto
is always the cadenza,

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when the orchestra
puts its instruments down

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and the spotlight's
just on the soloist.

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Beethoven wrote some marvels
for his fourth piano concerto in G.

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And Dame Mitsuko Uchida's
performance of it

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alternates between delicacy
and power.

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RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

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And now to Beethoven's piano
sonatas, the core of the repertoire.

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Beethoven's pianistic diary
all through his life.

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Here's Claudio Arrau from Chile
with an intense performance

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of what many of us regard as
Beethoven's greatest piano sonata,

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Opus 111 in C minor.

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You'll notice how Arrau makes
his famously magisterial tone

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by pressing down the notes
more slowly.

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Even the fast ones.

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The piano offers us such variety.

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00:55:12,720 --> 00:55:17,560
From a thread of half-heard melody
to a peal of clanging chords.

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No wonder it has such a special
place in the musical world,

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and our perfect pianists
along with it.

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Let's end with the BBC Proms
and Stephen Hough,

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certainly one of today's
most perfect pianists.

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With the final two variations
from Rachmaninov's masterpiece,

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Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

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RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

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00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:42,000
Good night

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00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:44,200
and bonsoir.

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00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:47,160
Bonsoir and good night

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00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:50,520
to all my friends here and abroad.

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00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:53,840
Good night and bonsoir.

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00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:56,000
PIANO RECITAL

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APPLAUSE