Monday, November 22, 2010

Cyprien Katsaris Plays Listz's arrangement of Beethoven 9th

I bought this CD decades ago in Calgary I think.  I was telling my baby that it was "music singing piano".  He really likes the dvd of Karajan conducting Beethoven's 9th.  So, we pulled this CD out and he thought it was funny that a piano was replacing the entire orchestra.  Cyprien Katsaris is quite a virtuoso pianist.  His recordings are hard to come by nowadays, but the complete set of Beethoven symphonies is available for quite a reasonable price.  Too bad they didn't sell it even cheaper given that these were recorded in the 1980s.  One of the interesting things is that Katsaris plays a Mark Allen concert grand that was custom built.  I found this 1982 article by Gary Graffman about Mark Allen's pianos.  Graffman is a pianist who lost the use of his right hand and had to end his two-handed career in the 1960s.  He's a teacher at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

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