Re: What about all the American Pianists?

[Juozas Rimas <JuozasRimas@takas.lt>]

(oops, sent the previous message with my brother's handle :)

> Anyway, you Americans  have had several great Pianists, Andre Watts, Van
Cliburn etc. All Pianists of the
>first rank, i.e., international artists. Why don't you discuss them? I'd love
to hear about them.

It indeed amazes me that Gould seems to be the most discussed pianist online. I
searched for the most popular ones I could think of at the Google and here is
the comparison of web page matches:

Glenn Gould - 101,000
Angela Hewitt - 58,700
Richter piano - 42,100
Alfred Brendel - 30,700

Horowitz Vladimir or "Horowitz piano" bring up only around 23,000 matches.

I was even more amazed to find out that Gould seems to be among the best
presented classical musicians (performers) online: only Leonard Bernstein with
143,000 matches and Yo-Yo Ma with 117,000 outrun him.

Isn't that weird: a pianist who, in the opinion of many listeners, could play
"only" the harpsichord music of J. S. Bach and who died 20 years ago hating
public concerts and publicity as a whole, remains the most popular one.
Regardless the fact that in certain Bach newsgroups you'd get a quick and
undoubted recommendation of "forgetting Gould if you want to hear the real
Bach". Gould is similar to Bill Gates in a way - everyone knows him but everyone
hates him as well :)

As few know of his peculiarities, I tend to think this hype can only explained
by the well-deserved hype of Johann Sebastian Bach...

Juozas Rimas Jr (not the one playing)
http://www.mp3.com/juozasrimas (oboe, piano, strings)