Miho's favorites

Frederyk Chopin   I’m a long time fan of Chopin’s music since when I was a teenager. Started loving his music from hearing his Polonaise , then Noctunes , Etudes … Frederyk Chopin I was using one of Chopin’s Nocturnes as my background music for my answering machine when I was in my 20s. In Japan, many of his music is famous and used in many TV dramas, commercials, movies, and mostly wealthy bourgeois family scenes. My image of many of Chopin ’s music that I’ve listened to is of a cozy, bourgeois world. From almost all his music I’ve ever heard, I often pictured an elegant, wealthy family’s world or a story about a family who are living in a luxury antique style house. Many of Mozart ’s music reminds me of a social life in an older generation, a story about bourgeois world in a gorgeous luxury palace. For Liszt ’s music, his music is very variety, ranging from an image of a sweet passionate love story for couples, all the way to nightmare horror story type o...

This year 2011 is Franz Liszt’s 200 years celebration year (Liszt was born in 1811 ) and many top pianists and also Liszt fans and also Chopin fans community will be celebrating for it. Last year was Frederic Chopin’s 200 years celebration. He was born in 1810. They were born only one year apart. We are glad we are getting into Liszt at such a celebration time. My impression of Franz Liszt, “ He was not only challenging to be a top pianist, he was challenging to be far above the top of the piano world, like paganini was in the violin world . He wasn’t depending on his talent, but was constantly challenging to improve his talent into a limitless level. That may be the most inspiring thing about him. “ Recently we’ve been enjoying listening to this CD called “ Greatest Hits Liszt “ every day. On this CD , My favorites are Hungarian Rhapsody#2 La Campanella Liebestraume ( Love dream ) Some long time Liszt fans said many newbie Liszt f...

More about Camille Saint Saens . This is Part 2. Camille Saint Saens was close friends with the legendary composers Franz Liszt and Pyotr Tchaikovsky as well as with another renowned French composer , Gabriel Faure . As mentioned in my last post about Camille Saint Saens, Liszt was a huge help in promoting Saint Saens music, by including Saint Saens music in his own concerts, by staging concerts of Saint Saens operas, and in general doing all he could to help the younger composer. When Saint Saens was 50 , he began composing another symphony in the early part of 1886. He had scarcely begun, however, when he received word of the death of Franz Liszt . The news affected Saint-Saëns deeply and he immediately decided to compose his new symphony as a tribute to Liszt, and to dedicate the work to his memory. The inclusion of a prominent role for the piano was part of this tribute. Tchaikovsky first met Saint-Saëns during the Frenchman's concert tour to Moscow in No...

I realized there are so many great top level pianists all over the world and I still need much more time to see all the greatest pianists. And I found that once the highest levels of piano playing are reached, at that point who you think is the best or is your favorite all depends on one’s taste and how the pianist performance and personality touches you. Personally , I love mixture of a dynamic performer, wild and also with sensitivity plus elegance with masterful technique and emotion and musicality. I’m surprised that it’s so different impression with same music depending on who is playing it , and also depending on the pianist’s mood at the time of the performance. So far, my favorite pianists of the 20th to 21st century are below, ( no particular order ) Here is the list : * Agustin Anievas (USA) * Yuki o Yokoyama ( Japan ) * Samson Francois (France)  * Vladimir Horowitz (Russia) * Yundi Li ( China ) * John Browning ( USA)  * Sandor Falvay ( Hungary )...

My passion and interest went to pianists world now, especially Franz Liszt ! He is magic, the more I know about him the more I’m deep into him. It’s never happened such a thing in my life almost like crush on someone who is not even a contemporary person and in fact, I'm losing all the other interests. I’ve seen many legendary people's photos and have read about them but I was always seeing them as the historical people, never thought about it. Besides his genius talent, a part of it may also be that no one looked like Liszt . . Actually for music, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Saint Seans are all tie breakers for me. If we consider for the greatest pianists who were also great composers, Liszt and Chopin are tie breaker for me. and it seems so d ifficult to have both fantastic talent as a pianist and performer and also as a composer. That's what makes Liszt and Chopin so special to me. However, Saint Saens and Tchaikovsky were both fantast...

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns ( 1835 – 1921) Calimille Saint-Saens is my favorite French composer of The Romantic Era. However my discovery about him was late, I discovered about him since I started watching figure skating. Even though I had heard his famous music “ The Swan “ before, I didn’t know Saint Saens was the composer of this beautiful music. I had thought this music was by Tchaikovsky , and that it was a part of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet music “ Swan Lake “. I don’t know why I got such an idea and had been believing that without checking who is the composer of “ The Swan “. Maybe I was making my own original story in my mind about “The Swan“. The first time I discovered about Saint-Saens was since I watched Johnny Weir ’s 2004 - 2005 short program performance “ Rondo Capriccioso “ , this program is one of my top favorites of his performances ( 2004 TEB France) and I really loved the music, so I finally checked the composer of the mu...

Recently I’m very interested in Franz Liszt ’s life, his music and his musical talent and while reading about his life story, I found that his popularity was even much more than I had imagined ! His killer charm made so many ladies crazy, to the point that they created a word for it, it was called “ Lisztomania “ which had never happened before at such an intensity. In fact, it was so intense, that people thought it was some kind of disease, a “ fever “, and they had people who suffered from this “fever “ go to the doctor to see what it was and how to “cure “ it. And the funny thing is they couldn’t figure out why this “ fever “ was only caused by one person - Franz Liszt . What is Lisztomania ? Here is the link for the explanation about Lisztomania , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania_(phenomenon) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Franz_Liszt “ Lisztomania or Liszt fever is a term used to describe the intense fan frenzy directed toward Franz Liszt during his perfor...