I've just listened to it: Kissin plays it wonderfully... You have to know that I learned this piece a long time ago, let me say that it is an extremely hard etude...
It also has an interesting history behind it... They say that Chopin has actually improvised this piece! I mean, because of the defeat in the Polish–Russian War, he was so mad that he started playing this piece with all his energy.
I also heard Cziffra's version and I have to say that I personally prefer how Kissin played, it seemed a lot more powerful and clean, how it should be. Anyway Cziffra has interpreted the etude in a completely different way, which is of course not wrong at all.
Same thing for Lisitsa's version, she played almost perfectly, but it seems that she has underestimated the power of the etude.
Let me tell to you a fantastic site where you can find pretty much all chopin's works:
http://www.ourchopin.com/musicchopin/You can hear in that site the version I like the most of this etude:
http://www.ourchopin.com/musicchopin/etu10-12.mp3Listen to that:
extremely powerful, but also very fast, precise and controlled!They should have written who played that, it's a shame I don't actually know who he/she is.
Epic! You have to know that Cziffra is known because of his
incredibile goddamn hands! I mean, listen how he used to warm up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7shGLjV0xJcThe only fault of Cziffra is that, because of his
incredibile goddamn hands, he plays everything
incredibly fast! And because of that, he often destroy some masterpieces... Let me do an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTwRyYIPmj4That is basically why I don't like him very much... You can hear it, he plays
everything without a single error and he also play with a lot of power, but that is not Chopin (hear, for example, Pollini or Horowitz version of this last one).
Beautiful is the right word. He has played this very fast Rondò almost perfectly but still you can hear that Beethoven composed it... I mean, probably you don't know: a musician should be able to play of course the piece, but he should also play the composer...
If this seems strange to you I'll do a simple example:
Chopin's last impromptu, Fantasie-impromptu op. posth. 66, is actually accidentally based on Beethoven's moonlight sonata, Sonata no.14, in particular the third movement (at least it seems to me). However if you listen to both of them by almost any pianist you will very easily recognize (if you know Chopin and Beethoven) who composed which one of those.
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So... Happy easter to everybody!