Word: pianos
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...first Walkmen album, Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone, actually sounds better to me coming through my alarm clock speakers. I don’t think it’s a fluke—the most compelling thing about that record is how their piano is mixed to sound like it’s punching through the cloud of thin, ringing guitar and hoarse drums (and it comes across just as energized and hypnotizing as the bassline in, say, Britney’s “Toxic”). The tinny speakers simply double the effect...
However, despite his best efforts, third-year graduate student Erick A. Matsen is announced as the winner over a dramatic piano overture, having consumed 807.5 grams of apple pie in three minutes and 12 seconds. Matsen attributes his win to stellar mental preparation. “I actually was a runner-up last year but I hadn’t gone in believing in myself. This year, I just believed in myself,” Matsen says. However, he admits later that mental preparation is only one element of his carefully crafted battle plan. “For lunch...
When Gyorgy Sandor talks about the piano, it's as if an oracle were speaking. "It's not in the fingers. It's in the muscles of the body," he whispers cryptically about the secret of his technique. Sandor, who draws on a repertoire of works that numbers more than a thousand, is known around the world for his wizardry at the keyboard. Last year he played to packed houses at Cairo's Manasterly Palace, Seoul's Arts Center and London's Barbican Hall, to name a few. This week he's on his way to Rome's Teatro Ghione...
...only do these vital virtuosos continue to perform, but most also teach, providing a critical link to a celebrated musical past. Bass player Homer Mensch, 89, learned orchestra playing from conducting greats Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein. Sandor grew up studying piano at Budapest's Liszt Academy with Bela Bartok, one of the 20th century's greatest composers. "[Bartok] listened to you and then played whatever you were trying to play," says Sandor of his teacher. "Technique is a difficult thing to put into words...
...Sandor, he's nearing the achievement of the legendary Mieczyslaw Horszowski, who continued to perform at the piano after his 100th birthday. Horszowski's mother had studied with a pupil of Frederic Chopin, and she gave her son his first lessons in 1895, when he was 3. In Horszowski's 98th year of musicmaking, people marveled at his longevity and were even more impressed by his artistry. Sandor explains Horszowski's endurance with the confidence of an insider. "I tell people that the first 90 years are hard," he says. "After that, it's easy...