HACKER Q&A
📣 samh748

Recommendations for emotive piano music?


I've only recently started to appreciate piano music and would love to increase my repertoire.

I'm open to anything, from classical to contemporary, pop to metal, doesn't have to be purely instrumentals either.

Look forward to hearing any and all of your recommendations!

  👤 tornadofart Accepted Answer ✓
Erik Satie for "modern and intellectual, but also highly digestible".

Arvo Pärt's "Alina" for "full of sadness, but also breathtakingly beautiful".

Glenn Gould's interpretation of Bach's "das wohltemperierte Klavier". A titan (in the Newtonian sense) of piano interpreting the compositions of the perhaps, along with Mozart, greatest composer of western baroque music. Piano was never the same again.

Anything played by Martha Argerich. Also highly recommendable on video. She is one with the instrument to a degree that is absolutely staggering. No technical prowess resists her, and is always played with intuitive grace and light-handedness, because she never practices. She doesn't have to, she just plays.

👤 defrost
Wim Mertens has some great piano compositions, although they also tend to sneak in a few strings and voices.

eg:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77R2TuScWU

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pybqjwf8w8s

and then there's improv; The Köln Concert is superb - but not available on youtube w/out subscription.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K%C3%B6ln_Concert

👤 _spduchamp
Check out Jean-Michel Blais. I love his very stripped down intimate recordings.

Also I highly recommend diving into some Oscar Peterson.

👤 chrism238
“Blurred Lines & Rape Me” by Reb Fountain and Amanda Palmer (YouTube for it).
👤 shpx
Frédéric Chopin

https://open.spotify.com/album/4marX3D0PVQkL8a08MS4mP

👤 samh748
Thank you all for the recs! This is already plenty to get me started. Really appreciate it!
👤 bediger4000
Philip Glass, Metamorphosis
👤 beardyw
Henrik Lindstrand - Leken