Liberace

Nightowl

I grew up in a time when Liberace was famous as a flamboyant and humorous entertainer, who played a bit of piano in between chatting and joking with the audience on family entertainment shows. Later on details of his personal life emerged and suddenly he wasn't on TV much. So, when I came across this video today it was a surprise to realise just how skilled he was:
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I never knew about his earlier years playing classical music. I certainly never knew how handsome he was in his earlier years. 🙂

Some of the comments below the video speak of his kindness and charm when meeting members of the public. I'm going to watch some more of his performances, I love his style.

What do you think of his performance in the above video? I'd be interested to hear what advanced pianists think of his technique - is this a case of style over substance or is he really as impressive as he seems to a beginner like me? I'd also love to here from anyone else who remembers Liberace's TV shows back in the 50s/60s/70s - do you have happy memories of watching his shows?

keff

Nightowl What do you think of his performance in the above video?

I think if I had been present in the audience of that concert would respond with as much applause as I could muster although if memory serves I have never been moved to stand whilst applauding.

pianoloverus

Nightowl What do you think of his performance in the above video? I'd be interested to hear what advanced pianists think of his technique - is this a case of style over substance or is he really as impressive as he seems to a beginner like me?

Although I watched quite a bit of Liberace on TV as a young boy, I don't think he's at the same level as the best pianists playing popular music today or the greatest jazz pianists playing jazz standards. And the difficulty of his arrangements of popular music are nowhere near the difficulty of the most demanding classical pieces.
He was an excellent showman and could be very funny. In one of his shows he walked out on stage in some very fancy outfit and pointing to the outfit said with a big grin on his face "Do you like it?” So the audience of course started applauding upon which he said "You should, you paid for it!"

Here are a few contemporary pianists who I prefer:
Hayato Sumino, also known as Cateen, who besides doing great performances of pop music is a good enough classical pianist to have reached a late round in one of the recent editions Chopin Competition. He is making his Carnegie Hall debut later this year.

Peter Bence

Some sensational jazz greats playing ballads:

Some jazz greats with sensational technique:

pseudonym58

He was an excellent pianist, and found a niche that worked for him during the era in which he lived. Had he been competing as yet another concert pianist at the time, he probably wouldn't have had a tiny fraction of the success he had as a flamboyant theatrical figure. More power to him.

Nightowl

pseudonym58 I think you summed him up pretty well there - he knew his strengths and carved out his own special niche. He certainly made an impact on the world and brought classical music to the masses, according to his own words "without the boring parts". 😁

He was immensely wealthy and had a lot of control over his choice of repertoire - unlike many concert pianists who work extremely hard but never achieve such things. (Not that money and fame are the only things that matter, but I imagine that lifestyle is quite enjoyable if you can handle the public scrutiny that goes with it.)

Nightowl

pianoloverus Thanks for the links - plenty of food for thought there! 😁

I already saw the first one - very clever playing by Cateen, but to me that's just an exercise in showing off by packing in the maximum number of notes possible to impress. A case of just because you can, that doesn't mean you should. But anyway he's obviously a very talented young man and I'm not surprised he did well in the Chopin competition.

Liberace was sometimes criticised for simplifying some classical pieces, which probably annoyed the purists who don't like anyone tampering with classical pieces, but I guess it made the pieces easier to memorise and play fluidly, which would be important for someone needing to hold a large repertoire of pieces in his memory. Anyway, most of the audience probably didn't notice the difference (because as we've discussed elsewhere, only a tiny percentage of the general population hold music diplomas/degrees so they don't have the extensive knowledge required to notice such things).

Peter Bence is also a very good pianist. I don't know the other pianists but I will watch the other vids - all part of my musical education. 🙂

PS: I love that one liner from Liberace - he had a great sense of humour.

WieWaldi

Who is this George Collier? I've seen several videos from him, many in the style of an artist playing a song while you can see the sheet music in the bottom part. I guess, the sheet music isn't public available, but George Collier made a transcription.

pianoloverus

WieWaldi He's one of probably hundreds of people who transcribe performances by great jazz pianists And sell them for a modest fee on the internet. There's probably a link to his home page and where you can purchase that piece underneath the video. Here is the link to his home page:

https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgeCollier/videos

pianoloverus

Nightowl Liberace was sometimes criticised for simplifying some classical pieces, which probably annoyed the purists who don't like anyone tampering with classical pieces, but I guess it made the pieces easier to memorise and play fluidly, which would be important for someone needing to hold a large repertoire of pieces in his memory.

He probably shortened classical pieces because he thought most of his audience would not want to listen to the entire piece.

Sophia

I didn’t watch all the links yet, but that Bach performance is incredible!

Nightowl

pianoloverus True. I'm a bit like that myself - I love Moonlight Sonata but dislike the other 2 movements which follow it and don't understand why they were tagged on. Liberace used to say that he played classical music "without the boring bits" - ideal for plebs like me. 🙂

pseudonym58

This may be unrelated, but I think at least a portion of the classical music listening public was used to hearing shortened versions of well-known works, originally so that they would fit on a side of a 78 RPM disc, and later the 10-in 33 RPM discs that were fairly common at the time.
There was also a line of phonograph discs called something like "Heart of the Symphony", where it was apparently felt that less sophisticated listeners would appreciate hearing just the familiar bits. 😆

Simonb

I think I've seen Liberace play what seem to me, to be some technically very difficult pieces, and I'm sure if you took all the Pianists in the world and were able to rate them, he would be in the top few percent. That said he wasn't as good as the great classical virtuosos. He wasn't a Jazz Pianist at all (as far as I know) so to compare him with that style is a bit unfair. Yes I've seen him play his fast boogie-woogie piece, which is great, but that's an arrangement, it's not improvised so it's not really Jazz.

However compared with someone like Richard Clayderman, who for a while was almost as popular, Liberace was a genius. I never understood why Richard Clayderman was so successful. There was someone who definitely simplified things! Likewise compared to a pop Pianist like Elton John, Liberace is in a different league as well, and I say that as an admirer of Elton John. He of course has an element of Liberace's showmanship and is a great songwriter.

All these things are relative, when talking about playing ability.

The video Pianoloverus posted of Dick Hyman (still alive age 98 btw!) playing Jelly Roll Morton is part of a wonderful program he did for the BBC (in the UK) in the 1980s called The Honky Tonk Professor. To a small audience he did a history of Jazz Piano from late 19th Century to Cecil Taylor in about an hour. It's essential viewing if you're interested in Jazz Piano, and I'm sure the full program is on YouTube. I videoed it at the time and have a copy on DVD now.

Cheers

pseudonym58

@"Simonb"#p359

Simonb

Hi pseudonym58

Thanks, that's great, I own the DVD and sheet music for that course.

The TV program I was thinking of is this:

Cheers

sweelinck

Years ago, I heard Victor Borge perform. After a program of piano arrangements of pop songs, with much applause at the end, he sat at the piano for an encore, and said something like this is what I play to keep my hands in shape. He then gave a flawless and spirited rendering of the Chopin Etude 10/4.

Peyton

He was a real charmer as well as a fine pianist. My grandparents LOVED him. Walter Cronkite LOVED him and talked about him quite a bit during interviews. (No idea why I remember that.)