Let us take the example of piano. When speaking of virtuosity, many classical-only listeners who listen to Sviatoslav Richter, Josef Hofman, Busoni or Paderewski for example, and who think that these classical pianists are the last word in pianistic virtuosity are SADLY MISTAKEN. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Believe me when I say this as I graduated with honors in composition and performance from The Juillard School. If you are a limited only to classical listener who doesn’t just sit there drooling while following the notes with a stupid look on this face and instead decides to compare what he’s heard contextually with, to take a simple view, the contrapuntal coalescence of a great jazz pianist like Lenny Tristano or Thelonius Monk who understand meter and modal shift and tonal subtlety on a level that someone like Richter for example could only dream of, then you will have come to an understanding about music and its performance intricacies that few who listen ONLY to classical music will ever attain in his lifetime. |