Tales out of school

It’s said that the famous teacher Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915), born in Poland and reckoned to be one of the most influential piano teachers of all time (his students included Paderewski, Friedman and Schnabel), could identify the nationality of a pianist by their playing alone.

Apparently, German pianists paid great attention to detail and respected the music, but were a little dull. French pianists were elegant and phrased supremely well. Italians were passionate but couldn’t play a note. Americans were spontaneous. British pianists were good workers but bad technicians. His own countrymen were poetic and instinctively tender. The best pianists were Russians, equipped with a prodigious technique, passion and dramatic power.

Were he alive today, how might Leschetizky describe pianists from Asia and the Far East? Once upon a time, and conveniently forgetting the likes of Mitsuko Uchida who, in any case, trained in Vienna, it was fashionable to dismiss them as note-perfect but lacking authenticity. Not any more, as Seong-Jin Cho, the South Korean winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, is the latest to remind us.