Music for the day: Grigory Sokolov

Music for this Wednesday morning.... (other than listening to Kat Edmonson again and again ;-))....

Sometime last week I read about Grigory Sokolov [1], a Russian pianist who some have opined is "the greatest pianist alive" -- just an opinion; we all know Martha Argerich is. ;-)) --- so, I had to go find some music by him. 

And the first thing I landed upon was Rachmaninov's 10 Preludes for Piano Op.23:

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 I also enjoyed Sokolov's playing of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2:

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And I'll leave you with one last video of Sokolov; here he plays the famous Chopin Preludes, Op. 28:

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[1]  If you are curious, here is the blogpost where I ran into the comment re: Sokolov being one of the greatest pianists alive. Ranking pianists is not my job and is a futile exercise for anyone, I think but he does seem like an intriguing guy!

The prodigious and articulate pianist James Rhodes has written a lively tribute in the Spectator magazine to the eccentric Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov, who lives in Madrid. James calls him ‘the greatest living pianist’, an appellation that is hard to prove since Sokolov makes few recordings, lives a sheltered life and doesn’t go out much.

He especially won’t go to London since that would mean attending the consulate in person in order to obtain a visa.