Glad you appreciate PatKo. Her best performance, I think, is in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (Music sharing thread. Links only. No chit chat - #523 by Conrad_Melville). She has played that faster than anyone else (with no impairment and a gain in excitement), except Pinchas Zuckerman, who has perhaps equaled her speed. The three knocks against her are her bare feet (obviously related to her sense of freedom; suck it up, critics), her use of sheet music (also done by Richter in old age and by Yuja Wang in difficult modern works like Bartok; the memorization dogma is useful for learning a piece, but it is pointless to stake a performance on it), and her interpretations (she is an anti-romantic and has a deep knowledge of Slavic folk music, which infuses her performances of Bartok and others; her technical prowess is awesome, which means that everything she does is a choice, not a mistake). She is unfailingly exciting and shows more joy in performance than anyone I have ever seen—an exhilarating, life-affirming quality.
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