Lang Lang

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• Top 6 Classical Pianists of All Time

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• Vladimir Horowitz

  Vladimir Horowitz is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, and his technically flawless yet emotionally intense performances of Romantic-era repertoire established him as one of the most celebrated classical performers of his generation following his emigration from the Soviet Union. His 1965 return to Carnegie Hall after a 12-year self-imposed retirement from public performance, driven by severe stage fright and depression, became one of the most celebrated comeback concerts in classical music history, with tickets reportedly selling out within hours. Horowitz's 1986 return to the Soviet Union for a historic Moscow concert, his first performance there in 61 years, carried significant symbolic weight during the late Cold War era and drew a global television audience for what was framed as a genuinely historic cultural moment. His combination of extraordinary technical virtuosity and his periodic dramatic returns from self-imposed retirement, each treated as a major cultural event, has made Horowitz one of the most legendary and closely followed classical pianists of the modern recording era.

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• Glenn Gould

  Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations became one of the best-selling classical piano recordings in history, and his unconventional, highly personal interpretive approach to Bach's keyboard works established him as one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic classical pianists of the 20th century. His decision to retire entirely from public concert performance in 1964, at just 31, to focus exclusively on studio recording reflected Gould's stated belief that live concerts were an outdated performance format, a genuinely radical position for a pianist at the height of his concert career. Gould's eccentric personal habits, including his practice of humming audibly while playing and his insistence on using a specific low, custom chair for every performance regardless of venue, made him one of classical music's most distinctively idiosyncratic public figures. His combination of genuinely innovative interpretive approaches to canonical repertoire and his radical rejection of live concert performance in favor of studio recording has made Gould one of the most intellectually and stylistically significant classical pianists of the recording era.

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• Arthur Rubinstein

  Arthur Rubinstein sustained an active international concert career for more than 80 years, from his childhood debut in the 1890s through his final public performances in the 1970s, giving him one of the longest documented performing careers in classical music history. His interpretations of Chopin's piano repertoire, a composer whose works Rubinstein performed and recorded extensively throughout his career, are widely regarded among the definitive recordings of that specific repertoire, reflecting his deep specialization in Romantic-era Polish piano composition. Rubinstein's warm, romantic interpretive style, emphasizing emotional expressiveness and tonal beauty over more austere technical precision, distinguished his approach from more clinically exacting contemporary pianists, and his interpretations remain frequently cited reference recordings. His combination of an extraordinarily long sustained performing career and his definitive interpretations of Chopin's repertoire specifically has made Rubinstein one of the most enduringly significant and beloved classical pianists of the entire 20th century.

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• Martha Argerich

  Martha Argerich won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965 at just 24, establishing her as one of the most technically dazzling pianists of her generation, and her combination of explosive virtuosity and genuine interpretive depth has sustained her reputation as one of the greatest living classical pianists for more than five decades. Her notoriously severe stage fright, which has led Argerich to cancel numerous performances throughout her career and to strongly prefer chamber music collaboration over solo recital performance, reflects a genuinely complicated relationship with live concert performance despite her extraordinary technical gifts. Argerich's extensive chamber music collaborations with other major classical musicians, a format she's stated she finds more psychologically comfortable than solo performance, have produced some of the most celebrated recorded chamber music of the past several decades. Her combination of extraordinary technical virtuosity, sustained across more than five decades of performance, and her genuine preference for collaborative chamber music has made Argerich one of the most artistically significant and personally distinctive classical pianists of her generation.

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• Van Cliburn

  Van Cliburn won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, an American pianist triumphing at a Soviet-hosted competition just months after the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik had intensified Cold War anxieties, making his victory a genuinely significant Cold War cultural moment. His win was celebrated with a ticker-tape parade in New York City upon his return, the only classical musician ever honored with that specific celebration, reflecting the extraordinary Cold War political significance attached to his competition victory. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally approved awarding Cliburn the competition's top prize despite his American nationality, reportedly asking competition judges directly whether Cliburn was genuinely the best performer before authorizing the politically sensitive decision. His combination of a historically significant Cold War competition victory and the unprecedented mainstream American celebrity that followed has made Cliburn one of the most historically significant classical pianists in terms of his moment's broader political and cultural impact, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, established in his honor, remains one of the most prestigious competitions in classical music.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.