Whatever one thinks of her playing, it's clear pianist Valentina Lisitsa deserves everyone's thanks for showing that there is nothing wrong with the state of classical music, only with the way it is presented: views of her YouTube performance videos number in the tens of millions. Lisitsa has been able to parlay that popularity into a more conventional career, but for a pianist who has built her reputation on internet moments to essay something like the complete solo piano works of Tchaikovsky, covering ten CDs (about 11 ...
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Whatever one thinks of her playing, it's clear pianist Valentina Lisitsa deserves everyone's thanks for showing that there is nothing wrong with the state of classical music, only with the way it is presented: views of her YouTube performance videos number in the tens of millions. Lisitsa has been able to parlay that popularity into a more conventional career, but for a pianist who has built her reputation on internet moments to essay something like the complete solo piano works of Tchaikovsky, covering ten CDs (about 11 hours of music in total) is unorthodox, or gutsy perhaps. As it happens, Lisitsa will probably find buyers. She records every scrap of music Tchaikovsky ever wrote for the piano, including an unfinished student work, a set of 50 folk song arrangements for piano four hands (recorded with Lisitsa's personal and artistic partner Alexei Kuznetsoff), an operatic potpourri, juvenilia, and a huge assortment of occasional short pieces. These are, as annotator Philip Ross Bullock concedes, of...
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