Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Not at all.  Lowell Liebermann, for one, is a piano virtuoso (although
>I don't always care for the music he writes).  There's also a young
>Russian perhaps-genius whose name escapes me (I confuse her with Tatiana
>Rankovich).  She's not only a piano firebrand and a very interesting
>composer, but she's apparently a fine Russian poet. And who could
>forget,once heard, Aubrey Fitch?  Rzewski also comes to mind.  Would you
>also consider Earl Wild, or is he a mere composing dabbler?

Well I don't recall Liebermann playing his own concertos...didn't another
pianist record them?

Tatiana Nikolaeva?  I had forgotten she composed, and did write and
record a piano concerto, I have the recording.

Rzewski, yes.

Wild...well most of his stuff is more in the nature of arrangements.

John McCabe is recently deceased.

Richard Rodney Bennett's Piano Concerto was played by Stephen Bishop,
but I think Bennett gave the first performance of his own Harpsichord
Concerto.

I think Bernstein was at the piano for one performance of his concerto,
the Symphony No.2, when it was conducted by Koussevitzky.  Copland played
his own piano concerto on several occasions.  Milhaud played his Carnaval
d'Aix several times and as I recall, with the New York Phil under
Mengelburg.  Dello Joio (still alive) played his Ricercari for piano and
Orchestra with the New York Phil and recorded it.  Then there was Tveitt
who played his own concertos...humm, maybe there is a book somewhere in
all of this.

Well I guess the pianist composer breed isn't completely dead, but it
seems to be terminal.

So for ten points, who was the last major violinist composer?  Actually
I don't know the answer to that question.

We still seem to have a few composer conductors with us, Segerstam,
Boulez, Previn, Skrowaczewski, and even Maazel and Tilson Thomas have
composed some...same for Slatkin?  and I would suppose Adams is more
of a composer who conducts...seems like Boulez and Skrowaczewski fall
somewhere inbetween...maybe even Segerstam, who is so prolific.  Who
else am I missing?

Then there was Schnabel who, as far as I know, never programmed his own
music.

Karl (who wonders what student pieces Toscanini wrote sound like)