# Composers that were not highly skilled at playing piano.



## PresenTense (May 7, 2016)

Yes, we all know composers from different eras who were really good at both playing their instruments and composing: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, etc, etc... But...what about the composers on the other side? It is known that Hector Berlioz couldn't play piano (He was a decent guitarist though) and he didn't received any early formal musical training.



> Berlioz was not a child prodigy, unlike some other famous composers of the time; he began studying music at age 12, writing small compositions and arrangements. As a result of his father's discouragement, he never learned to play the piano, a peculiarity he later described as both beneficial and detrimental. He became proficient at guitar, flageolet and flute. He learned harmony from textbooks alone-he was not formally trained. The majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces.












It's known that Ravel had a limited technique on the piano and despite this limitation, he recorded some of his piano works. The list goes on, I think. We have Erik Satie and Schoenberg too.

Do you know any other composers that were not highly skilled in their instruments but were so good at composing? What do you think about it?

(By the way, sorry for my awful grammar. English is not my language)


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Giovanni Palestrina.


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

Jean Sibelius.

fifteen


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Wagner was a poor pianist.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Wagner was a poor pianist.


yeah, read about it. But may be a big collective of Wagnerians on this forum might disagree with us


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Not a composer, but a great comedian who did for the piano what Florence Foster Jenkins did for the voice.


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

While Rimsky-Korsakov could definitely play piano, having taken lessons as a kid and believing it was an important skill to teach his students, he presumably wasn't a great pianist, as Mily Balakirev was shocked upon hearing his Piano Concerto:



Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov said:


> It must be said that it sounded beautiful and proved entirely satisfactory in the sense of piano technique and style; this greatly astonished Balakirev, who found my concerto to his liking. He had by no means expected that I ... should know how to compose anything entirely pianistic.


:lol:


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## PresenTense (May 7, 2016)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Wagner was a poor pianist.


Hmmm interesting.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

helenora said:


> yeah, read about it. But may be a big collective of Wagnerians on this forum might disagree with us


Well, poor by concert standards. But he could play well enough to accompany himself when he made his friends sit through his operas and sang all the parts himself. Perhaps we could talk about composers who were poor singers...


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Well, poor by concert standards. But he could play well enough to accompany himself when he made his friends sit through his operas and sang all the parts himself. Perhaps we could talk about composers who were poor singers...


yeah, let's talk about poor singers 

I just know that Bizet was quite a pianist. Well, here we don't compare with mostly pianist-composers like Liszt and Chopin, but they say Bizet was extremely accomplished pianist first of all.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Debussy had a hard time playing his Etudes.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

"Highly skilled" is a relative term, of course. Some of these not so skilled composers might still manage to blow away most listeners. 

There also seems to be some disagreement about the matter, e.g. I see someone mentions Debussy. It was my understanding that he was a superb pianist. And Brahms was a great pianist in his younger days but eventually become rather sloppy as he became more interested in composition.

Others that come to mind:
Haydn, said to have been a good but not brilliant pianist.
Schubert, who played beautifully but not at a very high technical level (or so they say - seems to me that the ability to accompany singers, for example, indicates a quite high level of musicianship!)
Dvorak wasn't really a pianist at all, if I remember correctly.
Someone already mentioned Sibelius - but he did compose rather lovely pieces for solo piano, and some of them sound to me like they are not exactly easy either.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Tchaikovsky could get by well enough on the piano but as far as I know but he never performed publicly.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

arnerich said:


> Tchaikovsky could get by well enough on the piano but as far as I know but he never performed publicly.


Correct, noting like Rachmaninov, which we can listing to till this day.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

brianvds said:


> "Highly skilled" is a relative term, of course. Some of these not so skilled composers might still manage to blow away most listeners.  There also seems to be some disagreement about the matter, e.g. I see someone mentions Debussy. It was my understanding that he was a superb pianist.


Have you heard Debussy's piano roll recordings? Surprisingly, they're somewhat disappointing (at least in my opinion). I don't think that the technology is entirely to blame; it seems that he was not the best interpreter of his own works. Here's Debussy playing his prelude La cathédrale engloutie:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Bettina said:


> Have you heard Debussy's piano roll recordings? Surprisingly, they're somewhat disappointing (at least in my opinion). I don't think that the technology is entirely to blame; it seems that he was not the best interpreter of his own works. Here's Debussy playing his prelude La cathédrale engloutie:


Listened to the first 1:30 of this, I found it enjoyable! Smooth and pretty! Not as nuanced as some later interpreters, but certainly some of that is to blame on the technology.


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## sprite (Jan 31, 2015)

Not quite classical but enough to warrant a mention: Kurt Weill was said to be a poor pianist.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Dvorak was primarily a violist , but he was a passable pianist and organist . Sibelius is said to have been an okay pianist even though he was a violinist, and a very good one, himself . 
Berlioz was pretty much self taught in his youth but did study composition at the Paris conservatoire , where he often came in conflict with its powerful director Luigi Cherubini .


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