While I agree that Elton is a great song writer, pretty much everything I’ve heard him play I can not only play but pick it up by ear pretty quickly. He’s just very straight and predictable. (same flat 7 chord in the same place in every song) I haven’t heard much Liberace, but if he could play “classical” stuff, I’d expect he’s the better pianist.
I mean, I know pianists that can play Elton’s piano parts and the melody along with it.
What’s a “flat 7 chord”? Dominant 7th? Minor 7th? Major 7th? Dominant 7 flat 5? diminished 7th?
Elton John (well, at that time, Reginald Dwight) began playing piano at age 3. He received a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music at age 11, and attended classes there for five years. A couple of excerpts about his time there from Wikipedia:
“According to one of his instructors, John promptly played back, like a ‘gramophone record’, a four-page piece by Handel that he heard for the first time.”
“For the next five years he attended Saturday classes at the Academy in central London, and has stated that he enjoyed playing Chopin and Bach and singing in the choir during Saturday classes, but that he was not otherwise a diligent classical student.”
So, he may not have enjoyed it, and he certainly didn’t stick with it as the focus of his career (his first paying gig was playing piano in a bar at age 15, and he appears to have pursued a pop career from that point on), but it seems likely that Elton John could play “classical stuff”, too, and play it pretty well.
Two words I would not use when describing Elton John are “Straight” and “Predictable”
Other kinds of “top” piano players. I freakin’ love Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, Red Garland, etc. Elton John is an excellent piano player with great technique - I have no idea if he plays jazz.
Elton could close his eyes.
Liberace’s Plastic Surgery Left Him Unable to Close His Eyes — Even While He Was Sleeping
There are about a zillion different kinds of great piano (or guitar, or saxaphone, or viola or whatever) players.
There’s the player who can sit down in front of some sheet music and play it perfectly, note for note, without a mistake, the first time. This player is probably in great demand at recording sessions for commercials and soundtracks and stuff like that. He or she may not have much in the way of creative talent, though.
There are players like Monk and Tristano and others who may or may not have been able to achieve machine-like perfect reproduction of written music, but who took the instrument, and music in general, to new places, and whom all serious players of that instrument (at least players of the same kind of music) who came after them must acknowledge.
There are players like Elton John, who is really remarkable for his songwriting skills. I mean, the guy seems to be able to come up with an unforgettable tune about every 15 minutes. I don’t think it really matters that he happens to play the piano. Elton John would be Elton John if he played the ocarina.
Then there’s Liberace. He was, at least early in his career, a technically proficient player. But his real skill and artistry lay in being a showman. And whether or not you liked his style of show, he was a great showman.