Stephen Kovacevich - a pianist who risked oblivion to know what it’s like out on the edge

The death of Stephen Kovacevich, aged 86, was announced yesterday. Tom Service pays tribute to a pianist whose performances were full of beauty, clarity – and danger And, here, in a piece published on Kovacevich’s 75th birthday, Andrew Clements picks his favourite recordings.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that Stephen Kovacevich and I were last in contact. He was in hospital, recovering from a hip operation, and we were talking about Hiromi, and where the latest generation of pianists were coming from. The players who had the brilliance, fire and commitment to the moment that his favourite players had: Vladimir Horowitz, Sergei Rachmaninov – his greatest of the greats – and his friend and occasional mentee, Yuja Wang.