Arturo Beneditti Michelangeli!
Any comments? Anyone out there agree or disagree?
Might I suggest Robert Casadesus. He wrote some of the sweetest (and compositionally appropriate) cadenzas for Mozart's piano concerti.
Different players for different composers.
Master Horowitz is great for the Baroque masters (he's got such a feather-light touch -- the Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, "closed holding the eggshell" organ-hand).
Helfgott and Van Cliburn are best suited to the "heavy hitters", Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, who else can hit 13ths with ease? ("Don't you just love those big, FAT chords?").
And then, should we talk about the Jazz Masters: Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, and (my personal fave) Vince Guaraldi...
Many more...
Come on, y'all. Who has the right to decide?
Just my little voice in the wilderness...
-Andy