Critically-acclaimed American pianist Robert Henry presents his highly anticipated debut recording “Twelve Nocturnes and a Waltz“.
Released in 2010, this recording is a compilation of some of the world’s best loved melodies, featuring Nocturnes of Chopin, Fauré, Grieg, Liszt and many others, including the world premiere of Alexei Stanchinsky’s forgotten Nocturne from 1907.
We asked Robert about his discovery of this previously unrecorded piece.
- It is unusual to find a piece that has yet to be recorded. Nevertheless, Alexei Stanchinsky’s forgotten Nocturne from 1907 has somehow slipped under the radar for over 100 years. It is indeed unrecorded and the sheet music is long out of print. Perhaps the treacherous difficulty of this piece has scared pianists away; this is easily the most difficult Nocturne of the CD, if not the entire repertoire. Or, perhaps the suicide of the 26-year-old Stanchinsky invites an unwelcome element of macabre. Whatever the reason for the neglect, it is undeserved; Stanchinsky was considered by his colleagues and professors to be potentially a greater talent than fellow classmate Rachmaninoff. With this world premiere recording of Stanchinsky’s Nocturne, I hope to have surfaced a long buried treasure, and helped to restore Stanchinsky’s prestige as an immensely talented young composer.
As a tribute to one of his musical mentors, Robert has created his own transcription of Chet Atkins’ Waltz for the Lonely. Regarding his transcription, Robert adds: - I think the original Waltz by Chet is truly a fine piece of music, intimate and quaint. I’ve played it all over the world, even at Carnegie Hall. For years, my arrangement was simple and a bit different from one performance to the next, but for this recording I decided to go for it and created a 1920’s Grand Romantic transcription in the manner of Leopold Godowsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff, gently bordering on jazz. I tossed in a bit of Copland, too, and the rest is myself. When I release the sheet music later this year, I’ll include this much harder version and a simplified arrangement. I hope everyone can enjoy both playing it and listening to it.
A video documentary of Robert’s recording experience, “The Making of Twelve Nocturnes and a Waltz”, has recently been awarded two Telly Awards. View the documentary:
Back in 2001, when Piano Forum was started, Robert was one of the very first contributors. Exclusively for Piano Street and its members, Robert has now kindly provided a free sample track from the CD, Liszt’s Liebestraume:
Robert Henry is an internationally distinguished pianist who has been heard throughout the world as soloist, accompanist and chamber musician, presenting critically-acclaimed solo debuts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. A recently named Steinway Artist, he has enjoyed success in nearly every important piano competition in the world, winning the Gold Medal in four International Piano Competitions in the 2001-2002 season alone. Future projects include a London debut in Wigmore Hall and a debut recording of Nocturnes, to be released in 2009. He currently serves as Artist-in-Residence at Kennesaw State University. Mr. Henry earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland.
Written partly during Chopin’s catastrophic wintertime stay on Majorca, the 24 Preludes, opus 28, are some of the composer’s most mysterious works. Schumann said of them: “They are sketches, beginnings of études, or, so to speak, ruins, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions.”
Although many of these pieces are not less of a challenge for pianists than some of Chopin’s Etudes, there are a few which are often played by less experienced players:
The Preludes op 28 as well as two other preludes, Opus 45 in C-sharp minor and Opus posth. (in A-flat Major) are now available as urtext scores to download and print from Piano Street’s online sheet music library.
Similar to the collections of Nocturnes and Ballades, published earlier this year this new edition by Piano Street attempts to present the most valid version of these pieces following consensus among today’s prominent scholars and pianists. The edition has Chopin’s own fingering only and for anyone needing further advice on fingering we refer to the edition by Herrmann Scholtz, also available for downloading.
Recorded and filmed live in Vienna’s legendary Musikverein concert hall, the Sony Classical debut is available on August 24 in multiple formats including vinyl and 3D video.
This release represents Lang Lang’s second live recorded recital to date after the best-selling “Live at Carnegie Hall” in 2004, which marked his international breakthrough as a recording artist. He has performed the new album’s program at the world’s major concert venues and will continue to tour with it throughout 2011.
This recital, one of 2010’s most eagerly-awaited classical recordings, is released in its entirety on the following multiple formats: Deluxe limited edition, Blu-ray, DVD, LP vinyl and Digital formats. For the first time Lang Lang will be performing some of the album’s repertoire in the new spectacular 3D format which will be a bonus feature on the Blu-Ray. This will include the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, Evocation from Albeniz’s Iberia suite, the explosive finale of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata and Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise. This forms part of Lang Lang’s commitment to reaching new audiences through innovative technologies, a goal he also aims to realize through his global brand ambassadorship with Sony Electronics. The Blu-Ray will be released in October 2010. The CD, DVD, LP vinyl and CD/DVD combo will release on August 24, 2010.
Promotional video:
Sheet music of Chopin’s Polonaise “Heroic” to download and print:
Lang Lang began playing the piano at the age of three and had already won the Shenyang Competition and given his first recital by the tender age of five. He shot to world-wide fame at seventeen when he triumphed in the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the “Gala of the Century”. Since then he has become one of the most sought-after musicians around the globe and was listed by TIME magazine among the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. Watched by more than five billion viewers, he played at the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and performed alongside Herbie Hancock at the 50th Grammy Awards. In December 2007, Lang Lang was guest soloist at the Nobel Prize concert in Stockholm, an event attended by the Nobel Laureates and members of the Royal Family. He returned as soloist for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize awarding ceremony and concert for President Barack H. Obama.
Lang Lang is an inspiration to young musicians everywhere and has made it his personal mission to broaden the appeal of classical music to the widest possible audience. He has founded the “Lang Lang International Music Foundation” with the aim of identifying and supporting exceptionally gifted piano students between the ages of six and ten, and he made a historic appearance on the finale of “Oprah’s Search for the World’s Smartest and Most Talented Kids,” duetting with three young musicians from his Foundation. Ever since the pianist shot to fame, China has been in the grip of a piano-learning frenzy known as the “Lang Lang Effect,” and Steinway has recognized the pianist’s popularity with children by creating five versions of the “Lang Lang Steinway,” designed for early music education. An estimated 40 million children in China are learning the piano because of the “Lang Lang effect.” While performing around 130 concerts a year, he also manages to find time in his packed schedule to be a UNICEF ambassador and work with the Montblanc Cultural Foundation.
The British may be a nation of music lovers, but they are clueless when it comes to classical composers, a survey revealed today. One in three people (33%) have never listened to classical music and 4% of those surveyed wrongly identified Bocconcini – small Italian cheese balls – as a composer.
Bocconcini - not a composer
The Reader’s Digest survey of 1,516 people also found that most were unable to link composers to their masterpieces. Three out of four (75%) did not know that Elgar wrote Pomp and Circumstance, and 27% did not even know he was a composer. Sixty-eight percent did not know Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 Overture.
The Welsh were more likely to own a Vivaldi or a Wagner, with 72% possessing at least one classical CD compared with the British average of 59%.
Most participants (61%) said they liked classical music, with the older generation much keener than the younger generation.
Gill Hudson, editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest, said: “As our survey shows, there’s clearly an appetite for classical music. I suspect that a combination of uninspired teaching and the elitism that surrounds much of the genre has alienated many people, hence the lack of knowledge of some of the greatest classical music and composers of all time.”
He added: “Classical music at its best can be moving, life-enhancing and uplifting. It should be accessible to all.”
An early piano believed to have been played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has surfaced in Germany and could be worth millions of euros, a radio station reported.
Public broadcaster SWR said the instrument was built in 1775 and acquired in the 1980s by piano manufacturer Martin Becker in the southern German city of Baden-Baden from an antiques dealer in Strasbourg, eastern France. When Becker decided to auction off the fortepiano, a music historian noticed the offer and “had a hunch that it could be the same long-lost instrument that Mozart played whenever he was in Strasbourg,” SWR said. “I had the idea to offer it on (online auction site) eBay and maybe get between 30,000 and 40,000 euros for it,” Becker told the radio station.
A historic oil painting in Vienna shows the composer Joseph Haydn, a Mozart contemporary, playing what may be the same instrument. The fortepiano, built by Christian Baumann, is one of eight known examples. Mozart was known to be a fan of Baumann’s work, SWR said. SWR said auction house Christie’s confirmed the piano’s provenance in 2003, but a company spokesman told AFP that its US-based musical instrument specialists had never examined it. Experts said the piano could be worth millions if its illustrious pedigree is established.
All About Chopin is an international challenge testing your knowledge about Chopin and an initiative of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, implemented by the Krystyna Bochenek Katowice Cultural Centre, the Chopin 2010 Celebrations Office and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. The contest marks the Chopin Year and will take place on October 16th – 17th 2010 in Katowice. It is addressed both to Polish and international Chopin enthusiasts eager to test their knowledge about the life and work of the Polish composer.
The Moments Musicaux were published only a few months before Schubert’s death in 1828. Most of them were composed during 1827 or 1828, with the exception of Nos. 3 and 6, dating from 1823 and 1824 respectively.
Recordings of the Six Moments Musicaux performed by David Wärn have now been published by Piano Street.
As a free time limited offer (until August 31) we are happy to share with you the recording of piece no 5 and 6 from the set:
At only 26, Anna Vinnitskaya has already established a flourishing international career, both in recital and orchestral performances. In 2007, she won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels becoming only the second woman in the history of the competition for piano to do so, after Ekaterina Novitskaya in 1968.
Anna Vinnitskaya was born in Novorossijsk, a Russian town next to the black sea, into a family of musicians. She got her first piano lessons at the age of six and played her first full solo recital at the age of nine. Three years later their family moved to Rostov on Don, so that Anna Vinnitskaya could study with Sergej Ossipenko at the Sergej Rachmaninov Conservatoire. During a piano competition in the year 2001 Ralf Nattkemper invited her to the “Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg”. From 2002 to 2009 she studied there with Evgeni Koroliov.
New signing and exclusive Naïve Classique artist, she makes her much anticipated debut album on the Ambroisie label featuring an all-Russian programme of piano sonatas by Rachmaninov, Medtner and Prokofiev and a piece by Gubaidulina. This is Anna Vinnitskaya’s first ever recording and it has already been met with high critical acclaim. Since its release in France, it was awarded the “Diapason d’Or” (within the “Discoveries” category) and most recently, the “Choc du mois” by Classica Magazine. It was also picked as CHOICE by International Piano Magazine.
Two of Johannes Brahms’ most popular late piano pieces are now available as Urtext scores from Piano Street’s sheet music library. Recordings, of the two pieces performed by Henrik Sandback, have also been added.
The three Intermezzi Op. 117 are probably the most well-known and best-loved of Brahms’s late piano pieces.
The composer described these pieces, all three of which are marked Andante, “lullabies to my sorrows”. They were inspired by a Scottish poem from Herder´s Volkslieder, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, and bear this inscription:
Schlaf sanft mein Kind, schlaf sanft und Schön!/Mich dauert´s sehr, dich weinen sehn. (Sleep softly my child, sleep softly and well!/It hurts my heart to see you weeping.)
The second piece of Op. 118 is one of Brahms’s most beloved creations, a deeply lyrical and moving nocturne. The opus, consisting of six pieces, were sent as a gift to Clara Schumann immediately upon their completion. Brahms’ biographer Jan Swafford has surmised: “he may have composed the pieces to try and keep Clara Schumann going in body and soul. Since she could only play a few minutes at a time now, and because she loved these miniatures so deeply, maybe they did keep her alive.”
Interview with Naxos’ Founder and CEO, Klaus Heymann
The record label Naxos has gone from budget outsider to industry leader in its 20-plus years of existence. But what does the future hold for any record label at a time when CD sales are plummeting and downloads are stagnant?
Critically-acclaimed American pianist Robert Henry presents his highly anticipated debut recording “Twelve Nocturnes and a Waltz“.
Recorded and filmed live in Vienna’s legendary Musikverein concert hall, the Sony Classical debut is available on August 24 in multiple formats including vinyl and 3D video.
A historic oil painting in Vienna shows the composer Joseph Haydn, a Mozart contemporary, playing what may be the same instrument. The fortepiano, built by Christian Baumann, is one of eight known examples. Mozart was known to be a fan of Baumann’s work, SWR said. SWR said auction house Christie’s confirmed the piano’s provenance in 2003, but a company spokesman told AFP that its US-based musical instrument specialists had never examined it. Experts said the piano could be worth millions if its illustrious pedigree is established.
All About Chopin is an international challenge testing your knowledge about Chopin and an initiative of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, implemented by the Krystyna Bochenek Katowice Cultural Centre, the Chopin 2010 Celebrations Office and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. The contest marks the Chopin Year and will take place on October 16th – 17th 2010 in Katowice. It is addressed both to Polish and international Chopin enthusiasts eager to test their knowledge about the life and work of the Polish composer. 
At only 26, Anna Vinnitskaya has already established a flourishing international career, both in recital and orchestral performances. In 2007, she won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels becoming only the second woman in the history of the competition for piano to do so, after Ekaterina Novitskaya in 1968.
Interview with Naxos’ Founder and CEO, Klaus Heymann
