Jean-Efflam Bavouzet took the Instrumental Award at this year’s BBC Music Awards for the third (out of four) volume of his complete Debussy piano music series on the Chandos label.
What makes this disc special is not only Bavouzet’s exceptional playing, but the intelligent programming. From what could easily have sounded a “bits and pieces” micellany, Bavouzet has created a wide-ranging programme which both encapsulates Debussy’s entire work, and at the same time has a sense of a coherent progression.
‘We have a lot to learn from Debussy,’ writes Bavouzet. ‘Through the sophisticated sounds he seeks to create and the simplicity of his textures by which he builds, in just a few phrases and harmonies, a whole world of poetry, but also through writing which always reveals a highly contrapuntal way of thinking, Debussy compels us to listen to his music in a very private, intense and nearly religious manner.
Starting May 22, all performances will be streamed live eleven hours per day and then archived for “on-demand” viewing. http://www.cliburn.tv/
The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was first held in 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas. It was created by Fort Worth area teachers in honor of Van Cliburn, who had won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition four years prior with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Van Cliburn was only twenty-three when he won in Moscow on April 14, 1958, at the height of the Cold War.
Upon his return to the United States, the young pianist received a hero’s welcome in New York City with a ticker-tape parade. This was the first and only time the city gave such an honor to a classical musician.
On that historic day, Van Cliburn became both cultural hero and unofficial diplomat. He went on to perform before every U.S. president from 1958 until today; the most famous of these concerts occurred in 1987 when he played for Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House. This occassion is now remembered as “the day the Cold War was lost.”
Historic video coverage featuring Van Cliburn:
The 2009 Competition
Twenty-nine pianists will compete in the Preliminary Round; twelve will compete in the Semifinal Round; and six will vie for top honors in the Final Round. All six finalists will receive a prize package offering three years of managed concert tours at over $1,000,000 total value.
Cliburn winners perform in hundreds of venues across the United States and abroad.
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata have joined forces to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn with a series of concerts and events. To promote the events a dedicated website has been created:
The RNCM Keyboard Festival (8 - 10 May) will feature all of Haydn’s keyboard sonatas. Graham Scott, Head of School of Keyboard Studies, and Artistic Director of the Keyboard Festival, commented, “Composed over the course of three decades the sonatas undergo an extraordinary passage of development from quite simple drawing room pieces to works of extreme harmonic, dramatic and intellectual inventiveness.
Joseph Haydn's two-manual harpsichord, made by Burkat Shudi and John Broadwood, London 1775.
To complement these sonatas some chamber works will also be performed during the festival, most notably two of his piano concertos in their arrangements for piano and string quartet. Celebrated Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner concludes the festival with a recital that includes Haydn’s exquisite F minor Variations.”
The Guardian said “The most perfect piano playing conceivable…” and The Washington Post “a virtuoso who begins where others leave off.”
English pianist Stephen Hough has enjoyed a phenomenal recording career with over forty recordings, many of which have won Gramophone and Diapason awards and Time Magazine’s Classical CD of the Year. He is a champion of forgotten masterpieces and newly commissioned works and is an avid writer, poet and composer.
In September 2008, Stephen Hough was awarded a Gold Disc for his Saint Saëns´s concerto set as the most popular classical recording of the past 30 years. Quite uniquely, Hough is open about weaknesses, about moments when he’s deeply questioned his career choice as a touring musician. Fighting his nerves and overcoming moments when he says he fails to reach his own high standards. The “writings” section of his website is highly recommendable.
Researchers have discovered the manuscript of a hitherto unknown piano piece by German composer Robert Schumann. Experts speak of “a sensational discovery”.
The twenty-four bar piece, named Ahnung, is not dated, but researches say it was written in 1838, the year in which Schumann also composed his famous Kinderszenen. The piece will have its premiere in September 2009, when it will be performed in the town of Überlingen on the Bodensee where it was discovered.
Available only until May 12, the Swedish Television offers a live HD performance of Sergei Rachmaninov´s third Piano Concerto with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lionel Bringuier as of February 20, 2009.
Content:
0:00 Introduction (in Swedish)
1:10 Alex Wade introduces Rach 3 and talks to Jonathan Philips
9:44 Interview with Leif Ove Andsnes (in Swedish) See summary in English below.
14:00 Live performance of the piano concerto
In the interview, the producer Camilla Lundberg asked Andsnes why he returned to the work after 15 years.
He first played and recorded it when he was only 24 years old, as his first Rachmaninov concerto.
Andsnes stated that the work defines crucial currents of modernity in the 20th century and therefore it has a special compositional and romantic quality. Having spent so much time with it, and when coming back to it with a new “bird perspective”, he felt that the contrasts and eruptive qualities of the piece should be more accentuated, which motivated him to have a second round with it. He also said that he found it unfortunate that the popularity of the film “Shine” led to the common notion that this concerto is nothing but a gladiator game.
One hundred years ago the work was premiered with Rachmaninov himself at the piano and Gustaf Mahler as conductor. History tells us how serious Mahler was in his work with the score and during rehersals. Andsnes considers this to be one of the moments in music history he would give anything to have experienced.
Rachmaninoff in action
Being fortunate enough to have spent a lengthy preparation period (five years) with Rach 3 during the 1990s, I agree with the popular metaphorical statement that this concerto is a serious attempt to climb K2.
After deciphering the most economical ways of moving (including intelligent fingering), I spent enormous amount of time on finding full sound easiness in the musical lines. This work also demands a very conscious idea of what to be audible in sections where the piano and orchestra share the musical energy.
The access to a large number of recordings was very helpful in this respect and I found the Horowitz/Ormandy collaboration and the Ashkenazy/Fistoulari particularly helpful in building the tutti soundscapes of the grand piano sound in the grand romantic orchestra.
Lukas Foss, an American pianist and composer, has died. He was 86.
Foss also had a career as a conductor.
His works include solo pieces for piano, choral and chamber music and many orchestral works in styles ranging from neo-classical to contemporary.
Born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin Aug. 15, 1922, he studied piano and music theory and composed music from an early age. He moved to Paris to study piano with Lazare Lévy in 1933. In 1937, he left for the U.S., where he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale and conducting with Sergey Koussevitzky at Tanglewood.
Lukas Foss, pianist and composer
He was known for composing in different musical styles, often combining past and present influences and techniques. An accomplished pianist, he performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was also an experienced conductor, working with such orchestras as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. Foss directed six Ojai Music Festivals and led 12 marathon concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, each dedicated to one composer. He succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as head of composition at UCLA and taught there for 10 years.
The list of famous left-handed pianists is a who’s who, from 20th-century legends Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould to today’s keyboard masters Daniel Barenboim, Radu Lupu, Leif Ove Andsnes, Steven Blier, Richard Goode, Helene Grimaud … and many more.
Pianist Russell Young, director of Kennesaw State University’s opera and music theater program, believes being left-handed is an advantage for pianists.
‘You read music from the bottom up on the printed page,’ he says. ‘Once you have the bassline down you get a more solid idea of the foundation and chord patterns, since the top lines [for right hand] are often more free-form melody.’
Young also suspects that lefties have a learning advantage.
All piano students must overcome the two hands’ resistance to work separately; by having to work harder on what’s essentially a right-handed instrument, the neurons of left-handed pianists get an extra workout and thus grow stronger.” Samuel Wang, professor of neuroscience at Princeton University adds, “Pianists must coordinate the activity of both [brain] hemispheres, since each hemisphere is responsible for a separate hand.”
Gloria Cheng receives Grammy Award, February 8th 2009
Gloria Cheng, recent Grammy winner of the Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (Without Orchestra) for “Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky and Lutoslawski” talks to Patrick Jovell, Piano Street (proud UCLA alum.).
Patrick: Congratulations on your Grammy award! Is it possible to know what this will mean to you and your life?
Gloria: I doubt that the award will change my life, but now, three days since the Awards ceremony, I am as busy and fulfilled as I have always been. No more, no less, really. But I’d say that the award has made me happier!
Patrick: On this CD you play music of Salonen, Stucky and Lutoslawski. I know that you had the chance to work closely with the composers? How does such a collaboration work?
Gloria: I’ve had the honor of working with all three composers on their music. Fortuitously, I was part of Salonen’s first guest engagement with the L.A. Philharmonic when he programmed the Lutoslawski Third Symphony. At the time I was playing second keyboard in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and that was my first encounter with the music of Lutoslawski. I was enchanted by the music. On a later occasion Lutoslawski was invited to be a featured composer on one of the L.A. Phil’s Green Umbrella programs, and I coached some of his chamber music with him. That experience gave me more insight and appreciation for his work, and I came to love it very much. Esa-Pekka and Steve Stucky are longtime friends and collaborators whose work I admire greatly, and I’ve worked them both countless times. The fact that all three composers are so linked musically (the younger two both acknowledge Lutoslawski as their musical forefather), that all four of us have worked together numerous times in the past, and that we are all friends, gives this CD a lot of musical and personal cohesion for me. As for the collaborative process, it’s probably the Salonen pieces that offered the greatest opportunities for interaction, since Dichotomie was written for me, and I did the first performances of the Preludes. Sometimes I’d play the piece for him and work through some passages that I envisioned alternate approaches to. Sometimes it was a phone or email dialogue about any number of things like dynamics, general expressive concepts, rubato, and the like. Actually the Preludes arrived in my email box with very little in the way of dynamics or expressive indications, and I ended up inventing some when I couldn’t reach Esa-Pekka. (I hope he’s happy with them!)
Steven Stucky was actually present at the recording session so he was able to offer any suggestions right there. In the end, he didn’t have too much to say, but I was glad he was there. Most composers I’ve worked with have refrained from imposing their own thinking on me, but enjoy collaborating on the organism together.
Patrick: You were trained by master teachers such as John Perry and the late Aube Tzerko, both representing notable and influential piano traditions. What triggered your interest in contemporary piano music?
Gloria: I feel that I am the luckiest pianist alive to have had the teachers that I had. My first piano teacher, Isabelle Sant’ Ambrogio, drilled the notion of tone and color, and how to produce a spectrum of them, into me at an early age. I also owe my lifelong absence of piano-related physical problems to her. Aube Tzerko taught me about structure and phrase and declamation. From John Perry I learned how to put the fire underneath a passage and make it soar. I have been so fortunate to have such a pedigree. As for getting involved in contemporary music, it appealed to me during my college years when I was awed by the breadth of knowledge that the composers had cultivated in order to ply their trade. They were the ones that knew poetry, literature, and myth; they were the ones who knew how to produce any style with their deep understanding of all the elements that comprised that style. I always learned something whenever I got into a conversation with a composer. So naturally I got drawn to playing their music, which was very strange and esoteric to my mind at the time. In the intervening years, my involvement with new music has led me to so many musical places that I could never otherwise have imagined. Each emanates from a rich personal history, philosophy, and culture, in other words, the life that was lived by that composer. I must add that I love playing music of friends. I usually can hear them in their music, and conversely I learn more about them when I put their music under my fingers.
Patrick: The complexity of contemporary compositions can often be rather discouraging for the un-experienced pianist. What advice can you give to pianists who want to explore and get exposed to contemporary piano music?
Gloria: In order to explore anything, one has to leave pre-conceived notions behind and be open to things that are completely different. The learning curve becomes steeper with much contemporary music because the languages are unfamiliar, and there is no inevitability as there is in tonal languages. Every composer’s musical language nowadays is personal and unique; the best are eloquent, persuasive, surprising, and ingenious. Understanding them requires openness, respect, humility, and a lot of patience. My world has grown bigger and more interesting from every composer whose music I’ve played. New sound worlds have revealed themselves to me in every instance. To mix a metaphor, some of these universes become lifelong loves that grow and evolve over time, some become great friends, some we want never to visit again. But the more openness we can show in the face of a new encounter, the richer our lives become.
To be continued…
Pianist GLORIA CHENG is widely recognized as a colorful and communicative interpreter of contemporary music, garnering universal acclaim for her unassuming virtuosity and eloquence. On the world premiere of Salonen’s Dichotomie, dedicated to Cheng, the Los Angeles Times described her performance as “miraculous in the sheer speed and sureness of her fingers, in the rich depth of color and sonority she obtained from the piano, and in the sheer expression of joy she brought to a demanding new work.” Gramophone has depicted her as “technically fearless,” and the New York Times has praised her “commanding technique, color and imagination.”
Cheng has premiered dozens of new compositions, including works composed for her by John Adams, Mark Applebaum, Pierre Boulez, Joan Huang, David Raksin, Terry Riley, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Chinary Ung, and Andrew Waggoner. Cheng’s dedication to contemporary music has brought her into close collaborations with many of the leading composers of our time: Thomas Adès, Henry Brant, Earle Brown, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, John Harbison, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Steve Reich, and Steven Stucky.
She has twice been featured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group at Alice Tully Hall, and made her solo debut with the L.A. Philharmonic in December, 1998, performing Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques and Couleurs de la cité céleste under the direction of Zubin Mehta. In May 2003, Cheng was the soloist, at the personal invitation of Pierre Boulez, in the L. A. Philharmonic’s historic final concerts in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, again performing Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Recent engagements include appearances with the Pacific Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Long Beach Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Opus Novum (Hawaii), Composers Inc., and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Additional projects have brought Cheng to festivals at Ojai, Tanglewood, Aspen, Bad Gleichenberg, and Kuhmo (Finland), to the Chicago Humanities, Other Minds (San Francisco), and Composer-to-Composer (Telluride) Festivals, and to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio France, Kennedy Center, and the Théatre du Châtelet.
Prior to post-graduate studies in Paris and Barcelona, Cheng earned her B.A. in Economics from Stanford University, and graduate degrees in Music from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California. Her primary teachers were Isabelle Sant’Ambrogio, Aube Tzerko, and John Perry. She is on the faculty at UCLA.
A much longed-for documentation of the pianist and piano pedagogue Hans Leygraf’s methodology is now to be found on two DVDs (a Finkernagel & Lück production 2006, 366 minutes approx. Region code: 0). These recordings, made among a selected few of his students in Salzburg, extends from the appropriate way of touching the keys to interpretation of the music as illustrated by practising compositions of Bach, Chopin and Schubert. The DVDs (in German) come with English, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, Corean and Japanese sub-titles.
DVDs Contents
The first disc is concerned with basic fundamentals and mechanics, whilst in the second students are seen developing their own preferences while still remaining totally aware of piano touch at all times.
DVD 1:
1. Greeting
2. Chopin: Prélude C minor. Relaxation, armweight, hand concentration
3. Bach: Invention C major. Key contact, finger activity
4. Bach: Invention D minor. Combined finger and arm motion
5. Bach: Invention F major. Increased finger activity
6. Chopin: Prélude E minor. Melodic expression and harmonic accompaniment
7. Chopin: Prélude B minor. Melodic expression and harmonic accompaniment
8. Chopin: Prélude C minor
DVD 2:
1. Bach: French suite C minor I-III. Individual interpretation
2. Bach: French suite C minor IV-VI. Individual interpretation
3. Chopin: Nocturne F minor. Emotional freedom through conciousness
4. Schubert: Moment musical No 6 A flat major. Professor Hans Leygraf teaching himself
On DVD 2, part 4, Leygraf teaches himself and comments accordingly:
“In conclusion I myself work on the Moment musical in A-Flat Major by Schubert. With my comments I explain the tasks I’ve set myself. For studying a composition it is of importance to me first to analyse the piece, then to read the score in order to get an idea about the musical content (the way a conductor reads a score), and only afterwards to sit down at the piano and to practise. I’m demonstrating that kind of work in this session.”
Excerpt on staccato from DVD 2, part 2 (Bach’s Air from French Suite no 2):
The DVDs (Euro 45 + shipping and handling) can be ordered through e-mail:
info[at]leygraf.com
Professor Hans Leygraf was born in 1920 in Stockholm as the son of German-Austrian parents. He studied piano in Stockholm with the Schnabel-student Gottfrid Boon, and with Anna Hirzel-Langenhan in Switzerland. After the war he performed throughout Europe, including the Soviet Union, USA, and Far East. He had appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, in London, Hamburg and Munich, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Orchestra under conductors like Blomstedt, Celibidache, Dohnanyi, Dorati, Ehrling, Fricsay, Gielen, Kempe, Sawallisch, Solti, and Szell.
Leygraf taught in Innsbruck, Darmstadt, Stockholm, Hannover and Berlin. From 1972 - 1990 he was a full professor at the Musikhochschule Mozarteum, Salzburg, where up to 2007 he had an international class for highly gifted students.
In Leygraf´s recent discography we find a selection of Haydn Sonatas (2 CDs) recorded in the 1960ies and in 2007 on the DB Productions label, and released during last year (2008).
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet took the Instrumental Award at this year’s BBC Music Awards for the third (out of four) volume of his complete Debussy piano music series on the Chandos label.
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata have joined forces to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn with a series of concerts and events. To promote the events a dedicated website has been created:
The Guardian said “The most perfect piano playing conceivable…” and The Washington Post “a virtuoso who begins where others leave off.”
Pianist Russell Young, director of Kennesaw State University’s opera and music theater program, believes being left-handed is an advantage for pianists.
The fact that all three composers are so linked musically (the younger two both acknowledge Lutoslawski as their musical forefather), that all four of us have worked together numerous times in the past, and that we are all friends, gives this CD a lot of musical and personal cohesion for me. As for the collaborative process, it’s probably the Salonen pieces that offered the greatest opportunities for interaction, since Dichotomie was written for me, and I did the first performances of the Preludes. Sometimes I’d play the piece for him and work through some passages that I envisioned alternate approaches to. Sometimes it was a phone or email dialogue about any number of things like dynamics, general expressive concepts, rubato, and the like. Actually the Preludes arrived in my email box with very little in the way of dynamics or expressive indications, and I ended up inventing some when I couldn’t reach Esa-Pekka. (I hope he’s happy with them!)
