This CD, a collection of live recordings taken from performances at the Royal Festival Hall and the Festival de la Grange de Meslay, provides yet another example of Boris Berezovsky’s stunning virtuosity and musicality. A Liszt recital, the disc features the famous Sonata in B Minor, often considered Liszt’s greatest composition for solo piano. Other works include Harmonies du soir, Venezia e Napoli and the Mephisto Waltz No. 1. Berezovsky closes the disc with one encore, the Chopin Waltz, Op.42. Born in Moscow in 1969, Boris Berezovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as “an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power”; two years later that promise was fulfilled when he won the Gold Medal at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Famous Pianists and Their Technique has been a standard in the field since its first publication in 1974. This widely used and acclaimed history of piano technical thought includes insights into the techniques of masters such as C.P.
E. Bach, BartĂłk, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Clementi, Czerny, Debussy, Godowsky, Horowitz, Levinskaya, Leschetizky, the Lhevinnes, Liszt, Mozart, Prokofiev, Ravel, Rubinstein, and Schubert, among others.
Called “the bible of piano technique” by Maurice Hinson, this book is a comprehensive resource for the student, teacher, and professional pianist who seek to discover the secrets of how the immortal pianists developed and polished their mechanical and musical technique. This expanded edition contains a foreword by Alan Walker, a new preface, and multiple new appendices.
“… the expanded part of Gerig’s book [is] so impressive that this section by itself is worth more than the price of the book. Just one of the cross- referenced ideas would be enough to spur a thesis, dissertation, or lecture- recital…. Scholars will not be disappointed at the array of obscure facts and hard-to-locate bibliography. Pedagogues will relish this text as an indispensable reference for their courses and daily work. Pianists will be able to constantly refer and return to their historical heritage. Gerig’s book has not only withstood the test of time, but will continue to do so.” – Piano Journal
The Verbier Festival is considered as one of the most important European festivals. Every July, the greatest names of classical music gather during two weeks, among the wonderful landscape of the Swiss Alps for an exceptional concert series.
Khatia Buniatchvili
The festival gives the artists the opportunity to perform original programmes with other musicians that they admire and with whom they have never had the opportunity to play.
For five consecutive seasons, medici.tv has been the place for classical music lovers around the world to enjoy the spectacular array of top artists who perform at the Verbier Festival, which this summer takes place July 15 – 31. As Martin T:son Engstroem, the festival’s founder and executive director, says:
“Verbier is a tiny Swiss mountain village, far from any big towns, but we can connect with the global internet community and share our wonderful programs with a worldwide audience. People have followed our concerts from some mind-boggling places. Hats off to medici!”
More than 20 events from the 18th annual Verbier festival are streamed live as well as being available on demand for free. Here are some piano related highlights you may not want to miss:
All the concerts are available online for free (account registration needed) the day after their broadcast on medici.tv as well as on medici TV’s iPhone and iPad applications until September 30th.
In October 2011, Carnegie Hall celebrates Tchaikovsky – the superstar who opened the Hall in May 1891.
In the July episode of from the Carnegie Hall Archives, Museum Director and Archivist Gino Francesconi explores the connections between Carnegie Hall, New York, and Tchaikovsky. Gino reveals how—amidst the turmoil of the decline of the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s—Carnegie Hall was earmarked to become the guardian of many irreplaceable Tchaikovsky artifacts, including the Bible in which the great composer hid some stolen flowers at Niagara Falls.
Opening week of Carnegie Hall – a highlight of Tchaikovsky’s visit:
Read the New York Times review of the performance of his Third Suite. May 8, 1891.
Evgeny Kissin is a great pianist in the Russian tradition, with the sweeping style, generous tone and powerful but supple technique that marks an heir of Rachmaninov. But for him, music is a language and performance is about communicating meaning, and he can conjure a world of imagination – reflective and insightful – even as he dazzles with his astonishing mastery of the instrument. The music world is marking the bicentennial of the birth of Franz Liszt — composer, virtuoso, and all-around diabolical genius. Kissin’s on-going world tour is therefor devoted entirely to works by Franz Liszt, to mark the 200th anniversary and which means appearances at the most distinguished venues around the world, including La Scala, Concertgebouw, Barbican and Carnegie Hall.
Kissin Plays Liszt - New CD to be released on July 12, 2011
“Kissin’s musicality, poetic interpretations, and extraordinary virtuosity have placed him at the forefront of the world’s new generation of pianists. So compelling is Kissin’s pianism, so fresh his response to even the most familiar phrases, that one hangs on every note.”
- The New York Times
“The splendid all-Liszt recital by Evgeny Kissin Sunday at Orchestra Hall pointed up a couple of interesting coincidences. When Liszt was Kissin’s age, he too was a virtuoso pianist famous the world over, even though he had already retired from active concertizing by the age of 40. Kissin, who – astonishingly enough, given his youthful appearance – will turn 40 in October, sounds as if he could go on delighting audiences forever. The evidence was plentiful on Sunday – the sovereign technical command that made everything seem effortless, the myriad stylistic insights, the avoidance of showmanship for its own empty sake. Sometimes Kissin made it all appear a bit too easy: You wanted a bit more of the sense of a performer grappling mano a mano with musical behemoths and finally vanquishing them, the way Vladimir Horowitz did. But this cavil wilted in the searing magnificence of the Russian pianist’s performances.”
- Chicago Tribune
“Despite the familiarity of his name, Liszt remains one of the great unknowns of 19th-century music, with swathes of his enormous output off-limits to performers and audiences. Evgeny Kissin’s all-Liszt programme may not have explored neglected territory, but the conviction generated by his combination of technical mastery with impeccable stylistic assurance offered a firm counterblast to those who view the composer as a superficial showman.”
- Guardian
“As I opened the programme to this all-Liszt recital by Evgeny Kissin, my eye was caught by a date: “Born in 1971…” Could it really be true that the eternally youthful piano wizard was about to enter his 40th year, and join the ranks of the middle-aged? Seeing him walk on stage with that familiar bright-adolescent gait, bowing very politely left and right, it seemed frankly implausible. The IAs for the playing, it was just as blemish-free and uncannily perfect as the man. Kissin really can conjure miracles of textural refinement and glittery sound from a piano, so much so that you can feel they actually obscure the music. But – the Liszt fan might say – that’s a false distinction. The whole point about Liszt’s wonderful piano tone-poems is that he makes pure sound expressive of a mood or scene. You don’t need to look for something ‘behind’ it.”
- Telegraph
Imagine hearing great, departed pianists play again today, just as they would in person. John Q. Walker demonstrates how recordings can be analyzed for precise keystrokes and pedal motions, then played back on computer-controlled grand pianos.
What we focus on is representing exactly is how musicians perform, John Q. Walker, Ph.D., Founder of Zenph Sound Innovations said.
Using signal processing, artificial intelligence, and acoustics, Walker’s company developed new computer software that can dissect any recording – note by note.
“If they’re playing the piano, how would they have pressed the keys, where would the pedal have been, how long would they have held it?” Dr. Walker says.
Walker and his team wrote software to take a piano recording – even an old, scratchy one – and determine not only which keys were struck but exactly how they were played, including all the subtle nuances that distinguish great pianists. The result was simply amazing.
“We saw it as a very hard signal-processing problem: Can we get backwards from recordings to the notes? We all know how to go forwards, but can we go backwards? And if we can crack that problem, the whole industry changes” Dr. Walker continues.
Walker’s group indeed cracked that problem. And with their software, they were able to re-create great piano performances of the past. “Reperformance” is the word Walker uses. It may seem like remastering on steroids – but in fact it’s a lot more. Think about turning a mono recording into stereo, for example, changing the acoustics of the room and positioning the microphones differently from where they were placed during the original recording session – even letting the listener experience what the pianist heard sitting on the bench. The commercial value was obvious, which is why Walker’s company was able to strike a deal with Sony Music.
Bach - Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations was the first album we recorded with Sony, and it’s the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. This was the first recording he made. He was 22 years old. He had had a very successful recital in New York, and Columbia Records said, “Let’s sign him up.” And normally when you sign up a young pianist, the first recording is, maybe, some Chopin or Beethoven sonatas or something. He picked a piece called the Bach Goldberg Variations, which had been rarely recorded on piano at all. It was thought you couldn’t play it on one manual. And he said, “No, I want to do this piece” and made a phenomenal recording in 1955 that has been one of the best continuous piano recordings in classical music history.
Dr. Walker has already staged robotic piano performances in front of some pretty big live audiences, recreating classic recordings at places like Carnegie hall. He’ll be performing at the Newport music festival in July. The first consumer software for piano files from Walker’s company Zenph sound innovations is set for release this summer.
Ingolf Wunder is an exclusive artist of the label Deutsche Grammophon since February this year.
June 17, 2011 will see the release of his first CD on the label with works by Chopin for solo piano. Wunder’s debut CD with Chopin and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit was released in 2006 (ORF). He is prizewinner of numerous piano competitions; most notably receiving the first prizes at the Steinway-Wettbewerb in Hamburg, at “Prima la musica” in Feldkirch, Austria, and at the “Concours Musical de France” in Asti. He took part in the 36th International Liszt competition in Budapest and was awarded with the prize of the city of Budapest.
Successful at the Chopin competition 2010 in Warsaw, Ingolf Wunder showed his excellence in playing works by the great Polish composer. The young Austrian not only won the 2nd Prize but also several special prizes and the audience award at the legendary piano competition. The decision made by the jury led to an intensive public debate and received worldwide awareness. As prizewinner the 25 year old Wunder follows in the footsteps of many famous pianists like Martha Argerich, Garrick Ohlsson, Krystian Zimerman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mitsuko Uchida and Maurizio Pollini.
Ingolf Wunder was born in Klagenfurt. At the age of 4 he started his musical education playing the violin; however it was not until he was 14 that his extraordinary talent for the piano was discovered. He went to the conservatories in Klagenfurt and Linz, later he studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Nowadays he is still regularly in touch with his mentor Adam Harasiewicz, the Polish pianist and winner of the Warsaw competition in 1955.
This CD, a collection of live recordings taken from performances at the Royal Festival Hall and the Festival de la Grange de Meslay, provides yet another example of Boris Berezovsky’s stunning virtuosity and musicality. A Liszt recital, the disc features the famous Sonata in B Minor, often considered Liszt’s greatest composition for solo piano. Other works include Harmonies du soir, Venezia e Napoli and the Mephisto Waltz No. 1. Berezovsky closes the disc with one encore, the Chopin Waltz, Op.42. Born in Moscow in 1969, Boris Berezovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as “an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power”; two years later that promise was fulfilled when he won the Gold Medal at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Evgeny Kissin is a great pianist in the Russian tradition, with the sweeping style, generous tone and powerful but supple technique that marks an heir of Rachmaninov. But for him, music is a language and performance is about communicating meaning, and he can conjure a world of imagination – reflective and insightful – even as he dazzles with his astonishing mastery of the instrument. The music world is marking the bicentennial of the birth of Franz Liszt — composer, virtuoso, and all-around diabolical genius. Kissin’s on-going world tour is therefor devoted entirely to works by Franz Liszt, to mark the 200th anniversary and which means appearances at the most distinguished venues around the world, including La Scala, Concertgebouw, Barbican and Carnegie Hall.
June 17, 2011 will see the release of his first CD on the label with works by Chopin for solo piano. Wunder’s debut CD with Chopin and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit was released in 2006 (ORF). He is prizewinner of numerous piano competitions; most notably receiving the first prizes at the Steinway-Wettbewerb in Hamburg, at “Prima la musica” in Feldkirch, Austria, and at the “Concours Musical de France” in Asti. He took part in the 36th International Liszt competition in Budapest and was awarded with the prize of the city of Budapest.
