Amid the vast piano repertoire, there is a distinct nook that warms the heart of piano lovers: the world of piano ensembles, encompassing works ranging from intimate duets to thunderous two-piano/eight-hands repertoire, and even beyond. The history of piano ensembles reaches from the likes of Wolfgang Amadeus & Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart to Argerich & Freire and many more.
Best known as a super-virtuoso and champion of obscure and oft-neglected works, Marc-André Hamelin has also gained a solid reputation as a composer in recent years. Harking back to an old virtuoso tradition, Hamelin's San Francisco Performances recital on Wednesday featured a second half of his own witty, delightful compositions, capping an evening of spectacular pianism.
Yefim Bronfman, affectionately known as “Fima,” has long belonged to the pantheon of pianists. He tours the world to perform with its best orchestras, to wrangle such titanic concertos as those by Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartók. His Tuesday recital for Cal Performances provided a rare opportunity to hear him all alone.
As the summer fog rolls in, music festivals blossom throughout the Bay Area. A standout among them has long been the Midsummer Mozart Festival, which started in 1974, and is claimed to be the only music festival in North America dedicated exclusively to Mozart. (No, Lincoln Center’s “Mostly Mozart” doesn’t even come close.)
It’s difficult to be an international competition winner. Not only is it phenomenally hard to win the competition itself, it’s even harder to maintain the level of celebrity years after the competition. It seems that for every major competition winner, at least 10 competitors fade into obscurity, washed away from judges’ and audiences’ memories.
Grażyna Bacewicz may not be a household name even among the cognoscenti of the 20th-century piano repertoire. She was well-known as a violinist and composer in her native Poland, and was an integral member of the underground music scene during World War II. She must have also been an excellent pianist, as she gave the premier performance of her own landmark Sonata II for piano.
The Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomšič has long had a reputation of being among the finest pianists alive today. Yet she was not well-known in the Western world until the collapse of the Communist bloc, though she was among the few from then-Yugoslavia who studied at the Juilliard School, while still a teenager. She was also the first student of the inimitable Artur Rubinstein, who taught her for two years.
To pianists, Chopin’s formidable Études have always seemed akin to waterboarding. Composed mostly in his late teens and early 20s, these were the first set of exercises to become a part of the standard concert repertoire. They are differentiated from his predecessors’ not only by having been composed to set technical challenges, but also by amounting to artistic masterpieces over time.
For young pianists, it could be tempting to build an international career on Chopin alone. After all, the unequivocal “Poet of the Piano” wrote almost exclusively for the instrument, and left us with some 20 hours of poetic, if often nationalistic, piano music. As the gold medalist at the prestigious Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in 2005, Rafal Blechacz is among the select few who evidently were chosen to carry Chopin’s torch to an international audience.
The world of music for two pianists is a rarified one. Established as an art form in the Mozart family for its two talented children, then popularized by Schubert at coffeehouses in Vienna, and finally made immortal by Brahms, the two-piano/four-hands repertoire has occupied an important but often neglected corner in the vast richness of piano music.
Ever since I heard Marc-André Hamelin perform Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Ottawa some 20 years ago, I have always found his highly deft technique and clean, transparent interpretation to be an inspiration. I have heard him perform live in Montreal, London, and Tokyo, among other cities, and have listened intently to a number of his recordings.
American pianist Eric Himy has carved out a niche in an intriguing way. Although highly acclaimed for his interpretations of Ravel, Debussy, and Liszt, he has played and recorded many works in his own transcriptions for piano.
North Bay fans of piano music are a lucky bunch. For the past six years, the Concerts Grand series, produced by Terry McNeill, has been presenting piano recitals primarily in Sonoma, attracting established as well as upcoming talents from near and far. Every year, pianists of extraordinary caliber have graced the Newman Hall stage of Santa Rosa Junior College.
Amid the vast piano repertoire, there is a distinct nook that warms the heart of piano lovers: the world of piano ensembles, encompassing works ranging from intimate duets to thunderous two-piano/eight-hands repertoire, and even beyond. The history of piano ensembles reaches from the likes of Wolfgang Amadeus & Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart to Argerich & Freire and many more.
Best known as a super-virtuoso and champion of obscure and oft-neglected works, Marc-André Hamelin has also gained a solid reputation as a composer in recent years. Harking back to an old virtuoso tradition, Hamelin's San Francisco Performances recital on Wednesday featured a second half of his own witty, delightful compositions, capping an evening of spectacular pianism.
Yefim Bronfman, affectionately known as “Fima,” has long belonged to the pantheon of pianists. He tours the world to perform with its best orchestras, to wrangle such titanic concertos as those by Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartók. His Tuesday recital for Cal Performances provided a rare opportunity to hear him all alone.
It’s difficult to be an international competition winner. Not only is it phenomenally hard to win the competition itself, it’s even harder to maintain the level of celebrity years after the competition. It seems that for every major competition winner, at least 10 competitors fade into obscurity, washed away from judges’ and audiences’ memories.
Grażyna Bacewicz may not be a household name even among the cognoscenti of the 20th-century piano repertoire. She was well-known as a violinist and composer in her native Poland, and was an integral member of the underground music scene during World War II. She must have also been an excellent pianist, as she gave the premier performance of her own landmark Sonata II for piano.
The world of music for two pianists is a rarified one. Established as an art form in the Mozart family for its two talented children, then popularized by Schubert at coffeehouses in Vienna, and finally made immortal by Brahms, the two-piano/four-hands repertoire has occupied an important but often neglected corner in the vast richness of piano music.
