Letter From Vancouver: Ahead of VSO, Anne-Marie McDermott reflects on freedom won through discipline

This weekend, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott and Otto Tausk, the music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, unite to present Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos, in three concerts. Stir, an independent hub for local arts and culture, interviews McDermott ahead of the performances. She says:

“I’ve lived this repertoire for probably 40 years. I do feel like my personal voice with this repertoire is at a place of real authenticity, because I’ve spent so many years with this music. I have something to say about it. I love to play it as if it had just been written. This is really important to me in recording or in concerts.”

With tour stops and concerts filling up her 2026 calendar, McDermott looks forward to continuing her journey with Beethoven, and performing all five concertos with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields as part of her final season as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado. Since taking on the role in 2011, McDermott has led the festival to a series of landmark achievements, including doubling the number of performance engagements, staging its first opera, expanding its commitment to commissioning new orchestral works, and continuing its emphasis on education and community outreach. To say her contributions required discipline would be a vast understatement.

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¡Viva Beethoven en México, con Anne-Marie McDermott!

Anne-Marie McDermott returns to Nezahualcóyotl Hall, in Mexico City, this weekend to perform Beethoven's Piano Concertos 4 and 5, over three concerts, with the distinguished Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería. At the podium is conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, an old collaborator.

Ahead of the concerts, McDermott talked with Antonio Becerril Romo, from El Economista. “Carlos Miguel Prieto and I have worked together for 20 years in various places and with various orchestras in the United States," she told him. "I worked with him in Xalapa (Veracruz) and also with the Sinfónica de Minería. We have a deep trust, and I feel we are like-minded in the way we approach Beethoven's music.”

For the American pianist, the personality of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano concertos is so diverse that it offers many possibilities for working with them. “There's a lot of joy in these five concertos, and you have these moments where you hear Beethoven in a very good mood. Then you have the opposite, as if you were in the depths of emotion, and I love those challenges and rely on them when working with Carlos Miguel Prieto and the musicians of Minería.”

McDermott is currently recording, for the first time, Beethoven's cycle of five piano concertos with Prieto and the Sinfónica de Minería.

To read the full piece, click here.

To find out more about the concerts, click here.

Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott on “The Strad”: Commemorating 50 years since Shostakovich’s death with New Album

Anne-Marie McDermott releases today the new album Shostakovich on First Hand Records, the day before the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. One of the most dazzling American pianists of her generation, McDermott is joined by violist Paul Neubauer, praised as “a master musician” by The New York Times. The album is available on a DigiSleeve CD and on all streaming/download platforms. It consists of the Cello Sonata, Op. 40, in an arrangement for viola and piano; the recently discovered Impromptu, Op. 33; and the Viola Sonata, Op. 147, Shostakovich’s final work.

“Perhaps the anniversary is a fitting occasion for violist Paul Neubauer and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott to record the Viola Sonata, which was Shostakovich’s final work, completed just over one month before his death in 1975,” writes The Strad in today’s feature, also recounting the 2017 discovery of the short but delectable Impromptu.

Anne-Marie McDermott and Paul Neubauer at Tippet Rise Art Center, where the album was recorded (credit: Emily Rund)

“It was a huge honor and inspiration to record this album at the magnificent Tippet Rise Art Center with violist Paul Neubauer,” says McDermott. “The environment at Tippet Rise created the most magical and serene backdrop for such profound and powerful music. These two sonatas are such an important part of musical history and they reflect a universe far beyond our human understanding. Having the opportunity to record them with Paul, an artist and friend whom I admire so much, was an intense, magical journey.”

To read the full piece, click here.

To find out more about the album and order your copy, click here.

Photo credit: Tristan Cook

Anne-Marie mcdermott on the cover of pianist magazine

June 2025

There comes a point in life for most of us when we say, enough. We say goodbye to responsibilities that had begun to feel more obligations, and we either seek new challenges, or find joy in what really motivates us, or both. For Anne-Marie McDermott, that point is now.

McDermott on the cover of the June 2025 issue of Gramophone.

The challenge (and the joy) immediately in front of McDermott is Beethoven. She has, after all, been playing the concertos for the best part of 40 years. Now is the time to commit them to record: ‘a daunting but thrilling process,’ she tells me.

Read more here.