Guest User 9/11/19 Guest User 9/11/19

WLRN: Acclaimed Maestro Joins Frost School Of Music And Palm Beach Symphony

WLRN’s Alejandra Martinez and Chris Remington sat down with Maestro Gerard Schwarz for an interview covering his childhood, classical audiences, and technology’s influence on music.

WLRN
Alejandra Martinez and Chris Remington

Maestro Gerard Schwarz sat down for a radio interview with WLRN covering his childhood, classical audiences, and technology’s influence on music. To read and listen, click here.

Guest User 9/9/19 Guest User 9/9/19

Calgary Herald: Honens Festival 2019 – Nicolas Namoradze dazzles on piano

Hot on the heels of the week-long Banff International String Quartet Competition comes the Honens Festival 2019, the September festival of piano-related events that takes place in the years between competitions. As is frequently the case, one of the main events is a solo concert by the winner of the previous competition, in this instance pianist Nicolas Namoradze, now a resident of the New York area.

Calgary Herald
Kenneth Delong

Fundamentally, however, Namoradze wears his enormous technique lightly. He sits quietly, with mostly just his fingers in evidence. His playing is effortless to a degree that can hardly be imagined, and the focus of his performance is entirely upon musical values. And here the range of his imagination in the shaping of line, control of texture, and fleetness in execution takes one’s breath away.

Read more here.

Guest User 9/6/19 Guest User 9/6/19

The New Yorker: Goings On About Town – Lara Downes

The pianist Lara Downes honors Clara Schumann’s legacy with a concert of works by women that falls exactly on the legendary virtuoso and composer’s two-hundredth birthday.

The New Yorker
Oussama Zahr

The pianist Lara Downes honors Clara Schumann’s legacy with a concert of works by women that falls exactly on the legendary virtuoso and composer’s two-hundredth birthday.

Read more here.

Guest User 9/4/19 Guest User 9/4/19

The Strad: Silver Linings: Postcard from Vail

In spite of unforeseen obstacles, this year’s Bravo! Vail Music Festival proved to be a huge success.

The Strad

Charlotte Smith

In spite of unforeseen obstacles, this year’s Bravo! Vail Music Festival proved to be a huge success. Mozart, Haydn, and lots of rain were among the excitements of the six-week festival, as recounted by Charlotte Smith in The Strad. To read her full article, click here.

Guest User 8/28/19 Guest User 8/28/19

The New York Times: Clara Schumann, Music’s Unsung Renaissance Woman

September brings the 200th birthday of a composer whose name is familiar, but whose creative legacy deserves far greater recognition. Pianist Lara Downes gives her perspective.

The New York Times
Thomas May

September brings the 200th birthday of a composer whose name is familiar, but whose creative legacy deserves far greater recognition.

“When I was growing up, I first learned about Clara from reading about Robert Schumann,” the pianist Lara Downes said in an interview. The experience immediately resonated, she added, because she had found a classical music figure who looked like her, and could be a role model. As a teenage virtuoso, Ms. Downes determined to track down Clara’s music and played her Piano Concerto in A minor with a small regional orchestra in Alabama.

That was considered unusual at the time, in the mid-1990s. “I was fortunate to have teachers when I was really young who let me explore repertoire off the beaten path,” said Ms. Downes. On her new album, “For Love of You,” which intertwines music by Clara and Robert Schumann, she again explores her early fascination. She’s one of a growing number of performers who are finding inspiration in Clara Schumann’s legacy — and bringing it before a wider audience.

Read more here.

Guest User 8/27/19 Guest User 8/27/19

BBC Radio 3 In Tune: Marc-André Hamelin

Marc-André Hamelin visits the BBC Radio 3 studios to discuss his upcoming performance at the BBC Proms premiering Ryan Wigglesworth’s piano concerto and he performs his Toccata on L'Homme Armé among other works.

BBC Radio 3 In Tune

Listen here.

Guest User 8/23/19 Guest User 8/23/19

Minnesota Public Radio: Pianist Haochen Zhang offers a fresh take on Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev

Chinese American pianist Haochen Zhang became a gold medalist and a first prize winner of the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. At age 19, he was one of the youngest winners in the competition. Ten years later, Haochen has just released his second recording. It features Tchaikovsky's powerful Piano Concerto No. 1 and the work he performed in the final round of the Cliburn Competition: Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Minnesota Public Radio
Julie Amacher

Haochen Zhang — Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 / Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 (BIS)

"This is exactly 10 years after 2009, when I won the Cliburn. There's a personal feeling to this piece that I've been performing ever since.

"It's known for being the most technically challenging piano concerto, with the crazy cadenza in the first movement and nerve-racking second movement, and so forth.

Listen to Haochen’s interview with Julie Amacher here.

Guest User 8/19/19 Guest User 8/19/19

WFMT: Watch violinist Anne Akiko Meyers perform Bach and Gounod’s Ave Maria

Bach and Gounod's Ave Maria has always held a special place in violinist Anne Akiko Meyers' repertoire: she grew up playing the beloved work. "It's just one of the most beautiful pieces," Meyers shared during her August 16 Impromptu performance with pianist Marta Aznavoorian. Meyers visited WFMT ahead of her Sunday evening performance of Barber's Piano Concerto at Ravinia Festival with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

WFMT

Watch the performance below and read more here.

Guest User 8/16/19 Guest User 8/16/19

Washington Post: Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Debuts at Wolf Trap

With new sounds in the beginning of the concert to the tried and true of the Western canon, the Shanghai Symphony’s debut at Wolf Trap was a wonderful snapshot of its musical history and tradition.

Washington Post
Patrick D. McCoy

A balmy evening and an enthusiastic audience created the perfect setting Wednesday for the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s Wolf Trap debut. But there are things beyond the weather to consider for the orchestra’s appearance in the cultural backyard of our nation’s capital — repertoire among them. Conducted by Long Yu, the program began with “Wu Xing” by Chinese composer Qigang Chen. Based on the traditional pentatonic scale, the work took on an otherworldly quality. Divided into five short movements, the elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth were reflected in the instruments…

With new sounds in the beginning of the concert to the tried and true of the Western canon, the Shanghai Symphony’s debut at Wolf Trap was a wonderful snapshot of its musical history and tradition.

Read more here.

Guest User 8/9/19 Guest User 8/9/19

The Times: Mahan Esfahani – Bach Toccatas Review – Bold, Dynamic, and Stupendous

Mahan Esfahani’s goal in life, his biographical note says, is to “bring the harpsichord to the concert mainstream”. To further this, the Iranian-American musician commissions new pieces, which is certainly one way of taking the keyboard instrument that plucks its strings out of history’s cocoon and welcoming it into the modern world. The other way is to give such thunderously exciting performances of old repertoire that anyone with ears to hear will sit there with mouth agape.

The Times
Geoff Brown

Mahan Esfahani’s goal in life, his biographical note says, is to “bring the harpsichord to the concert mainstream”. To further this, the Iranian-American musician commissions new pieces, which is certainly one way of taking the keyboard instrument that plucks its strings out of history’s cocoon and welcoming it into the modern world. The other way is to give such thunderously exciting performances of old repertoire that anyone with ears to hear will sit there with mouth agape.

Read more here.