PIANIST JENNY Q CHAI “DISSECTS” MARCO STROPPA MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012

And again, I hope you can make it to my lecture-recital. Prepared by my advisor, amazing contemporary pianist Dr. Marilyn Nonken, from NYU.

Recently compared to pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and David Greilsammer by New York Times reviewers Anthony Tommasini and Vivien Schweitzer in reviews of her appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Le Poisson Rouge, pianist Jenny Q Chai (www.JennyChai.com) presents her lecture-recital “Dissecting Stroppa” – An Analysis of “Innige Cavatina” from Miniature Estrose by Marco Stroppa -- on Monday Dec. 3rd, 7:30 PM, at Miller Hall, Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Avenue, in New York City. Tel: 212 749 2802. Free Admission.

In this groundbreaking performance mixing academics with theater, Chai, wearing a doctor’s lab coat, will "dissect Stroppa" and in particular, his recent work, “Innige Cavatina” from the collection Miniature Estrose. Chai met the composer Marco Stroppa in Darmstadt, Germany five years ago, and she was immediately enthralled by his music. The two kept in touch musically, and Stroppa introduced Chai to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with whom she has studied for two years. This lecture-recital is taking place as part of Jenny Q Chai's D.M.A. thesis and dissertation on Stroppa.

For her debut at Zankel Hall, pianist Jenny Q Chai was praised by the New York Times' Anthony Tommasini for her "resourceful technique and sensitivity" as well as playing that is "admirable for its refinement and directness." Of her performance at the Keys to the Future Festival, Zachary Woolfe wrote, also in the New York Times: “Jenny Q Chai opened the concert playing two of Ligeti’s Études with rich tone and rhythmic clarity; especially strong was her “Cordes a vide.” Chai is an active pianist specializing in contemporary music, and in addition to Carnegie Hall, Jenny has played at New York venues such as Roulette, Symphony Space, the Stone and recently made her Chicago debut playing Schumann's Kreisleriana at the Dame Myra Hess Series. Recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissioning Project, first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporary Solo Piano Festival, and recipient of the DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Chai has premiered, most notably, Life Sketches and Five Pieces (for Jenny Q Chai) by Nils Vigeland, Intimate Rejection by Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang, Messiaen's Canteyodjaya (China premiere) and Marco Stroppa's Innige Cavatina (US premiere). Chai has also premiered “Marriage (Mile 58) Section F” from The Road by Frederick Rzewski in Ghent, Belgium, where she was given the Logos Award for the best performance of 2008. Chai played the first contemporary solo piano concert in China this June at the National Performing Arts Center in Beijing; and she recently had the privilege of introducing the concept of prepared piano to a Chinese audience, with the world premiere of Mallet Dance by John Slover, in Shanghai Concert Hall. She has recently lectured at NYU, Manhattan School of Music, and in Shanghai at Fu Dan University and at FaceArt Music InterNations.

Composer, researcher and professor, Marco Stroppa was born in Verona, Italy, and has composed for both acoustical instruments and new media. His repertoire includes works for concerts, one music drama, two radio operas and various special projects. He often groups several works around large cycles exploring specific compositional projects, such as a series of concertos for instrument and a spatialized orchestra or ensemble inspired by poems of W.B. Yeats, a book of Miniature Estrose, seven pieces for solo piano, a cycle of works for solo instrument and chamber electronic music inspired by poems of e. e. cummings, and two string quartets. He has worked as a composer and researcher, and teacher at IRCAM (where he was selected by Pierre Boulez to be the director of Musical Research starting in 1987), and he founded the composition and computer music workshop at the International Bartók Festival in Szombathély, Hungary. He taught composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and Lyon and since 1999 he has been full professor of composition and computer music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart. He studied at the Conservatories of Verona, Milan and Venice and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. Among Stroppa's significant pedagogical contributions is a masterclass in composition and interpretation with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris in 1988.

Jenny Q. Chai

A Piano, an iPad, a Mirror: Tools for a Modern Recital

Jenny Q Chai at Le Poisson Rouge
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
Published: November 5, 2012

In recent years the piano recital format has become more flexible. While many performers stick to the standard recipe of large-scale sonatas, multimovement pieces and oft-heard shorter works, others, like the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and David Greilsammer, might juxtapose a dozen smaller pieces by composers as varied as Cage and Chopin, Scarlatti and Stockhausen.

The Chinese-born 29-year-old American pianist Jenny Q Chai, who has studied with Mr. Aimard, is following the more eclectic path, as demonstrated by her program on Sunday evening at Le Poisson Rouge. She told the small audience that because of Hurricane Sandy she had barely been able to make it back to New York from China in time for the event.

Ms. Chai wore a pale blue gown with satin top and billowing skirt for the first half of the program and a slinky dress and black high-heeled boots for the second half. A small mirror tucked into the back of each dress reflected light against the wall. She used an iPad instead of paper scores, a fast-growing trend on the concert stage. (An increasing number of professional pianists have begun to use music in solo recitals, bucking the unfair dictum that pianists should perform only from memory.)

Ms. Chai opened her program with an atmospheric rendition of Satie’s “Three Gymnopédies,” followed by a thoughtfully conceived interpretation of Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces (Op. 11), about which the composer wrote that he had “no formal, architectural or other artistic intentions (except perhaps of capturing the mood of a poem), no aesthetic intentions.” Ms. Chai played two Scarlatti sonatas with a deft, light touch and concluded the first half of the program with the multilayered textures of “Innige Cavatina” by the Italian composer Marco Stroppa.

The second part of the program opened with John Cage’s “Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” in which she gently tapped rhythms on the closed piano lid and sang an enigmatic melody. The postintermission highlights were André Boucourechliev’s rambunctious “Orion III,” with its crashing chords, rumbling bass and misty interludes, and the Barcarole from Nils Vigeland’s “Life Sketches.” A descending motif in the upper register meshed with prepared piano notes in the lower register to create an eerie canvas.

The least convincing part of the program was the standard repertory, with stilted interpretations of Chopin’s Barcarole and “Child Falling Asleep,” the penultimate movement from Schumann’s “Kinderszenen.”

Ms. Chai sounded back in her element with the whispered vocals of the encore, Victoria Jordanova’s “Prayer.”

Pianist Jenny Q Chai at (le) Poisson Rouge

by Craig Brinker

The hurricane affected everyone in the New York/New Jersey area to some degree, and pianist Jenny Q Chai also felt the repercussions of the “superstorm.” After coming back from intermission, Chai said that this was the first time she had slept on couches for two consecutive nights in order to give a recital. The 25 or so people in attendance at(le) Poisson Rouge on Sunday evening were glad she was willing to do so: Her intensity and control throughout a program full of technically challenging repertoire was impressive. Chai has the enviable ability able push past the sometimes overwhelming amount of notes on the page to give the audience a comprehensive musical narrative.

Beginning the program was a rather cold and austere interpretation of Satie's Three Gymnopédies, followed by a performance of Schoenberg's Drie Klavierstuck that was both mesmerizing and powerful. Chai played the piece in exactly the manner it was intended, with emphatic gestures and some lovely usage of rubato. She also gave a scorching rendition of French composer André Bouchorechliev'sOrion III–full of fire, but never lacking in subtlety.

The rest of the program was technically precise and well-rounded. Chai was willing to sing, tap on the piano, and reach inside the instrument to provide any of the more eccentric colors required by the thornier compositions on the program. The ever-versatile performer selected two vocal works to perform, John Cage's The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs and, as an encore, Victoria Jordanova's Prayer. Her reedy voice entered into fervent recitation during Wonderful Widow,highlighting the eeriness of text.

The last two pieces on the program were two Barcarolles, one by American composer Nils Vigeland, the other more familiar of the two, by Chopin. Chai joked that when she decided to program these two pieces she didn't think that boating through lower Manhattan would be a distinct possibility. Her delicate touch served her well for the Vigeland work, although there was a slight rhythmic misstep in the middle of the piece. The Chopin sounded simple and elegant after all the complex and often harsh music from earlier in the program. If it was easier on the listener's ears, it was certainly easier on her fingers, too; she played it confidently and with great rhythmic control.

Both an intellectually and viscerally fulfilling performance, Chai made a good case for the continued importance of the avant-garde in 20th- and 21st-century music. Wishing the audience goodnight with a second encore, “Child Falling Asleep” from Schumann's Kinderszenen,audience members left the venue with a simple, yet strange, lullaby ringing in their ears.

Jenny Q. Chai ~ Reflections in Blue at LPR (A Review)

In Avant Garde, Classical Music, Concert reviews, Musicians, New Classical Music on November 10, 2012 at 5:25 pm

Reflections in Blue: Jenny Q. Chai at Le Poisson Rouge
Jenny Q. Chai, piano
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC
Sunday, Nov. 4th, 2012

Written by Scottie Roche

On Sunday, November 4th, I had the immense pleasure of leaving behind the troubles inflicted on New York City and much of the East Coast by Hurricane Sandy to be transported to that other realm we call Music, by way of Jenny Q Chai’s show at Le Poisson Rouge. Understandably, things had been tense of late with a pivotal national election looming and the city devastated by a storm that had left the very area of the concert’s venue in total darkness for a week — Le Poisson Rouge was without power until the night before the concert.

That the performance happened at all is a testament to the resilience of New York City and the perseverance of an endearing performer who though she had difficulty reaching NYC from China and had spent the last few nights sleeping on the couches of friends (which she assured us were very comfortable.) “The show must go on,” the old adage maintains. I’m glad it did.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was walking into when I saw the breadth of the program Ms. Chai had put together. Certainly I was intrigued, but curious as to how Satie would sit beside Schoenberg or what Scarlatti would sound like sandwiched between Stockhausen and the work of Marco Stroppa. As the performance proceeded I quickly learned to trust Ms. Chai’s smart programming and theatrical good sense.

Ms. Chai made a stunning entrance in an ebullient powder blue gown— its strapless ruched satin bodice a modern reflection of the gown’s more traditional organza skirt. Ms. Chai made the interesting choice of wearing an oval mirror on her back, while the front of her gown had a more forward-looking reflective waistline. The gown was a perfect synecdoche of the performance as a whole: the atonal complexity of Schoenberg’s harmonic language might seem an ocean away from the simplifying French modernity found in Satie’s Three Gymnopedies but in terms of the straightforward presentation of musical ideas, they make wonderful companion pieces. Powder blue streaks in Ms. Chai’s hair were a striking addition to the overall ambience of the evening. Programming the Scarlatti after the Schoenberg made Scarlatti feel quite fresh, the second sonata being a particular joy. Following Scarlatti was Marco Stroppa’s Innige Cavatina, an exciting piece that I’m happy to have come in contact with.

After intermission Ms. Chai entered with a change of wardrobe. She still sported a mirror at her back but her gown had been replaced with a dress that evoked an evening of fun in San Tropez. There was a subtle lighting change, adding warmth to the cooler preintermission atmosphere, but still blue.

I found the highlights of the program’s second half to be Cage’s “Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” with Ms. Chai’s warm chest voice accompanying the taps on the fallboard called for by the piece. Andre Boucourechliev’s “Orion III” was really amazing, it dazzled in the upper registers and was full of crash boom fireworks in the bass. Where it all came together for me was the Chopin Barcarolle which ended the program. I found Ms. Chai’s performance heartfelt and quite touching. It made me appreciate all the more the musical voyage through varying waters of style and century through which she navigated her audience. It is no small feat to present such a diverse program cohesively and Ms. Chai did so, splendidly. At the concert’s closing we were graced with an encore from Ms. Chai’s album New York Love Songs: Serbian born composer Victoria Jordanova’s “Prayer”. Hearing Ms. Chai’s whispering and sultry voice perform this song live was just the perfect top-off to a magical evening.

Scottie Roche is an opera-trained vocalist, social media arts consultant and a freelance writer. His website is Scottie Roche.com

5 Questions to Jenny Q Chai (pianist)

Posted by Andrew Tham
December 2, 2012, 10:30 pm

Jenny Q Chai is a pianist currently based in New York, where she is receiving her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She has premiered new works by composers such as John Slover, Niles Vigeland, and Ashely Fu-Tsun Wang. As an advocate of contemporary music, Chai serves on the board of New York City’s Ear to Mind organization which regularly promotes and programs new music. She also spends much of her time in Shanghai, where she founded FaceArt Music InterNations to help foster an exchange of contemporary music with China. I spoke to Chai about her work, including her latest project, “Dissecting Stroppa,” in which the pianist will deliver a theatrical lecture-recital on composer Marco Stroppa’s “Innige Cavatina.”

Is “Dissecting Stroppa” just a lecture-recital or do you consider the entire presentation a performance?

I definitely do consider the entire presentation a performance. A lecture-recital for me is all tied together, just as there’s a “-” between the two words. As long as a person steps on a stage to present something, to me that is a performance.

I’m also weaving a little bit of theatrical elements into a usually academic performance. Because for me, Stroppa, and my former teacher Pierre-Laurent Aimard—and many artists I’m sure—music is about the everything we experience.

Is the medium of the lecture recital something you’d like to see more frequently in recital halls, especially in regards to contemporary music? Similarly, do you believe we should we be talking about new music as much as playing it?

Yes, absolutely! I believe we should talk about all classical music–especially the connection between new music and old music–and not keep it caged in an Ivory Tower anymore. This is why I think [music critics] Alex Ross and Anthony Tomassinni are great! I’m also a fan of Charles Rosen, who I recently learned has formed a strong musical bond and showed deep interest in Stroppa’s Miniature Estrose (the piece I’ll be talking about is from this piano cycle). If only he wasn’t so ill now, he’d come.

Of course, there have been wonderful and great minds talking about music and philosophy throughout history. But to be able to talk and play consecutively is something only musicians can do and, I believe, should absolutely do.

As an active performer/lecturer in Shanghai, what is your view of their contemporary music scene? Do you think there is a general lack of coverage of new music in China?

The contemporary music scene in China is in its infancy now. Because I am from the very beginning of this infancy, from my personal experience, I see a big interest in Chinese people with a curiosity and challenging intellect to understand new music and the development of classical music. Classical music is not unpopular in China, mainly because people are so crazy about pianists!

On the psychoacoustic and cognitive level, music is something that crosses cultures. People certainly react very individually towards music, even in the same culture. But there are plenty of Chinese audiences who react to Western classical music in such a strong way that they don’t even know why. That is why I think it is so important to talk about music, old and new, to help the Chinese audience to identify their “vibrating frequency” with music. Also, this should be applied globally.

You’ve had various pieces written for you, including John Slover’s Mallet Dance for two prepared pianos which you premiered in Shanghai. As a commissioner of new works, do you ever feel like writing for the “unprepared” piano has become obsolete? Or are there still new sounds to discover on the instrument in its traditional state?

Oh, I think it is totally the opposite from obsolete. Preparing a piano is just a direction one can take, a style to choose to write. But it’s just like with any other form of music; can you say that a fugue has been exhausted? Or that character pieces have become obsolete? It really depends on the composer.

Plus, music composition is formed on so many levels. Besides the sound (which, say, is set to be prepared piano), the form of the piece, the musical language, the interactions between musical materials, the interplay between audience’s perceptions, and many more things can be explored infinitely. But sounds too, of course! John Slover has certainly found many amazingly new sounds which stirred up 1600 Chinese people that night. They loved it.

Many of your programs tend to mix old and new repertoire in interesting ways. Is there a particular piece from both the canon and the contemporary world that you’d like to someday pair together on a recital?

I think the next work I’d like to pair would be a Beethoven sonata. Because Beethoven has it all: the edge and the contemporary experimental spirit in him.

I am still searching for the right contemporary work to pair him with. I’m lucky to know so many of the best living and 20th century composers in person or in a very personal way. But let’s face it, Beethoven is a big match for everyone. However, I am convinced I have the choice already in my repertoire of contemporary composers. Just need to look deeper (into myself and the composers), contemplate a bit more in quiescence.

Jenny Q Chai will present “Dissecting Stroppa” on Monday, December 3, 2012 at the Manhattan School of Music’s Miller Hall. You can find out more about her at jennychai.com and composer Marco Stroppa at marco-stroppa.com.

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Simone Dinnerstein, Pamelia Kurstin and Alvin Epstein Set for Le Poisson Rouge, 11/19

Classical music and avant-garde cabaret merge when pianist Simone Dinnerstein, thereminist Pamelia Kurstin, and actor Alvin Epstein join forces for the first time on Monday, November 19 at 7:30pm at Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street, NYC). Together they journey through music by Bach, Mozart, and Chopin to Poulenc’s The Story of Babar the Elephant for piano and narrator, weaving together disparate elements in an unusual evening of poetry, music, improvisation, and narration. The unorthodox trio will repeat their program the next evening, Tuesday, November 20 at 7pm, as part of Dinnerstein’s Neighborhood Classics concert series at PS 321 (180 7th Avenue, Brooklyn), which raises funds for New York City public schools.

French composer Francis Poulenc’s musical work The Story of Babar the Elephant from 1940 is based on the 1931 children’s story of the same title by Jean de Brunhof. Poulenc initially improvised the piece while living outside of Paris to amuse the young family of his cousin, but eventually wrote it down when it proved to be very popular with many of the children in the neighborhood. Poulenc uses evocative colors to illustrate scenes in the narrated story, which is divided into distinct sections entitled “Lullaby,” “Nocturne,” “A Hymn,” “A March,” and more.

Having been identified as “an utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” by The New York Times, American pianist Simone Dinnerstein performs in concert halls around the globe. Her recordings have shot to the top of multiple “Best of” lists and the Billboard Classical Chart. In addition to her busy performing schedule, Dinnerstein is dedicated to her community and can also be found sharing her music in schools, community centers, and prisons. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son; she is managed by IMG Artists and is a Sony Classical Artist.

American theremin player Pamelia Kurstin is known to cross all boundaries of music performance, demonstrating “how to squeeze soul from an instrument you can't even touch” (TED). Well-known for her work on the theremin as well as the bass, Kurstin is supremely versed in jazz to rock in venues that range from the concert hall to the movie theatre. Kurstin currently makes her home in Vienna, performing with eccentric rockers Barbez among several others. Her most recent solo album, Thinking Out Loud, was released on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

Students Simone Dinnerstein and Kirill Gerstein listed in performances

Simone Dinnerstein

Simone Dinnerstein: 'The art I love—Piero della Francesca, for example—is always a little bit wrong, the dimensions aren't exact, the perspective isn't perfect, there's some distortion. And when it moves away from perfection, it becomes mysteriously human.' (Photo: Lisa Marie Mazzucco)

The ‘Majestic Originality’ Of Simone Dinnerstein

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, where she still lives, now as a wife and mother, Simone Dinnerstein burst into the classical consciousness in 2007 with the Telarc release of her self-financed (or rather, self- and friends-financed) recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations played on a 1903 Hamburg Steinway. She sent copies of the disc to a few critics and to some artist managers as well, and secured sponsorship for a 2005 concert at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. A New York Times listing of the show mentioned the unreleased Bach recording, and lo, a recording contract was forthcoming from Telarc, which released the album and reported it selling some 30,000 copies, which qualifies as "whopping" in the classical world. The disc topped Billboard's Classical Sales Chart in its first week of release and landed on a bevy of year-end Best Of lists. The immediate impact of this on Ms. Dinnerstein's life? She was able to buy the vintage Steinway.

In 2008 the pianist recorded a program of Bach, Beethoven, and Philip Lasser at Berlin's Kammermusiksaal (a venue about half the size of the adjacent Berlin Philharmonic hall), and released The Berlin Concert to further acclaim, albeit with some gripes about the performance of the Bach (including the Goldberg Vairation 13) and Beethoven pieces, but fairly unanimous thumbs-ups for the interpretations of Lasser's "Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach."

Simone Dinnerstein on her new album, Bach: A Strange Beauty: ‘There’s something about Bach’s music that when I hear it I feel clean. There’s something about the depth of his writing that reflects like a crystal all different kinds of light. Bach’s music feels like it comes from the ground and goes to the sky.’

Early last year Ms. Dinnerstein jumped to the recording big time by signing with Sony Classical, and now has returned with another Bach odyssey, titled Bach: A Strange Beauty. WQXR-FM in New York made it the station's Album of the Week a week before it was released and the critical raves are starting to pile up again.

The Independent's (U.K.) Michael Church was skeptical of Ms. Dinnerstein's Goldberg Variations effort, and he began a recent profile of her in the January 16 issue of The Independent by referencing his reservations about the disc:

As it happens, I was one of the few critics not to like the CD unreservedly, and when I ask her reaction to my strictures on her opening tempi in BBC Music Magazine, she laughs: "That's OK. If everybody loves you, there must be something wrong." But her interpretation is evolving all the time, she adds, and her speeds are now sometimes quite different.

Nevertheless, Church grants the debut disc's "incontrovertible" proof of "the majestic originality" of the artist's vision, and adds, "the same holds good for her new CD, Bach: A Strange Beauty, which consists of a suite, some chorale arrangements, and two concertos."

Church: "The title comes from Sir Francis Bacon: 'There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.' For Simone Dinnerstein, this is a defining quality of Bach's music: 'I always think of it as being about symmetry and structure gone slightly awry. He throws in something unexpected all the time. Most of his music is made up of sequences, harmonic progressions, ascending or descending. You expect it to be the same in each measure, but in one of them he will invert the voices, or have a slightly different harmony, and because it's not an exactly repeated sequence it throws off the balance of the phrase, which becomes asymmetrical. Baroque is all about perfect form, and this is un-Baroque.' Dinnerstein links this to the paintings she copied as a child: 'The art I love—Piero della Francesca, for example—is always a little bit wrong, the dimensions aren't exact, the perspective isn't perfect, there's some distortion. And when it moves away from perfection, it becomes mysteriously human.' So it is with Bach: she even likes what Jacques Loussier does with his music.

"But she's by no means limited to this composer. The CD she released last year includes an extraordinary account of Beethoven's final Piano Sonata, where visionary beauty alternates with an energetic jazziness, and her chamber music activities now include a double act with the folk singer Tift Merritt. And she's unapologetic about the smallness of her solo repertoire, the by-product of her passionate thoroughness. 'Even now, playing the Goldbergs is a lot of work. Before a performance, I need to clear my head of everything else for two weeks. It's like a marathon: you need to build up your mental and physical strength.'"

Since 1996, Ms. Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing Classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra coinciding with her BSO debut.

Simone Dinnerstein performs at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, Jessup, MD, October 23, 2009, a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra coinciding with the pianist’s BSO debut.

In addition, Ms. Dinnerstein has founded P.S. 321 Neighborhood Concerts, an evening concert series at the Brooklyn public elementary school that her son attends and where her husband teaches fifth grade. The concerts, which feature musicians Ms. Dinnerstein has admired and collaborated with during her career, is open to the public and raises funds for the school's Parent Teacher Association. The musicians performing donate their time and talent to the program.

Last month she performed a series of concert events (in Durham, NC; Davis, CA; and San Francisco, concluding with a February 3 concert in Tallahassee, FL) with country-folk artist Tift Merritt titled Night. Commissioned by Duke (University) Performances, the work featured new music by Patty Griffin, Brad Mehldau and Philip Lasser with arrangements by violinist Jenny Scheinman. In addition to this material, both artists perform their own solo sets. Writing at The Thread, the Duke Performances' Blog, Brian Howe notes: "Merritt and Dinnerstein are undertaking something audaciously eclectic-rangy in its components, uncompromising in its pointed emotionality. The program they'll present absorbs an amalgam of composers, arrangers, lyricists and contexts; poetry and art-music and popular song. It reads like a high-minded yet passionate—indeed, verging on sentimental—dialogue between disparate sections of the pop-art continuum, a multivalent interrogation of the nocturnal in all its shadings and forms. "

At home in New York, Ms. Dinnerstein is continuing Neighborhood Classics (formerly Neighborhood Concerts), a concert series open to the public and hosted by New York City public schools. The musicians performing donate their time, and ticket sales benefit the schools' Parent Teacher Associations. The series began last year at PS 321, the Brooklyn public school the artist's son attends and where her husband teaches. (Simone also attended the school, and her mother taught there.) This year, the series expands to include PS 142 on the Lower East Side.

Daughter of painter Simon Dinnerstein, Ms. Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She was a winner of the Astral Artist National Auditions, and has twice received the Classical Recording Foundation Award. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio, the distinguished pupil of Artur Schnabel.

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Simone Dinnerstein Hears Things Differently'

excerpts from WQXR-FM Album of the Week Review, January 25, 2011

BACH: A STRANGE BEAUTY
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Kammerorchester Staatskapelle Berlin
Sony Classical
Available at www.amazon.com

We tend to think of J.S. Bach as the most logical of all composers. His formal rigor drives the 32 Goldberg Variations and the 48 preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier, among other precisely balanced creations. Simone Dinnerstein hears things differently.

On Bach: A Strange Beauty, she goes looking for the expected patterns, the off-kilter rhythms and the mysterious and hyper-expressive sounds in the composer's music. This collection contains three transcriptions of his Chorale Preludes, two Keyboard Concertos and one English Suite.

Simone Dinnerstein plays Variation 13 and discusses Bach’s Goldberg Variations. A clip from Michael Lawrence’s film, BACH & Friends.

The Brooklyn-based Dinnerstein is no stranger to pushing the envelope when it comes to Bach interpretation. In 2007, she achieved an unexpected breakthrough after teaching herself and recording the Goldberg Variations. Telarc picked up the album and it became one of the year's biggest success stories. The originality of her interpretation surprised (and, in a few cases, puzzled) many who were familiar with this work.

On Dinnerstein's Sony debut, she continues her quest to draw out unexpected qualities in Bach. Her penchant for shading effects and for contrasts in dynamics is particularly found in the Prelude arrangements. A haze of pedaling envelops Wilhelm Kempff's arrangement of Nun freut euch while a Schubertian sense of line and rubato dominates Busoni's arrangement of Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ.

Dinnerstein plays up the asymmetries and off-kilter elements of the concertos, especially the opening of the D-minor Concerto with its quirky offbeats. The F-minor Concerto, meanwhile, has a kind of romantic grandeur. The English Suite No. 3 in G minor is leaner and more straightforward, though the dynamics—whispered pianissimos and ferocious fortes—remind us that this is a Dinnerstein performance.

Simone Dinnerstein

The American pianist Simone Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio, the distinguished pupil of Artur Schnabel. For two summers, she was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. Dinnerstein has fast been gaining attention as a commanding and charismatic artist, and as one of the most compelling women pianists performing today. She has enjoyed critical acclaim in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gramophone Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, O The Oprah Magazine, Slate.com, The American Record Guide, and Fanfare. She has made live appearances on National Public Radio's Performance Today and WNYC's New Sounds and Soundcheck. Since being featured by The New York Times as an artist "poised for a breakthrough" in September 2006, she has performed to a sold-out audience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's prestigious Accolades series, debuted with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein, and signed an exclusive recording contract with Telarc International. Recent highlights include her debut recital at the Salle Cortot in Paris and recitals at Philadelphia's Bach Festival and the Copenhagen Music Festival. Dinnerstein received the Classical Recording Foundation Award for 2006 and 2007 for her recordings with cellist Zuill Bailey of Beethoven's complete works for piano and cello on the Delos label.

Simone Dinnerstein, piano
July 15, 2012 at 4 pm

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826
Intermission
English Suite No. 3 in G minor, BWV 808
Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825
 

Simone Dinnerstein has been called “a throwback to such high priestesses of music as Wanda Landowska and Myra Hess,” by Slate magazine. The New York-based pianist gained an international following because of the remarkable success of her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which she raised the funds to record. Released in 2007 on Telarc, it ranked No. 1 on the US Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many “Best of 2007” lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Her follow-up album, The Berlin Concert, also gained the No. 1 spot on the Chart.

Simone Dinnerstein has been called “a throwback to such high priestesses of music as Wanda Landowska and Myra Hess,” by Slate magazine. The New York-based pianist gained an international following because of the remarkable success of her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which she raised the funds to record. Released in 2007 on Telarc, it ranked No. 1 on the US Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many “Best of 2007” lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Her follow-up album, The Berlin Concert, also gained the No. 1 spot on the Chart.

Dinnerstein's performance schedule has taken her around the world since her triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2005 to venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London's Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals, and the Stuttgart Bach Festival; and performances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Kristjan Järvi's Absolute Ensemble, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony.

Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to coincide with her BSO debut. 

Dedicated to her community, in 2009 Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics, a concert series open to the public hosted by New York City public schools. The series features musicians Dinnerstein has met throughout her career, and raises funds for the schools. The musicians performing donate their time and talent to the program. Neighborhood Classics began at PS 321, the Brooklyn public elementary school that her son attends and where her husband teaches fifth grade. Artists who have performed on the series include Richard Stoltzman, Maya Beiser, Pablo Ziegler, and many more. Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She was a winner of the Astral Artist National Auditions, and has twice received the Classical Recording Foundation Award. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio.

Simone Dinnerstein lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son. She is managed by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists and is a Sony Classical artist.

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Simone Dinnerstein

October 2009 News
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Debut Concerts

Thursday, October 22 at 8pm & Sunday, October 25 at 3pm
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore
Friday, October 23 at 8pm
Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College
Saturday, October 24 at 8pm
Music Center at Strathmore
For details visit www.bsomusic.org

Simone will make her debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Louis Langrée, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. The program also includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 and Haydn's Symphony No. 44, "Funeral."

Beethoven Complete Works for Piano & Cello with Zuill Bailey

Simone's recording of the complete works by Beethoven for piano and cello with cellist Zuill Bailey is now available, and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Classical Chart!

Simone and Zuill performed for an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the album release concert for the 2-disc set at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York's West Village on August 27. Read about the concert in The New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

For links to purchase the album, visit www.simonedinnerstein.com/music.php

ALSO THIS MONTH:
Recital presented by the Berkshire Bach Society
Saturday, October 3 at 8pm
Bard College at Simon's Rock; Great Barrington, MA
Visit www.berkshirebach.org for more information.

Program:
J.S. Bach: French Suite No. 5
J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto No. 1
J.S. Bach: Well-tempered Clavier II (selections)
Philip Lasser: Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach

With the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra
Friday, October 16 at 7:30pm
Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox; Spokane, WA
Visit www.gonzaga.edu for more information

Simone will perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra, led by Kevin Hekmatpanah.

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January 2010 News
PS 321 Neighborhood Concert: Bach and Beyond
Sunday, January 10, 2pm
PS 321's Auditorium | 180 Seventh Ave.| Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: $15 at www.ps321.org

Simone and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) will perform on the PS 321 Neighborhood Concerts series, which Simone founded at the Brooklyn public school that her son attends and where her husband teaches (which she also attended growing up!). Simone's program with ACME will include Bach's Keyboard Concerto in F minor, selections from Dvorak's Piano Quintet, and music by New York composer Phil Kline. Time Out New York calls ACME "one of New York's brightest new music indie-bands." The ensemble has performed at BAM, Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, Le Poisson Rouge, and many other venues in New York.

All ticket sales benefit PS 321's Parent Teacher Association.

Live Broadcast on WQXR-FM from The Greene Space Friday, January 29, 7pm
The Greene Space | 44 Charlton St. | New York, NY
Ticket information will be available at www.thegreenespace.org.
Live broadcast on WQXR-FM and www.wqxr.org.

Simone and ACME will preview their January 30 all-Bach concert at Miller Theatre the night before, live on WQXR. The performance will include selected Preludes and Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; Bach's Keyboard Concerto in F minor; selections from The Art of the Fugue, and some surprises! Be sure to tune in.

Miller Theatre: Bach and the Concerto
part of the Bach and the Baroque Series
Saturday, January 30, 8pm
Miller Theatre at Columbia University | 2960 Broadway at 116th St. | New York, NY
Ticket: $35 at www.millertheatre.com

Simone will perform selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; ACME will perform selections from The Art of the Fugue arranged for string quartet, flute, clarinet, bass, harmonium, and vibraphone; and together they will perform Bach's Keyboard Concerti in D minor and F minor. Simone explains why she chose to perform Bach with a new music ensemble, saying, "Bach's music is timeless, and I wanted to play with musicians who would bring a fresh voice to it - who would very naturally be included to play his music in a way that reflects the current times, our current sound world. I think ACME is a great fit for this program."

ALSO THIS MONTH:
El Paso Pro-Musica
January 14-17, 2010
El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM
Visit www.eppm.org for the complete concert schedule and ticket information.

Simone and ACME travel to El Paso and Las Cruces to perform music by Bach and Dvorak in four concerts presented by El Paso Pro-Musica.

Chandler Center for the Arts
Saturday, January 23, 7:30pm
Chandler Music Hall | 71-73 Main Street | Randolph, VT
Tickets: $30 at www.chandler-arts.org

Simone and ACME present their all-Bach program at Chandler Music Hall. The program includes selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; The Art of the Fugue arranged for string quartet; and Bach's Keyboard Concerti in D minor and F minor.

Sony Classical Signs American Pianist Simone Dinnerstein

Debut Album To Be Announced Spring 2010
'The pianists' pianist of Generation X' - The New Yorker

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Classical is pleased to announce the signing of an exclusive agreement with American pianist Simone Dinnerstein. Known for her intelligent but emotive performances, Dinnerstein has been called "…a phenomenon in the world of classical music" by The Washington Post. The New York-based pianist gained an international following because of the remarkable success of her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which she raised the funds to record. Released in 2007, it ranked No. 1 on Billboard's Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was included on many "Best of 2007" lists such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Her follow-up album, The Berlin Concert, also gained the No. 1 spot on the chart. Dinnerstein's first album for Sony Classical will be announced in Spring 2010.

"I am honored to be joining Sony Classical to continue what has been a lifelong dream – recording and performing repertoire to which I feel closely connected," said Dinnerstein. "Sony Classical is an established voice in the recording industry, but one that is looking toward innovation and leading the field into the 21st century. I am extremely proud to be a part of their continued legacy and bright future."

Bogdan Roscic, President of Sony Classical, said: "Like so many in our business, I marveled at Simone's recording of the Goldberg Variations and have wanted to produce records with her ever since. When I met her, the thoughtfulness and care with which she approaches her recording projects impressed me enormously. The modern piano has been called a machine-age beast, and Simone is taming it in a unique way, to a level of intimacy and expressivity all her own. I am thrilled that she has decided to become a Sony Classical artist."

Dinnerstein's performance schedule has taken her around the world since her triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2005, performing Bach's Goldberg Variations. Some of her recent and upcoming performances include her recital debuts at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival; as well as debut performances with the Dresden Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Kristjan Jarvi's Absolute Ensemble, the Tokyo Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, and the Minnesota Orchestra. In New York, she has performed on the People's Symphony series at Town Hall, on Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, and in three sold-out recitals at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is also a frequent performer at (Le) Poisson Rouge in the West Village. In July 2009, she made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, playing Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Since 1996, Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing Classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to coinciding with her BSO debut.

In addition, Dinnerstein has founded P.S. 321 Neighborhood Concerts, an evening concert series at the Brooklyn public elementary school that her son attends and where her husband teaches fifth grade. The concerts, which feature musicians Dinnerstein has admired and collaborated with during her career, is open to the public and raises funds for the school's Parent Teacher Association. The musicians performing donate their time and talent to the program.

Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She was a winner of the Astral Artist National Auditions, and has twice received the Classical Recording Foundation Award. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio, the distinguished pupil of Artur Schnabel. Simone Dinnerstein (pronounced See-MOHN-uh Dinner-STEEN) lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son.

View performance videos & interviews with Simone Dinnerstein: www.simonedinnerstein.com/look.php

Simone Dinnerstein's complete concert calendar: www.simonedinnerstein.com/tour.php

RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, deutsche harmonia mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz are labels of Sony Masterworks. For email updates and information regarding RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, deutsche harmonia mundi, Masterworks Broadway and Masterworks Jazz artists, promotions, tours and repertoire, please visit www.sonymasterworks.com.

SOURCE Sony Classical

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Robin Freund-Epstein

Robin Freund-Epstein attended Oberlin College and subsequently completed both her B.M. and M.M. degrees at Manhattan School of Music studying with Solomon Mikowsky.

Ms. Freund-Epstein’s training also includes the Tanglewood Summer Institute and private studies with Sascha Gorodnitzki and Fiorella Canin. As a concerto soloist she has performed with the Bay Atlantic Symphony, Atlantic Chamber Orchestra and Brooklyn Heights Orchestra. She was a member of the Riverside Piano Quartet and Olmsted Trio and has appeared as a guest artist with the American Chamber Players. As a winner of the Artists International competition she played a Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1999.

Manhattan School of Music Precollege faculty since 1987.

rfreund-epstein@msmnyc.edu

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New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra

Fri, Feb 8 at 8 pm
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space
$20; Member, Student, Senior $14; Child $12

MUSIC

More Major minors: Two more giants of the symphonic repertoire - both in C minor: Winner of many top prizes at renowned competitions, Russian-born pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine performs Rachmaninov's beloved Piano Concerto No. 2; conductor Guerguan Tsenov concludes the program with Brahms magnificent Symphony No. 1.

The Dallas Morning News said Russian-American pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine, "played Brahms' Op. 117 Intermezzi more beautifully, more movingly, than I've ever heard them. At once sad, tender and noble, this was playing of heart-stopping intimacy and elegance."

Highlights of the upcoming season include a return to Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, chamber music concerts with violinist Mikhail Simonyan at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Bremen Musikfest, debut appearances with the West Virginia Orchestra, Flint Symphony, and the Bay-Atlantic Symphony and performances of "Between the Keys," a program of complete solo piano works of John Corigliano.

Mr. Moutouzkine has toured throughout Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Italy, and North and South America, as well as in China and Japan. In recent seasons, he has appeared as soloist with the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Television Orchestra of Spain, Cleveland Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic, Valencia Philharmonic, the Gran Canaria and Tenerife symphonies in the Canary Islands, the National Symphonic Orchestra of Panama, the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra of the Czech Republic. His recital in London's Wigmore Hall was hailed by International Piano magazine as "grandly organic with many personal and pertinent insights offering a thoughtful balance between rhetoric and fantasy…technically dazzling." Mr. Moutouzkine's performance of Chopin Études in the Great Hall of the Moscow conservatory was recorded live and released on the Classical Music Archives label in Russia.

The winner of many renowned competition awards, Mr. Moutouzkine claimed top prizes at the Walter W. Naumburg, Cleveland, Montreal, and Arthur Rubinstein international competitions, among others. He is a winner of Astral Artists' 2009 National Auditions, and The Philadelphia Inquirer said of his Philadelphia recital dubut under Astral's auspices, "Moutouzkine's kind of talent has an impact on his surroundings…[he gives] clarity to his musical choices, but heat to the conviction behind them," and went on to say that his is "a career that will matter." Recent highlights include debuts at the Great Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic in Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berliner Symphoniker, a chamber music concert in Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse with the Jasper String Quartet, an appearance with The Philadelphia Orchestra on its "Beyond the Score" series, performances in Colombia, a recital in Puerto Rico, and recitals throughout Asia, including appearances in the Beijing Concert Hall and Japan's Yokohama Hall. The Greenwich Citizen claimed of his recent debut with the Greenwich Symphony in Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 that Mr. Moutouzkine is "poised to join the pantheon of greats…outperforming even the composer himself." Following the success of a performance of his own solo piano transcription of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, performed live alongside specially commissioned animation entitled Who Stole the Mona Lisa?, he opened Astral's 2012-2013 season with a repeat performance in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, to rave reviews.

Alexandre Moutouzkine holds a Master's degree and post-graduate degree from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky. He holds undergraduate degrees from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover and Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Music Academy. He is currently a teaching associate at the Manhattan School of Music where he also received a 2012 Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine: Crisp, bright, clean - and finger-busting

September 27, 2011
By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic

The kind of well-groomed, well-tempered talents that arrive at the Kimmel Center are in some ways the best recommendation for refreshingly less-mediated recitals of the sort given Sunday by pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine eight blocks west at the Trinity Center for Urban Life. This young Russian pianist (just a hair over 30), presented by Astral Artists, programmed too much music (Corigliano, Schumann, Scriabin) and talked (however engagingly) at too much length. Yet he offered much to take home - even if, at the time, one struggled to take it in.

The concert also felt like the beginning of a career that will matter. Whether or not he reaches Lang Lang's global heights, Moutouzkine's kind of talent has an impact on his surroundings. The center was packed to the rafters with age groups at both extremes - thanks to his recitals at schools and senior facilities - plus the Russian community. And while his program was a finger-buster, it wasn't flashy; much of the challenge was sifting through vast thickets of notes to find the music's central and most essential ideas - one reason Scriabin's collection of little monsters known as the Etudes, Op. 8, was Moutouzkine's finest achievement.

One couldn't expect the insights that come with decades of living with this music, but Moutouzkine offered musical traffic management of the highest order. His technique is crisp, his sonority bright and clean, but without the eerie ease of Marc Andre Hamelin, giving clarity to his musical choices, but heat to the conviction behind them.

Scriabin's music itself vacillates between Chopin on steroids and a more mature manner that points to the composer's concise later piano sonatas. Even his best melodic ideas are so elaborately framed that you can miss what the framing is for; Moutouzkine made each etude a glimpse into a larger individual world. No. 11 was a detailed soliloquy, while No. 2 felt like an exploration in pure sound. By the end, the piano was significantly out of tune, and Moutouzkine probably could have used an ice pack. Yet he played two encores.

No doubt he earned most audience points with Schumann's beloved Fantasy in C, which began with an explosion of notes - mainly because this is a pianist who lets you hear them all. The composer's mental instability usually seems a million miles away amid this music's youthful extravagance. But rather than creating a warm blanket of sound with his left hand, Moutouzkine maintained an honest clarity that let you feel the fissures in the piece's emotional foundation. His soft playing wasn't just pretty, it was deep.

John Corigliano made an uncharacteristically unbuttoned appearance in the recently composed, three-movement Winging It. Though Corigliano's typical starting point is structure, this piece is mostly improvisations that he recorded and transcribed. You don't need to know that to hear the difference from his other music. Moutouzkine revealed a fascinating recurrence of archaic cadences, some sounding like traditional hymns, others like Renaissance polyphony. I wonder if the composer saw that coming. I certainly didn't.

Read more

Alexandre Moutouzkine

Dear Vera (Wilson, Astral Artist),

Alex was superb!!!! Thank you for sending him to us! What an amazing technique and what an amazing program. Everyone I talked to was amazed at how much energy he had because each piece he played had so much technical brilliance, which he performed so effortlessly. His lyrical side was also so touching. I have honestly never heard the last movement of the Waldstein played so ethereally and so magically. He cast a spell over us all with that last movement which I will never forget.

Alex's master class was also excellent and very informative to everyone. I liked how he would work very carefully with each student, yet also make points directed towards the entire class. At one time he had us all clapping and trying to do triplet vs. duplet rhythms at the same time! It was fun. I, myself, came away with several excellent pointers that I will reiterate to my students today.

He was also most gracious, warm and pleasant and had a lot of fun with my students and others that he met. We would love to have him play here again in a few years.

Again, thank you so much for giving us a chance to hear and meet this wonderful artist. It's been a pleasure to work with you and we're looking very much forward to meeting Di Wu and hearing her recital and experiencing her master class in April.

Gratefully,
Fritz

*Fritz C. Gechter, D.M.A*

A Musical Mélange at CMI

Alexandre Moutouzkine, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou and others make a night to remember at Chamber Music International.
by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs
published Monday, February 27, 2012

Richardson — A 100 years or so ago, concert programs were quite different from the carefully programmed ones we attend today. Back then, there would be a jumble of a couple of movements from a symphony, a piano concerto, someone would sing a few arias, a quintet would play and a pianist would knock out some showpieces. The concert the Chamber Music International presented in Saint Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson on Saturday brought this to mind.

There was Beethoven's B flat Major Piano Trio (Op. 11), followed by Arthur Honegger's Rhapsody for flute, clarinet, violin and piano. Then a violinist played two unaccompanied works: Bach's Preludio from his E Major Partita (BWV 1006) and a rarity, Eugene Ysaye's bizarre Sonata for Jacques Thibaud in A Minor, Op. 27 No. 2. The program ended with César Franck's Piano Quintet. A very 19th century evening, indeed.

What was very 21st century was the consistently high level of the performance and technical mastery from all involved.

Russian pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine has been a local favorite ever since he won the Special Award for Artistic Potential at the 11th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. All of his considerable musical skills, especially his subtle phrasing, were on display. Flawless technique is expected these days, but Moutouzkine makes perfection look easy. In the Beethoven trio, the Honegger Rhapsody and the Franck Quintet, he was constantly in contact with the players, turning his head frequently to watch first violinist Ik-Hwan Bae. Many fine pianists don't do this in chamber music, mostly because they are so tied to the score. Moutouzkine has the score in front of him for reference only and can thus indulge in the luxury of making eye concert with the players throughout the performance. This is just one of many things that set him apart.

Flutist James Scott and clarinetist John Scott (the program doesn't mention any relation) only played the Honegger but, with the sensitive contributions of violinist Ik-Hwan Bae and Moutouzkine at the piano, it was a standout performance. This is a work that is rarely played but deserves more exposure. It is luscious in its post-Debussy chromatic language and the group played it beautifully.

The excellent violist Susan Dubois joined Bae, Hou, Lewis and Moutouzkine for an ardent reading of the Franck. This is passionate music that needs to be played in the hot fever of the romantic spirit and that they certainly did. Although they never crossed the line into blatant sentimentality, they certainly wrung every bit of ardor and fervent romanticism out of every note.

EL NUEVO SIGLO BOGOTA – February 17, 2012

THE TELLURIC STRENGTH OF ALEXANDRE MOUTOUZKINE

At first sight, Alexandre Moutouzkine seems harmless, almost a little shy, with the kind of shyness that audiences like.

But don’t be fooled by appearances, because once he sits down at the piano, his attitude changes and so does his physiognomy. And the greatness of this pianist emerges according to the circumstances at hand.

Last Sunday, on the fourth recital dedicated to Beethoven’s 32 sonata cycle, the great artist revealed himself to be up to the task of the last work, the Appassionata: he slightly curved his back, approached the keyboard like a beast before its prey, and performed the first chords of the Allegro assai with supreme delicacy. Then, following the markings of the score, he launched into the fortissimo which determines the dramatic character of the work, flooding the hall with a sonority that was frankly telluric but also absolutely controlled. Of special note was Moutouzkine’s ability to control the changing sonorities of the first movement, a quality that he maintained in the second movement, Andante con moto. Here Beethoven asks the interpreter to double the tempo of each successive variation, an octave higher, a lesson in technique and expression. Of course, he reserved all his artillery for the final movement, Allegro ma non troppo, which was the crowning glory of a concert that the audience justly appreciated and expressed with roaring and thundering applause. Alexandre Moutouzkine had earned this appreciation from the first notes.

He opened his performance at a very high level with the Sonata in C Major Op. 2 No. 1, in which the second movement, Adagio, shone with a solemnity that clearly announces the depth of spirit of the sonatas which follow.

The first part of the program closed with the first of the sonatas in the third style, No. 28 en A Major, Op. 101 which does not portray the vehemence of the Appassionata. Instead, this sonata demands depth and intimacy, a characteristic of the last five sonatas; within the framework of an exceptional interpretation, Moutouzkine reached new heights in the two final movements which joined as one.

The second half of the program opened with the Sonata No. 4 which Beethoven himself named the Grand Sonata, which of the 32 is the most extensive, after Hammerklavier; it was brilliantly performed. Moutouzkine overcame the legendary difficulties of the Molto allegro e con brio, and exhibited the greatness of the masterful Largo con espressione. The third movement, Allegro, was performed with imagination while the final Rondo sounded fresh and at times, somewhat mysterious.

Philadelphia Inquirer

As soloists, splendid; together, superlative
November 08, 2011|By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic

Though Astral Artists is in the business of helping promising young talents be all they can be, one can never be sure what form that might take. And while violinist Kristen Lee probably would have given a substantial recital whatever the circumstances Sunday at the Trinity Center for Urban Life, the breakthrough aspect was her duo partnership with pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine.

No pairing since violinist Soovin Kim and pianist Jeremy Denk has exhibited the kind of synergy with which the two both supported and competed with each other in the best possible way. Often, they seemed bent on topping each other, not with sparkle and brilliance (though such qualities were certainly there) but with specificity of insight and of characterization in a big, varied program of Poulenc, Adams, Ysaye, Messiaen, and Brahms.

Moutouzkine's September recital and Lee's performance of Ysaye's Sonata No. 3 for solo violin proved they're wonderful on their own. But as a team, they both become more individualistic - perhaps because they allow each other that extra degree of freedom?

As a result, one's superficial expectations of any given piece were upended. Though Poulenc's Sonata for Violin and Piano is said to reflect his horror over World War I, one rarely hears that element amid the composer's trademark light touch. But the lyrical slow movement took on unusual intensity of concentration with Lee, while Moutouzkine found pockets of dark coloring elsewhere that put everything around it in a different perspective.

The meditative repose that lies beneath most of what Messiaen wrote came with vital tempos and a strong pulse in his Theme et Variations. Though unlike anything I've ever heard, the performance convinced you this is how it should always be. John Adams' Road Movies, a lighter-weight work full of lots of lyrical gestures that reach upward, seemingly to an endless landscape, had all the necessary vitality but also found that one note in any given passage that makes the difference between music that's extremely engaging and seriously witty.

The second theme group of the Brahms Violin Sonata No. 3 first movement had a liquid quality that transcended the music's bar lines while maintaining strict control over the momentum, and moved from there into a performance in which every passage had an insistent distinction: Ideas built on one another, but each had a strictly separate message.

Lee, who'll be featured in Astral's Dec. 3 Philadelphia Brahms Festival, was on her own with the Ysaye sonata, a piece with so much surface dazzle you could easily assume that's all there is. Not with her. The music felt so substantial as to withstand comparisons with similarly unaccompanied works by Bach.

A word about the encore, which was Debussy's Clair de Lune. Nothing seemed special at the outset, but the performance (as well as the rest of the concert) was dedicated to Astral's recently deceased artistic director, the beloved Julian Rodescu. One can laud him for his achievements, but the Lee/Moutouzkine performance was an ideal tribute; it went well beyond the piece's pictorial qualities and became a lullaby that showed just what depths of emotion music can contain without the outlines becoming distorted. Few people in the community will be missed as much as Rodescu. But consider what he inspired here.

Stamford Advocate

Shouting ovation for Greenwich Symphony
Jeffrey Johnson
Published 9:09 p.m., Monday, April 16, 2012

Ever hear of a shouting ovation? In the classical music world standing ovations are not uncommon. But people shouted when Alexandre Moutouzkine finished the final chords of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto in his performance with the Greenwich Symphony in Dickerman Hollister Auditorium at Greenwich High School Saturday. Yes, there were scattered "Bravos," but most reacted more viscerally. They shouted and hooted. Then, with noise filling the hall, they stood.

Few pianists can play the Rachmaninoff third piano concerto because of its demands on technique, concentration and endurance. Moutouzkine transcended these demands with intellectual clarity. He was able to articulate connections within the work that few manage to consider simply because they are busy with the notes themselves. A great example of this was the figuration in the development of the first movement as it built toward its climactic centerpiece.

Moutouzkine brought out the complexity of the counterpoint, creating a dialogue of multiple ideas in the music. Pianists choose between two possible cadenzas in the first movement of this piece, and Moutouzkine elected the darker, more dramatic and powerful of the two, often referred to as the "ossia" cadenza. This was a good choice for him because it allowed him to demonstrate his voicing control in the lowest register of the piano.

Moutouzkine also juxtaposed the playfulness of the articulate and playful dialogue between the piano and orchestra in the second movement with passionate lyricism, so the edges between these attitudes became blurred. The sense of this juxtaposition was further developed in the finale, and the explosive technical command during the final pages of the work left us in awe. Then, it was all over but for the shouting.

Moutouzkine offered an encore, playing an amazingly super-charged, virtuosic transcription of the Rachmaninoff "Polka Italienne." The first half of this program was no less extraordinary. "We are in a mood to celebrate," said conductor GSO David Gilbert, "it has been a wonderful season, we had a great time, and this program could not be better for that purpose." The event opened with Rossini's overture to "La Scala di Seta." This piece was easy on the ears and filled with lovely musical humor. But for all its sonic joy, it is a challenging work to perform because its lines are completely exposed, and because nothing goes wrong quicker than things that are supposed to be witty and fun. The Greenwich Symphony made it fun, and the brilliant performance was led by nimble and articulate oboe playing by Randall Wolfgang.

Next we heard the orchestral suite "The River" by Duke Ellington. I was thrilled to hear this played live. Gilbert had a personal connection with the work because it was premiered in 1971 with the American Ballet Theatre, where he was principal conductor from 1971-1975. This work has the classic American charm of steak and whiskey. It was an effective blending of influences and styles from the classical music world, with influences from big band, swing and even an essay into tango. The first half of the program closed with an after-dinner mint; "Alborada del Gracioso" by Ravel.

Gilbert was right; this was a season to celebrate. And the Greenwich Symphony programs for 2012-2013 are even more reason for celebration: they are the most adventurous of any orchestra in Connecticut. Let the celebration begin. Jeffrey Johnson is a professor of music at the University of Bridgeport who has written books on music for Dover Publications and Greenwood Press. He can be reached at jjohnson@bridgeport.edu.

The Washington Post

Violinist Mikhail Simonyan at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre
By Robert Battey, Published: April 1

Russian violin virtuoso Mikhail Simonyan offered bracing readings of two big sonatas — Brahms’s D Minor and Prokofiev’s F Minor — framed by shorter works of Arvo Part and Karol Szymanowski at a well-attended recital at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Saturday afternoon.

Simonyan, who first appeared at the Kennedy Center in 2001 (at the 35th anniversary gala) is still in his 20s but projects unruffled, seasoned mastery. His bow-arm is a thing of wonder, powerful and seamless. He displayed a perfect, biting sautille stroke in Ottokar Novacek’s “Perpetuum mobile,” offered as an encore, and his hammering strokes in the second movement of the Prokofiev rang without ever scratching. His left hand is fleet and accurate, although the vibrato lacks variety and the natural beauty of the finest artists.

Certainly the Prokofiev was the high point of the recital, considerably aided by pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine, who found interesting and unusual textures in his music but never overbalanced Simonyan. The two artists captured the epic quality of the piece with deep understanding and a broad frame of aesthetic reference.

In the Brahms, Simonyan’s general carelessness with rhythms, and a willful pushing and pulling of tempos, marred the music from the first phrase onward. This otherwise-superlative artist would do well to re-examine the piece, with particular attention to how his parts are supposed to fit in with the those of the pianos.

The Szymanowski Nocturne and Tarantella is a rarely heard gem, and Simonyan’s flawless technical dispatch enhanced its impact.

The concert was presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society.

Alexandre the Great and a "Rach" for the ages

Greenwich Citizen
Thursday, April 19, 2012

Crowned by a performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, commonly known as the "Rach 3," and regarded as the most difficult ever composed, the 54th season finale of the GSO had it all: Great programming, a wonderful orchestral performance, and Alexandre Moutouzkine.

Remember his name, as you'll be hearing much more of this young pianist, poised to join the pantheon of greats.

With an admixture of music of many eras and styles, the performance also included works by Ravel, Rossini, and Duke Ellington in a deeply satisfying, well-paced concert.

At the Sunday afternoon concert, Mary Radcliffe announced the winner of the annual Dorothy Gluckmann Award, violinist Anastasia Dolak, of New Fairfield.

Conductor David Gilbert commented that the orchestra was going to show off, and remarked on the GSO's history of finding young artists on the verge of important careers. Of Moutouzkine, he commented that he "owned" the "Rach 3," displaying the stamina, technique, and the poetical sense that the work demands.

Opening with Rossini's Overture to "La Scala de Seta," (the Silken Ladder), a musical romp of romantic intrigue, buoyantly scored, with the orchestral opening cascading to portray the ladder being lowered for a lover, the work featured oboe, flute and French horn, moving to a scurrying passage of pizzicato strings, a typical Rossini romp.

"The River," a ballet score by jazz great Ellington and originally composed for The Alvin Ailey Dance Company, is in seven sections (echoing Shakespeare's Seven Stages of Man?) and represents life's journey as a moving stream. Spring opens with a figure in French horn, with bell-like xylophone and the kettle drum signifying birth itself.

"Meander" began in a low bleat of horns in dissonance, with jazz-like chords and the thrill of the harp. A flute broke in, leading to a jazz sequence, with hot rhythm and jazz kicks. Suddenly the music went to tempo, the tuba sounded and the flute wandered into a cadenza.

"Giggling Rapids" was antic, opening with piano, a jazzy dance band whirling like a flight of bumblebees. With percussive kicks, the character was like a Broadway show tune played by a big band. "Vortex" opened sotto voce, with pizzicato basses and flute, castanets clicking, cello and oboe in a luscious close.

"Lake" was jazzy, Ellingtonian, with a 4/4 boogie beat. "Twin Cities," where the trickle finally joined the Mississippi, was somber, throbbing, with cymbals joining. A four-square chorale with a harp plinking behind the stately, portentous theme led to the swelling finale.

Conductor David Gilbert cited the brasses and woodwinds, and the audience erupted into "bravos."

Maurice Ravel's "Alborada del gracioso" from the original piano suite, "Miroirs," is a Spanish, driving, virtuosic orchestral work. The GSO was up to the percussive, Flamenco style, pounding themes, interspersed with romantic melodies, always taken up-tempo.

The orchestra gave an accomplished reading of a work, combining swooningly romantic passages with rhythmic Flamenco parts.

Moutouzkine, greeting Concert Master Krystof Wytek, appeared in a black tailcoat, intriguing, as the heat in the auditorium had caused male orchestral members to doff their jackets.

Beginning Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30," his articulation was perfect in Allegro ma non mato: powerful when needed, exquisitely tender in romantic passages. The soloist gained power in the cadenza, achieving breathtaking arpeggios and holding the sostenuto pedal, interestingly, through some transitions.

Intermezzo adagio, with its poignant orchestration, and the cascading emotion of the piano as it entered, calm and questioning, was sheer poetry.

Moutouzkine performed another heart-wrenchingly beautiful cadenza with soul, heart, and mastery. But the "Rach 3," like the human heart, is always restless, and called for reprises in the brasses and woodwinds.

Finale was taken very up-tempo, staccato, with astonishing crescendos, a slow chorus of brasses and woodwinds and then a ripple in the keyboard. An intense and passionate melody broke out, the flute singing. The thrumming, swelling chords reached crescendo, more pedal attacks by the piano and the orchestra swelled to the finale.

The eruption of bravos was sustained, and after the fourth curtain call the soloist played a jazzy, Gershwinesque encore by fellow Russian Nikolai Kapustin, "Etude 7, Intermezzo."

Had we, the audience, ever really heard the "Rach 3" before? Or been so intensely moved and involved before? The simple answer is "No, we had not." Moutouzkine brought out previously unnoticed secondary melodies in the left hand, and utilized the sostenuto pedal to great effect, outperforming even the composer himself. Elegant, emotional and virtuosic, his was a performance to be treasured by an artist of true genius.

Of the concert, a friend, a life-long music lover, said it was "the best she had ever attended." That sentiment was echoed by the audience, and by this reviewer.

For information on the upcoming 55th season of the GSO, visit www.greenwichsym.org, or call 203-869-2664.

Outstanding Young Alumni Award

Alexandre Moutouzkine (MM ’01 / PS ’04 / AD ’05), has appeared as piano soloist with such ensembles as The Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, and Brno Philharmonic Orchestra of the Czech Republic. He recently debuted at the Great Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berliner Symphoniker. His recital in London’s Wigmore Hall was hailed by International Piano magazine as “grandly organic, with many personal and pertinent insights, offering a thoughtful balance between rhetoric and fantasy…technically dazzling.” The winner of many renowned piano competition awards, Mr. Moutouzkine claimed top prizes at the Walter W. Naumburg, Cleveland, Montreal, and Arthur Rubinstein international competitions, as well as winning the Astral Artists’ 2009 National Auditions.

Classical music review: Chamber Music International delivers skillful surprises

By Scott Cantrell Classical Music Critic scantrell@dallasnews.com
Published: 27 February 2010

Chamber Music International's Saturday-night concert was imaginatively programmed and played with great flair as well as skill. With a typical assemblage of performers from hither and yon, treacherous high violin and cello lines in the Shostakovich Piano Quintet weren't always fastidiously tuned. But these were momentary distractions in a performance deeply felt and wisely gauged. And the first half of the concert, at Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium, was pretty fabulous.

The opening Suite for two violins and piano could pass for Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Oozing turn-of-the-20th-century charm, the four movements marry palm court and concert hall.

In fact, it was the work of Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925), a German pianist and composer of Polish descent. His compositions are largely forgotten, but early recordings preserve his celebrated (if to our ears eccentric) pianism.

It's hard to imagine a performance with more affection and pizzazz than that served up by violinists Jun Iwasaki and Ik-Hwan Bae and pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine. The piano part could have used a little more projection, but the Caruth Steinway's treble sounded a bit muted all evening.

Iwasaki and Moutouzkine gave a bang-up account of American composer Paul Schoenfield's Four Souvenirs: a "Samba" that really gets down, a dreamy "Tango," a surprisingly gentle "Tin Pan Alley" and, with quite a bit of boogie-woogie mixed in, a virtuoso "Square Dance."

On his own, Moutouzkine made Ravel's La valse high drama, from opening rumbles, to waltzes that really danced and stretched their legs to an orgiastic climax.

Violist Susan Dubois- what a big, gorgeous tone - and cellist Nikola Ruzevic joined in the Shostakovich, a work relatively free of the composer's trademark irony.

The second-movement fugue, beginning and ending in muted wispiness, is quite haunting. The central scherzo (missing from the program's list of movements) is a send-up of a country dance. Even most of the finale is surprisingly genial, its turbulent climax dismissed in a surprise quiet ending.

This was a concert full of pleasant surprises. It would have been better with half the 12 minutes of talking at the beginning.

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THE WALTER W. NAUMBURG FOUNDATION
Announces Winners of the 2010 Piano Competition

First Prize Winner: SOYEON LEE

Second Prizes to: RAN DANK and ALEXANDRE MOUTOUZKINE

Honorable mention to: CHRISTOPHER GUZMAN

Forty-two Pianists competed in the competition Final Round took place on Wednesday, June 23 in New York City June 24, 2010, New York City – On Wednesday, June 24, 2010, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation held the final round of the 2010 Naumburg Piano Competition. Three finalists, out of a pool of 42 pianists from around the world, were chosen to compete in the final round.

The first prize was awarded to Soyeon Lee, a native of South Korea, who has been hailed by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style.” She is the second pianist from South Korea to be awarded the Naumburg Piano Award following in the foot steps of Kun-Woo Paik who was the first prize winner in 1971. Her prize includes two fully subsidized concerts in New York City, one of which will be given on March 29, 2011 in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; concert engagements with orchestra and in recital throughout the United States; and a cash award of $10,000.

Two second prizes were awarded to Israeli pianist Ran Dank, and Alexandre Moutouzkine, a native of Russia. Mr. Dank and Mr. Moutouzkine each received a cash award of $4,000. Honorable mention was awarded to Christopher Guzman, a D.M.A. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin where he studies with Anton Nel. Mr. Guzman received a cash award of $1,000.

The preliminary round of the 2010 Naumburg Piano Competition took place June 17 – 19 in Manhattan School of Music’s Miller Recital Hall. Twelve pianists were selected to compete in the semi-final round that was held on Monday, June 21 in Merkin Concert Hall. The final round was held on Wednesday, June 23 in Manhattan School of Music’s John C. Borden Auditorium. The competition was open to pianists of every nationality, not under the age of 17 or more than 32 years of age.

The jury for the 2010 Naumburg Piano Competition consisted of Anton Nel, Ursula Oppens, André-Michel Schub, Ann Schein, Jeffrey Swann, Robert Mann, Seth Knopp, Robert Levin and Menahem Pressler. Among past winners of the Naumburg Piano Award are Abby Simon (1941), William Kappell (1941), Constance Keene (1943), André-Michel Schub (1974), Stephen Hough (1983), Anton Nel (1987), Awadagin Pratt (1992), and Gilles Vonsattel (2002).

First Prize Winner, SOYEON LEE

SOYEON LEE has performed as guest soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, symphony orchestras of Columbus, Napa Valley, San Diego, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (Dominican Republic), and others, under the batons of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jajha Ling and Otto-Werner Mueller. Recital appearances include New York City programs in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall; Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Auditorio de Musica de Nacional in Madrid – part of a 13-city tour of Spain and Baek-Am Art Hall in Seoul. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with the Parker String Quartet, bassist Edgar Meyer and the Edgeffect Ensemble with Mark O’Connor. A recent collaborative project included performances in Seoul with he pop-star sister, Lee So Eun.

Ms. Lee is passionate about expanding environmental consciousness through music and gave to critical acclaim the first ever eco-awareness concert, “Re!invented” at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in February 2008. For this event, she wore a commissioned concert gown, made of more than 6000 used juice pouches, by eco-fashion designer Nina Valenti. She has been featured on the cover of Symphony magazine’s annual “Emerging Artists” issue, Musical America’s “More Thrills of Discovery”, heard on broadcasts on WQXR’s “McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase,” WNYC’s “Soundcheck,” and throughout the United States on National Public Radio. Her debut CD featuring Scarlatti sonatas was released on the Naxos label. In 2004, she was named a winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, as well as awarded the Second and Mozart prizes at the Cleveland International Competition, and the Bronze Medal at the Palma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition.

Soyeon Lee is a native of South Korea and began her piano studies at age five. At age nine, she moved to the United States and attended the Interlochen Arts Academy. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald. While at Juilliard, she earned the Artist Diploma, won the Rachmaninoff Concerto Competition, two consecutive Gina Bachauer Scholarship Competitions, and was awarded the Susan Rose Career Grant as well as the William Petschek Piano Debut Award.

Second Prize Winner, Ran Dank

Ran Dank’s performance highlights this season includes making his debut in Washington Performing Arts Society’s prestigious Hayes Piano Series at the Kennedy Center, appearances in recital at Omaha’s Strauss Performing Arts Center, the Morgan Library and the University of Florida; is soloist with the symphonies of Pensacola and Phoenix; and appears at Lincoln Center with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conductor Pinchas Zukerman. He returns to the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, performs in Young Concert Artists Musical Marathon at Symphony Space, and at the 6th Young Concert Artists Festival in Tokyo, as well as this October, appears with Fourtissimo, a piano quartet featuring pianists Vassilis Varvaresos, Soyeon Lee and Roman Rabinovich at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. In his native Israel, Mr. Dank has performed with the symphony orchestras of Jerusalem, Rishon Lezion and Raanan and at the Israel Festival. He has been heard at the Chopin Festival in Warsaw and at Finland’s Mäntta Festival for Virtuoso Pianists. Mr. Dank was winner of the Sander Buchman Memorial First Prize in the 2008-09 Young Artists International Auditions. Among his other prizes have been prizewinner in Australia’s Sydney International Piano Competition, and the Cleveland Piano Competition. As a result of that competition, he performed with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Ran Dank, born in 1982, began his piano studies at the age of seven. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University and is a recipient of grants from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. Mr. Dank earned his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School where he studied with Emanuel Ax and Joseph Kalichstein, as well as the Artist Diploma in 2009, working with Robert McDonald. He is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree with Ursula Oppens and Richard Goode at New York City’s University Graduate Center.

Second Prize Winner Alexandre Moutouzkine

Second Prize Winner Alexandre Moutouzkine burst onto the U.S. concert scene at the age of 19, when he received the Special Award for Artistic Potential at the XI Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Mr. Moutouzkine is also a winner of the St. Petersburg International Piano Competition and is a laureate of numerous international competitions including the Cleveland, Denmark’s Tivoli International, the Ignacio Cervantes (Havana), and Montreal International, to name a few. He has toured throughout Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Italy, and in countries in North and South America. Among orchestras that he has appeared as a soloist include the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Television Orchestra of Spain, the Cleveland Orchestra, Valencia Philharmonic, the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba, among others. Recent performances included a tour across the US, and concerts throughout Europe. His performance at London’s Wigmore Hall was reviewed in International Piano as “grandly organic, with many personal and pertinent insights, offering a thoughtful balance between rhetoric and fantasy … technically dazzling.”

His upcoming engagements include a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berlin Symphony. Alexandre Moutouzkine holds a Master’s degree and the Artist Diploma from Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky, and a Bachelor of Music degree from both the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover and Russia’s Nizhny Novogorod Music School. He is on the roster of Astral Artists.

 

The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation was founded in 1926 by Walter W. Naumburg and continues today in the pursuit of ideals set out by Mr. Naumburg. His desire to assist gifted young musicians in America has made possible a longstanding program of competitions and awards in solo and chamber music performance, composer recordings, and conducting. It was Mr. Naumburg’s firm belief that such competitions not only benefit the new stars, but would also be for these talented young musicians who would become the prime movers in the development of the highest musical standards of excellence throughout America. Robert Mann has been president of the Naumburg Foundation since 1971.

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Edward Neeman

About the Performers and Composers

Edward Neeman studied piano with Larry Sitsky at the Australian National University, where he received his Bachelor's Degree in music in 2005. He moved to the United States to study with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music, where he received his Masters Degree. Other teachers have included Geoffrey Lancaster at the ANU, Roger Woodward, Irena Orlov, and Santiago Rodriguez. He is currently a DMA candidate at the Juilliard School, studying with Jerome Lowenthal. Edward has won first prizes in the Rodrigo International Piano Competition, the Carlet International Piano Competition, and the Kawai Australasian Concerto Competition among others. He has performed with the Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, West Australian Symphony, Queensland Symphony, and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Madrid under conductors such as Andrey Boreyko, Gérard Korsten and Vladimir Verbitsky. He has been featured on ABC television and radio programs in Australia. In the 2009/10 season, Edward has played concerts across the United States and toured Spain, London, and the Czech Republic. His performance of the Concierto para piano by Joaquin Rodrigo with the Prague Philharmonic will be released on CD by the Rodrigo Foundation later this year. Other highlights include performances with Juilliard's new music ensemble Axiom, and a world premiere of the piano sonata “Retirer d'en bas de l'eau” by Larry Sitsky in April 2010.

Visit Edward's Website

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Edward Neeman Anticipation accompanies the end of Round Two at the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition
Published: Sunday, August 02, 2009, 11:20 PM Updated: Sunday, August 02, 2009, 11:36 PM
By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer


No one has leaped far ahead of the pack at the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition, as Alexander Ghindin did almost a week before he won first prize two years ago. There's a closer degree of artistic ability among the best of this year's contestants, which makes choosing from among them for the semi-finals, not to mention the finals, a greater challenge. The final recitals in Round Two on Sunday at the Cleveland Play House's Bolton Theatre didn't do much to change the impressions that the last 10 of the 32 contestants had made in the first round. Those who stood out did so again. The others made every effort to build on what they had offered when they introduced themselves.

Aside from several exceptional performances Sunday, the thing that many people are likely to remember was the sound of a cell phone ringing during the first movement of Brahms' Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 1. Certainly American pianist Michael Neeman, 25, won't forget it: he was playing the piece, beautifully, at the time.

But Neeman didn't flinch when the nuisance reared its ugly sound. He proceeded to shape the Brahms with forceful and poetic maturity, propelling and hugging phrases, making sure that sonorities always maintained grandeur, even in the fiercest passages. The young Brahms emerged as the passionate and tender rebel he would always be.

Neeman's artistry also served the aristocratic demands of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp minor, which benefited from the pianist's subtle shadings and elastic tempos.

For sheer, captivating music-making, few contestants this year were more persuasive than South Korea's Soo-Yeon Ham, 23, who wound up the Round Two recitals with a radiant account of Chopin's 12 Etudes, Op. 25. Many of the pieces in this collection were played singly during the first two rounds. Ham's way of floating sonorities and imbuing each etude with fluency and feeling made her approach to Chopin a series of special occasions.

Marina Radiushina, a 29-year-old Urkaine-born American, was the essence of expressive fervor and discipline in her recital. She treated the angry rhetoric and motoric aspects of Kenneth Leighton's Fantasia Contrappuntistica (Homage to Bach), Op. 24, with superb command of color and rhythm. She had a slight mishap in Handel's Chaconne in G major, but the rapt stateliness of her playing won the day. And Radiushina was master of the rapturous lines, soft dynamics and sweeping gestures in Schumann's Variations on a Theme of Clara Wieck from the Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 14.

No one else Sunday was as consistent as these pianists, but there were fine performances amid stressed-out competition readings. Polish-born American pianist Martin Labazevitch, 29, was bright and affecting in three Scarlatti sonatas, which emerged with jewel-like clarity. His Chopin (Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 55, No. 2; Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52) were intimate and a bit prosaic.

Venezuela's Kristhyan Benitez, 25, veered toward willful, idiosyncratic and noisy shaping in Schumann's Kreisleriana, Op. 16. His approach was far more suited to Federico Ruiz's "Merengue" (1994), whose explosive rhythms and vital folk elements he set in vivid motion.

South Korea's Sangyoung Kim, 25, was cogent and stately in Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp minor, though prone toward rigidity and rushing in Schumann's Carnaval, Op. 9, among the composer's most beguiling collections.

Another performance of the Schumann was offered by Russia's Alexander Osminin, 27, who played with robotic precision and found little charm in the music (and barely acknowledged the presence of the audience). He energized the rollicking pungencies in Alemdar Karamanov's Rondo in E minor, but was nondescript in two Scarlatti sonatas.

By contrast, South Korea's William Youn, 26, was expressive and exuberant in two different Scarlatti sonatas. When he turned to Brahms' Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 2, his sound turned brittle, his shaping short of breath and his pacing too hyper to allow Brahms to speak with anything resembling grandeur.

Three Scarlatti sonatas sounded alternately buoyant and pensive in the hands of South Korea's Ju-Eun Lee, 28, who turned to the silent audience at the end of the last sonata with an adorable smile, as if to say, "That's all folks." She wasn't quite done, however: she moved on to Chopin's Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, which was rough-hewn and unfocused, some sensitive lyrical shaping aside.

Works by Beethoven and Chopin received facile, unsettled performances by Russia's Anna Bulkina, 23. But she gave a powerful and ominous account of Sofia Gubaidulina's Chaconne, which - a testament to the piece's modern strength - was played by two pianists during the early rounds.

Now we wait for the jury to send eight of the contestants to the semi-finals, which are held Tuesday and Wednesday.

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Ups and downs prevail as Round One ends at the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition
ublished: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 11:23 PM Updated: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 11:38 PM
By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer

The roller coaster that is the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition continued Thursday with the remaining 10 contestants playing their Round One recitals. Of the competition's 32 participants, about half have demonstrated enough artistic substance to warrant possible advancement to the semi-finals, though only eight will have the good fortune to do so after Round Two ends Sunday. The third and final day of Round One on Thursday at the Cleveland Play House's Bolton Theatre yielded four contestants who went beyond piano playing to offer compelling music-making. Technically, the overall level was high, but nerves, willfulness and other intrusions kept many of the performances from entering the realm of satisfaction. The day's most individual pianist was Michael Neeman, 25, who holds citizenships in the United States and Australia. Neeman is a true artist who isn't afraid to put a distinctive stamp on whatever he touches, without resorting to mannerism.

In Beethoven's Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, he tapped into the composer's early radicalism, pointing out rule-breaking matters of form and harmony. Neeman was incisive and insightful, modifying tempos to subtle effect and finding all sorts of inflections to convey the varied emotional states. He gave a fascinating account of Chopin's octave-laden Etude in B minor, Op. 25, No. 10, breathing inventively with the music, and braved the 12-tone jazziness of Milton Babbitt's brief "It Takes Twelve to Tango."

Ukraine-born American pianist Marina Radiushina, 29, also contributed a fine traversal of Beethoven, here the Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 110. Deeply felt, urgent and dramatic, the performance was marked by sophisticated shaping and sonic splendor. Radiushina made an explosive thing of the chromatic challenges in Chopin's Etude in A minor, Op. 25, No. 11 ("Winter Wind").

The day included three accounts of Haydn's Sonata in C major, whose most persuasive interpreter was Martin Labazevitch, a 29-year-old Polish-born American. His Haydn was a thing of articulate and delightful beauty, full of nuanced details and rollicking motion. He gave dynamic thrust to Radzynski's Mazurka (2008), but found Chopin's Etude in B minor, Op. 25, No. 10, to be a bit of a weighty challenge.

Another captivating advocate for the Haydn sonata was South Korea's Soo-Yeon Ham, 23, who emphasized crisp attack, purity of sound and delicate phrasing. She was poised and bright in two Scarlatti sonatas and mustered powerful and otherworldly intensity in Ligeti's Etude No. 6, Book I ("Automne a Varsovie").

Three other South Korean pianists were variable. Sangyoung Kim, 26, took hold of the angry chords and floated the ethereal statements in Dutilleux's Choral et Variations. But she clipped phrases and lost tension in Haydn's Sonata in G major and tossed off Chopin's Etude in G-sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 6, at too brisk a pace for details to register.

William Youn, 26, was bold and often fluent in his repertoire, but also reckless in Haydn's Sonata in C major, noisy in Chopin's Etude in B minor, Op. 25, No.10, and indistinct in the quirky leaps and fragmented bursts in Yun's 5 Klavierstucke.

His compatriot, 28-year-old Ju-Eun Lee, was more controlled in the Yun collection, and she brought lilting agility to Chopin's Etude in A-flat major, Op. 10, No. 10. Still, she had little luck in Beethoven's Sonata in E major, Op. 109, which sounded capricious and coarse, and she lost her way briefly in one of the final variations.

Russia's Anna Bulkina, 23, was crisp if not entirely accurate in two Scarlatti sonatas. She presented Brahms' Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35, mostly as a technical showpiece, minus much phrasing or atmosphere. Some sonorities became harsh.

Another Russian pianist, 27-year-old Alexander Osminin, has technique to spare, though he appeared reticent to use these gifts to bring expressive depth to the music in his head. Beethoven's Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, unfolded with machine-like efficiency. The performance hardly took a breath. His fingers did his bidding in Chopin's Etude in A minor, Op. 25, No. 11 ("Winter Wind"), without capturing the music's swirling, icy aura.

There were moments during the recital by Venezuela's Kristhyan Benitez, 25, when you could hear the musical intelligence behind the unsettled playing. More often than not, Benitez sounded bland in pieces by Bach, Chopin and Beethoven, which lacked clarity and presence. Things, of course, could change during Round Two, when the contestants play longer recitals and try to show more facets of their artistry. Surprises are always welcome, like twists in a good thriller.

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In Cleveland International Piano Competition, winner is only part of the story
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Reporter
The artistic dust has settled -- or has it? -- from the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition, which provided enough suspense for several sonic thrillers.

As always, the outcome of musical competitions leaves observers believing the jurors are wise, mad or a bit of both. Listeners hear different things in pianists, choose their favorites and hope the jury will agree with them.

It rarely happens, of course. The nature of these events almost demands that debates will ensue, which is healthy. This year's Cleveland competition continued the traditions of ecstasy, agony and surprise that are inevitable contest accompaniments.

The faithful may still be arguing about the ranking of the top two finalists -- Croatia's Martina Filjak (first) and Canada's Dmitri Levkovich -- but no one can deny that both are superb, charismatic artists poised for flourishing careers.

Still, it is inevitable that a number of pianists who make outstanding impressions in the early rounds will fall by the wayside because they're deemed too striking or somehow short of virtuoso character. Memory and technical lapses don't help.

Juries at big musical competitions lean toward contestants who are polished, confident and promising, if not likely to go to extremes. Among the pianists this year who fit into that category were Filjak and Levkovich, intensely musical performers who brought seasoned and sensitive shaping to the repertoire they played.

Fine, but to my ears, American pianist Edward Neeman was the competition's most audacious artist, which may have sealed his fate after the first two rounds.

The listeners who found Neeman's performance of Beethoven's Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3 to be a bold elucidation of radical music evidently didn't include the jury. In works by Bach, Babbitt, Brahms and Chopin, Neeman also found individual answers to phrasing and shading that heightened each score's expressive aspects....

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Yuan Sheng

Yuan Sheng Recital - IKIF

14th International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes College
New York City
July 25th, 2012

Program

Debussy – Suite Bergamasque
Debussy – Estampes
Debussy – L’isle joyeuse
Ravel – Sonatine
Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin

On arrival at Mannes College this evening I learned that two upcoming recitals this week are already sold out. This one should have been, too.

I first heard Yuan Sheng about nine years ago, playing an all-Chopin recital. I subsequently heard him play an all- Bach recital, and several programs with mixed repertoire. He returned to Bach at his IKIF recital last year with a performance of the Goldberg Variations which made a profound impression on his audience.

This year, perhaps with the 150th anniversary of the birth of Debussy and the 75th anniversary of the death of Ravel in mind, he turned to French repertoire. And, as usual, his interpretations were convincing and impressive.

Why?

Because, I think, he has the sensitivity and sophistication to get into the sound world of whatever music he’s playing and, without imposing himself in an egotistical way, make his conception of it work. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be played differently. But one doesn’t argue with him. One readily accepts the way he plays the music.

Having heard David Dubal’s program on Debussy a few nights ago, which included voluptuous and overwhelming recorded performances by Gieseking and Michelangeli, I was nevertheless reminded of yet another aspect of music of this genre by Yuan Sheng this evening, namely an almost classical quiet and restraint that can sometimes tug at the heartstrings. One heard this often, as well as the great swirls of sound in other places, ie. the whirlwind in the last movement of the Ravel Sonatine, and the frenzy, and huge sustained sound at the end of the Toccata from Le Tombeau. And everything in between.

Mr. Sheng has a very big dynamic range, and the musicianship to hold one’s attention, either through the senses or the intellect, or both. He will not, for instance, play a phrase with rubato without subtly altering the rubato when it comes around again. Not surprisingly, when he played an encore, Debussy’s The Girl With the Flaxen Hair, it was more interestingly and expressively played than usual. And, with no trouble at all, he went from a quasi-religious Japanese sensibility in Pagodes to a longing, romantic Spanish atmosphere in La soirée dans Grenade.

This is an artist who seems to play everything well, and certainly deserves greater recognition.

Donald Isler

Review of Yuan Sheng's performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Mannes Festival in New York City, July 2011.

On one of the hottest nights of the summer, Yuan Sheng, professor of the piano at the Central Conservatory in Beijing was in New York to perform at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival. His appearance brought forth a large and knowledgeable crowd at the Mannes College. Mr. Sheng played but one composition, the monumental Goldberg Variations. For 70 minutes you could not hear a sound, the audience was about as concentrated as Mr. Sheng. In his performance there was not a shred of fake spirituality, nor any influences of Gould or Mr. Sheng’s mentor Rosalyn Tureck. This was a highly pianistic rendering; full throttle piano playing. The Goldbergs are Bach’s most worldly keyboard work and Mr. Sheng brought flesh, the devil and humor to the long but tightly knit score, certainly the greatest set of Variations of the Baroque period. Mr. Sheng’s preparation was strong, and his fingers never faltered. He seems to conceive the work, one may perhaps say, as a non-verbal play - each Variation bringing its own cast of characters. I do not know if such a Stage Conception was in Mr. Sheng’s mind, but for this listener I saw one character after another jumping and bouncing from the keyboard - I kept thinking of the Commedia dell'arte. Of course I don’t mean this in a literal sense, only that tonight’s conception was so graphic that the Goldbergs had a new vibrancy. As I left the concert, a young pianist exclaimed, “This was the best hour of my life.” Mr. Sheng is becoming well known, and his Goldbergs have been heard in many venues, but let’s not typecast him, as his repertoire is vast.

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Tatiana Tessman

Tatiana Tessman Pianist in Review

Tatiana Tessman, Piano
Winner of the World Piano Competition
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center
November 30, 2012

Tatiana Tessman’s November 30th Tully Hall recital presented the latest winner of the World Piano Competition—an artist of technical brilliance, interpretive authority along with a comforting aura of authority and dependability. Ms. Tessman, was who was born in Russia, studied at the Gnessin School in Moscow with a series of excellent teachers and has concertized and won several prizes in her native land. Later, she came to New York to polish and complete her training at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky. She is a recipient of the Elda van Gelder Memorial Foundation.

Her program began with three Chopin Mazurkas, Op. 50 which commanded attention with a bold rubato and extroverted, rhetorically flexible rhythmic drive. For some, her “in your face” feistiness may have seemed overly flamboyant. But quibbles aside her style, proved justifiably idiomatic.

Six additional Mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski, (also Op. 50) and still another two by Thomas Ades, beautifully complemented the Chopin group and in fact proved to be even more delicate and whimsical, more colored and intimate, too, than what Ms. Tessman’s extroverted style brought to the Chopin.

Chopin’s imposing Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49 brought the first half of the concerto to a close, and her memorable, masterfully held together interpretation was, for this writer, the highpoint of the evening. Every crucial detail made a fine impression: the rock solid rhythmic underpinning of the alla Marcia introduction; the long lined harmonic shaping of the second subject: the superbly judged timing and pacing of the central Trio (which coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to the analogous middle Trio of the Schubert Klavierstuck No.1 in E flat Minor, D. 946); and the towering climactic drama at the very end proved unusually effective and convincing.

Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata, the penultimate of his works in that genre, and the last of the three great “War Sonatas” (Nos. 6-8), is extremely passionate, nostalgic and imposing (the Ninth Sonata, the contemporaneous Cello Sonata and Seventh Symphony, all showed the composer to be depleted and spiritually threadbare, a depressing decline). Ms. Tessman’s interpretation was heartwarming, excitable and charged with virtuoso brilliance. Her version was also happily tempered with generosity and lyrical warmth.

The rapturous response of the audience was rewarded with a lovely, communicative reading of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Op. 32, No. 5.

Tatiana Tessman is an emotionally outgoing but formidably controlled virtuoso. I look forward to hearing much more of her playing.

-Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Pianist Tatiana Tessman in Solo Recital

Concert to be held November 30, 2012 at Alice Tully Hall

New York, NY: Performing works by Chopin, Szymanowski, Ades, and Prokofiev, pianist Tatiana Tessman makes her debut at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, November 30th at 8:00 pm. Tickets are $20 ($10 for students) and are available at www.lincolncenter.org, at the box office on 1941 Broadway (65th street between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave) or by calling 212.671.4050

This concert features The Lincoln Center Debut of the World Piano Competition's 2006 Gold Medalist Tatiana Tessman

The Program includes:
- Chopin Mazurkas op.50
- Szymanowski Mazurkas op.50 (Selected)
- Ades Mazurkas op.27
- Chopin Fantasy op.49
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- Prokofiev Sonata No.8

"…an exceptionally gifted pianist… [Tatiana Tessman] possesses a strong artistry and personality…" writes the German Bayern of the Russian-born pianist Tatiana Tessman whose career is studded with accomplishments and awards that firmly distinguish her as an artist of international stature. Multiple prizewinner, Tatiana Tessman has performed as soloist with orchestras across three continents, including the World Symphony in Cincinnati, Shreveport Symphony, Bach's Festival Orchestra, Manhattan School of Music Philarmonia, Uruguay Philharmonic Symphony, Panama Philharmonic Symphony, Korea W. Philharmonic the Russian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra upon a personal invitation from Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich.

On the competition front, Ms. Tessman has had overwhelming success as she claimed First Prizes at the Glenn Gould International Piano Competition in Ostra (Italy), Santorini International Piano Competition (Greece), 55th Wideman International Piano Competition, the Missouri International Piano Competition and the 50th Cincinnati World Piano Competition, in addition to multiple other awards at the Panama International Piano Competition, the Florida International Piano competition and the Eisenberg-Fried Manhattan School of Music Concerto competition in New York.

Fueled by her victories on the grueling international competition circuit, Tatiana Tessman's reputation as an outstanding pianist of exceptional value expanded rapidly, leading to engagements throughout Russia, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the United States. Her artistry has taken her to many of the world's leading venues including The Big Hall of Moscow Conservatory, The Seoul Arts Center in Korea, Italy's La Scala and Carnegie's Weill Hall, where her performance was recorded and broadcast by New York's WQXR Classical Music Station.

In 2003, Ms. Tessman's career marked a milestone when the Russian pianist was invited by Mstislav Rostropovich to perform under the maestro's baton with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at the "Klassik am Odeons platz" in Munich. The concert took place at the central square in front of an astonishing 7000 people. Ms. Tessman's debut with Maestro Rostropovich was followed by an appearance at the "Summer Concerts" Festival in Ingolstadt. It was at these concerts where Tatiana Tessman's much-acclaimed performance of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto led to other concerts at the series "La Scala presents"

Ms. Tessman's public concert career began at the age of four in Omsk, Russia. A year later she entered the Gnessins School of Music in Moscow, where she studied under the direction of Professor Tatiana Zaitzeva. In 1997, after being awarded a scholarship from the "Mstislav Rostropovich" foundation, Ms. Tessman was admitted to the Moscow State Conservatory where she studied with teachers such as Valery Kastelsky, Pavel Nersessian, Nikolai Lugansky, Sergei Dorensky; with whom she pursued her studies as a post-graduate student and Mstislav Rostropovich; Tessman was the maestros last student. After finishing her B.M. and M.M. degrees at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatoire, Ms. Tessman moved to the United States where she is currently pursuing her doctoral degree at Manhattan School of Music under the guidance of Solomon Mikowsky. She is a recipient of the Elda van Gelder Memorial Foundation Scholarship.

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About SIMA Trio and the players

Winners of the First Prize and Gold Medal of 2012 New England International Chamber Music Competition, Sima Trio is quickly becoming one of the leading, young trios of its generation. Praised for their "powerful" and "heartfelt" interpretations of classical and ethnic repertoire, and connected by their Armenian heritage, the members of this NY based ensemble are highly sought after soloists and chamber musicians who have performed at such major venues as Carnegie Hall, Teatro Colon, Palau de la Musica de Barcelona ,Concertgebauw, Seoul Arts Center,Shanghai Theatre, Salle Cortot, La Jolla Sherwood auditorium, Orange County Performing Arts Center, and Yerevan Philharmonic Hall, among others. International award winning violinist Sami Merdinian, cellist Ani Kalayjian, and pianist Sofya Melikyan have studied with Dorothy Delay, Peter Oundjian, Joaquin Soriano , Solomon Mikowksy, Timothy Eddy, and Ralph Kirshbaum.

Ukrainian Pianist Inesa Sinkevych, 1st prize winner of Maria Canals
International Piano Competition in Barcelona, Spain

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Xiayin Wang

Pianist Xiayin Wang Celebrating Her New Life

One of the first musicians I am meeting at the Juilliard cafeteria after the long summer months is the young pianist, Xiayin Wang.

It was composer Sean Hickey, who drew my attention to this rising star. “She is phenomenal, and you ought to meet her”, he said when I met him in his role as business development manager for Naxos America (see also: this article).

As I sit down with Wang, we talk about musicians we both know personally. And then it dawns on me: I had actually been present when Manhattan School of Music – trained Wang gave one of the most memorable performances of her career back in 2006, at Alice Tully Hall in New York City.

Her parents were in town and attending the concert, and so she asked her father, a professional Erhu player, to share the stage with her. “Celebrating our new life” was the title of a traditional Chinese folksong she performed with him as an encore to her concert program. It was hard to tell who had been more moved by this joint performance – the audience, or the father-daughter team.

“He was so nervous, and I was on fire”, smiles Wang as she remembers that very special evening. “In fact, at one point I thought I saw smoke coming up from stage, but it was just the dust of the resin that my father had applied too generously to the strings of his instrument, to make the sound very smooth sounding”.

And so the title of the Chinese folksong she performed that night became the motto of her career as a professional musician – a very fine beginning of a new life, indeed, and a celebration of a career taking off with tremendous energy.
Training at the Shanghai Conservatory from age 5, her mother devoted all her time watching over little Xiayin’s piano practice. Today, her daughter appreciates the benefits of her rigorous and disciplined early training..Says Wang in a November 2007 Fanfare interview: “As a kid, you are not going to have that discipline, no matter how much you love music. The parents, the teacher have to sit next to you. My mom took notes every single lesson. I still have those notes”

Her training in the U.S. started in 1977; her first teacher at the Manhattan School of Music was Dr. Solomon Mikowsky.
Known for his gift of being able to detect future success in his students – he ‘discovered’ musicians like Kirill Gerstein, winner of the 2010 Gilmore Artist Award – Mikowsky took on Wang right after hearing her taped performance of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz.

Four years later, Wang continued her studies with Nina Svetlanova, a graduate of Heinrich Neuhaus’s Moscow Conservatory class. After an extensive career as a pianist and a decade of teaching at the Manhattan School of Music, Svetlanova had made it onto Benjamin Saver’s list of “Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA” in 1990.

Today, Wang muses about the differences between Chinese and Western-style piano pedagogy:”In China, the teacher is dominant 100 percent. Over here, the teacher has 70 percent of dominance; the student has the rest”.

About the differences in repertoire, performance practice, and even in the way one listens to repertoire, she says: “In China, the teachers encourage students to listen to recordings before they learn the pieces, but when I came here, the teachers would not encourage you to listen before you learned the pieces … you don’t copy anything, you learn with your own understanding”.

Wang has long expanded her repertoire to include contemporary classical music – the kind of repertoire missing from the more generic Western classical music menu offered to pianists in China at the time, which generally ranged from Bach to Debussy.

She has also extensively collaborated with major chamber groups and composers. Several contemporary composers have gladly put their scores in Wang’s hands, and found them to be rendered with refined musicianship and a superb range of color and expressiveness. If one adds Wang’s charismatic personality to the mix, it comes as no surprise that critics and label executives alike are full of praise.

Sean Hickey is one of the composers Wang has worked with. She explains: “I met Sean through another friend of mine, David Homan, a composer and the director of the Israel American Cultural Foundation. Sean Hickey introduced me 

to Earl Rosen, director of Marquis Records. I was thrilled that they offered me a contract, giving me free choice of the repertoire to be performed. The result was my 2007 debut CD, “Introducing Xiayin Wang”, with a varied repertoire ranging from Bach to Scriabin”.
Her second Marquis recording, released in 2008, was the “Brahms Piano Quartets” collection, with the Amity Chamber Players; a recording with violinist Catherine Manoukian will soon follow (Richard Strauss’s Sonata E-flat major, Op. 18, and Cesar Franck’s Sonata A-major).

In May 2009, her first Naxos CD, “Scriabin: Piano Music – Poems, Waltzes, Dances“, was released. Wang gets very enthusiastic when describing the composer: “There is so much color”, she says.

Then, when the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall was opened in 2009, Wang premiered Sean Hickey’s “Cursive”.
Further describing her friendship with Hickey, she adds: “Sean and I have known each other for a while, and as you know, composers always promote their compositions, and performers are always open to new ideas … He is such a genuine person, so actually the whole story was pretty simple: we both just came up with the idea of playing a new work of his at the Alice Tully Hall concert”.

The performance also included the premiere of “Enchanted Garden, Preludes Book II,” by composer Richard Danielpour. Pianist Christopher Rilley had premiered “Book I” at the Aspen Music Festival on July 4th, 1992. According to the composer, the “garden” refers to the garden of the mind. (Danielpour’s “Enchanted Garden, Preludes Book I and II”, played by Wang will be released by Naxos in March 2011).

Wang had met Danielpour when she premiered a piece by one of his students at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.:”Through the course of playing the piece in a lesson with Mr. Danielpour, I got to know him, and he asked me if I was interested in premiering his preludes”.
This November will see a recording of Earl Wild’s piano music. In an August 2010 Examiner interview, Wang described one of Wild’s pieces, the “Toccata a la Ricky Martin”, as a rollercoaster ride for pianists.

The CD signing for this release will take place on November 23, at the soon-to-be- closed Lincoln Center branch of Barnes and Noble.

That same evening, Wang will perform with the Fine Arts Quartet at Alice Tully Hall, across the street from the CD signing. The performance will be dedicated to chamber music works of Schumann (to be released by Naxos in 2011).

“We started rehearsals in May already and will have two more performances before the Alice Tully Hall event on November 23”, Wang explains. “The recording itself will take place this December, at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, on 155th Street and Riverside Drive. It’s a great place, with almost 6000 seats and great acoustics. One gets a piano delivered … its really sweet.”
The Fine Arts Quartet has an extensive history of its own. Three of the quartet’s current artists – violinist Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, and cellist Wolfgang Laufer – have been performing together for over 25 years. Violinist Nicolo Eugelmi joined in 2009. Some of the quartet’s 200-plus recorded works have been released by Naxos.

Wang describes the specific challenges of the recording process itself:”The biggest challenge is to keep it fresh. It is all about mental energy. You have to put yourself at ease and forget the fact that you are recording, treating every performance as a performance”.

And she continues: “The process involves a lot of correcting, and I am usually not very keen on going back to listen, but you get used to it. I do at least two whole takes, and then I go back to sections. The recording allows the artist an almost perfect performance, without necessarily withholding the ‘live’ effect”.

On recording with a chamber group, she says: “There is, of course, the added complexity of delivering the different voices. It is technically more demanding; you are working with different personalities, and you want to make everybody happy. But you also grow together in the preparation process, through rehearsals. It is an experience, and there are many choices to get it right, so you learn where to expect possible problems, and try to work them out”.

I am already looking forward to the upcoming recital with the distinguished Fine Arts Quartet this November, and will certainly compare the live performance with those ‘perfect’ recordings.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/music/article/pianist-xiayin-wang-celebrating-her-new/

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Pianist Xiayin Wang, Celebrating Her New Life

One of the first musicians I am meeting at the Juilliard cafeteria after the long summer months is the young pianist, Xiayin Wang.

It was composer Sean Hickey, who drew my attention to this rising star. “She is phenomenal, and you ought to meet her”, he said when I met him in his role as business development manager for Naxos America (see also: http://blogcritics.org/music/article/sean-hickey-talks-about-naxos-a/

As I sit down with Wang, we talk about musicians we both know personally. And then it dawns on me: I had actually been present when Manhattan School of Music – trained Wang gave one of the most memorable performances of her career back in 2006, at Alice Tully Hall in New York City.

Her parents were in town and attending the concert, and so she asked her father, a professional Erhu player, to share the stage with her. “Celebrating our new life” was the title of a traditional Chinese folksong she performed with him as an encore to her concert program. It was hard to tell who had been more moved by this joint performance – the audience, or the father-daughter team.

“He was so nervous, and I was on fire”, smiles Wang as she remembers that very special evening. “In fact, at one point I thought I saw smoke coming up from stage, but it was just the dust of the resin that my father had applied too generously to the strings of his instrument, to make the sound very smooth sounding”.

And so the title of the Chinese folksong she performed that night became the motto of her career as a professional musician – a very fine beginning of a new life, indeed, and a celebration of a career taking off with tremendous energy.
Training at the Shanghai Conservatory from age 5, her mother devoted all her time watching over little Xiayin’s piano practice. Today, her daughter appreciates the benefits of her rigorous and disciplined early training.

Says Wang in a November 2007 Fanfare interview: “As a kid, you are not going to have that discipline, no matter how much you love music. The parents, the teacher have to sit next to you. My mom took notes every single lesson. I still have those notes”. 

Her training in the U.S. started in 1977; her first teacher at the Manhattan School of Music was Dr. Solomon Mikowsky.
Known for his gift of being able to detect future success in his students – he ‘discovered’ musicians like Kirill Gerstein, winner of the 2010 Gilmore Artist Award – Mikowsky took on Wang right after hearing her taped performance of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz.

Four years later, Wang continued her studies with Nina Svetlanova, a graduate of Heinrich Neuhaus’s Moscow Conservatory class. After an extensive career as a pianist and a decade of teaching at the Manhattan School of Music, Svetlanova had made it onto Benjamin Saver’s list of “Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA” in 1990.

Today, Wang muses about the differences between Chinese and Western-style piano pedagogy:”In China, the teacher is dominant 100 percent. Over here, the teacher has 70 percent of dominance; the student has the rest”.

About the differences in repertoire, performance practice, and even in the way one listens to repertoire, she says: “In China, the teachers encourage students to listen to recordings before they learn the pieces, but when I came here, the teachers would not encourage you to listen before you learned the pieces … you don’t copy anything, you learn with your own understanding”.

Wang has long expanded her repertoire to include contemporary classical music – the kind of repertoire missing from the more generic Western classical music menu offered to pianists in China at the time, which generally ranged from Bach to Debussy.

She has also extensively collaborated with major chamber groups and composers. Several contemporary composers have gladly put their scores in Wang’s hands, and found them to be rendered with refined musicianship and a superb range of color and expressiveness. If one adds Wang’s charismatic personality to the mix, it comes as no surprise that critics and label executives alike are full of praise.

Sean Hickey is one of the composers Wang has worked with. She explains: “I met Sean through another friend of mine, David Homan, a composer and the director of the Israel American Cultural Foundation. Sean Hickey introduced me to Earl Rosen, director of Marquis Records. I was thrilled that they offered me a contract, giving me free choice of the repertoire to be performed. The result was my 2007 debut CD, “Introducing Xiayin Wang”, with a varied repertoire ranging from Bach to Scriabin”.
Her second Marquis recording, released in 2008, was the “Brahms Piano Quartets” collection, with the Amity Chamber Players; a recording with violinist Catherine Manoukian will soon follow (Richard Strauss’s Sonata E-flat major, Op. 18, and Cesar Franck’s Sonata A-major).

In May 2009, her first Naxos CD, “Scriabin: Piano Music – Poems, Waltzes, Dances“, was released. Wang gets very enthusiastic when describing the composer: “There is so much color”, she says.

Then, when the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall was opened in 2009, Wang premiered Sean Hickey’s “Cursive”.
Further describing her friendship with Hickey, she adds: “Sean and I have known each other for a while, and as you know, composers always promote their compositions, and performers are always open to new ideas … He is such a genuine person, so actually the whole story was pretty simple: we both just came up with the idea of playing a new work of his at the Alice Tully Hall concert”.

The performance also included the premiere of “Enchanted Garden, Preludes Book II,” by composer Richard Danielpour. Pianist Christopher Rilley had premiered “Book I” at the Aspen Music Festival on July 4th, 1992. According to the composer, the “garden” refers to the garden of the mind. (Danielpour’s “Enchanted Garden, Preludes Book I and II”, played by Wang will be released by Naxos in March 2011).

Wang had met Danielpour when she premiered a piece by one of his students at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.:”Through the course of playing the piece in a lesson with Mr. Danielpour, I got to know him, and he asked me if I was interested in premiering his preludes”.
This November will see a recording of Earl Wild’s piano music. In an August 2010 Examiner interview, Wang described one of Wild’s pieces, the “Toccata a la Ricky Martin”, as a rollercoaster ride for pianists.

The CD signing for this release will take place on November 23, at the soon-to-be- closed Lincoln Center branch of Barnes and Noble.
That same evening, Wang will perform with the Fine Arts Quartet at Alice Tully Hall, across the street from the CD signing. The performance will be dedicated to chamber music works of Schumann (to be released by Naxos in 2011).

“We started rehearsals in May already and will have two more performances before the Alice Tully Hall event on November 23”, Wang explains. “The recording itself will take place this December, at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, on 155th Street and Riverside Drive. It’s a great place, with almost 6000 seats and great acoustics. One gets a piano delivered … its really sweet.”
The Fine Arts Quartet has an extensive history of its own. Three of the quartet’s current artists – violinist Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, and cellist Wolfgang Laufer – have been performing together for over 25 years. Violinist Nicolo Eugelmi joined in 2009. Some of the quartet’s 200-plus recorded works have been released by Naxos.

Wang describes the specific challenges of the recording process itself:”The biggest challenge is to keep it fresh. It is all about mental energy. You have to put yourself at ease and forget the fact that you are recording, treating every performance as a performance”.

And she continues: “The process involves a lot of correcting, and I am usually not very keen on going back to listen, but you get used to it. I do at least two whole takes, and then I go back to sections. The recording allows the artist an almost perfect performance, without necessarily withholding the ‘live’ effect”.

On recording with a chamber group, she says: “There is, of course, the added complexity of delivering the different voices. It is technically more demanding; you are working with different personalities, and you want to make everybody happy. But you also grow together in the preparation process, through rehearsals. It is an experience, and there are many choices to get it right, so you learn where to expect possible problems, and try to work them out”.

I am already looking forward to the upcoming recital with the distinguished Fine Arts Quartet this November, and will certainly compare the live performance with those ‘perfect’ recordings. Article by Ilona Oltuski http://getclassical.org

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Emily White

Z6822 Liner Notes PDF  (5.16 MB)

Charles Tomlinson Griffes 1. The Fountain of the Acqua Paola, op. 7, no. 3 2. The White Peacock, op. 7, no. 1 Yehudi Wyner 3. Three-Fingered Don (1993) 4. Addio Roma, addio (1991) 5. From the Flow (1991) George Gershwin and Will Donaldson 6. Rialto Ripples (1917)

Listen to Samples and Purchase here:
Arabesque Records Digital Store    -    Amazon.com    -    AmazonMP3    -    iTunes

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Sonata No. 3, op. 36 1. Presto 2. Adagio: Mesto 3. Assai vivace 4. Fuga: Allegro moderato, scherzando e buffo Four Etudes, op. 4 5. No. 1, Allegro moderato 6. No. 2, Allegro molto 7. No. 3, Andante in modo d'una canzone 8. No. 4, Allegro ma non troppo, affettuoso e rubato Metopy (Metopes), op. 29 9. Wyspa syren (The Isle of the Sirens) 10. Kalipso (Calypso) 11. Nauzykaa (Nausicaa) Maski (Masques), op. 34 12. Szecherezada (Sheherazade) 13. Blazen Tantris (Tantris the Buffoon) 14. Serenada Don Juana (Don Juan's Serenade)

Listen to Samples and Purchase here: Arabesque Records Digital Store    -    Amazon.com    -    AmazonMP3    -    iTunes