Speaking of Pianists

SHOW BROADCASTS ON KBPS 89.9 FM NOVEMBER 14

11-year-old pianist Adria Ye from Lake Oswego, Oregon will appear on an upcoming episode of From the Top, the hit public radio program featuring America’s best young classical musicians and hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley. Now celebrating its 10th Anniversary Season, From the Top is heard on nearly 250 stations nationwide and taped before live audiences around the country. Broadcast from New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston, MA, the show airs on KBPS 89.9 FM at 5 pm Saturday, November 14.

Adria performed at Carnegie Hall when she was just seven years old.  She was inspired to play piano by her brother Michael, who has previously appeared on an episode of From the Top. Adria was the winner of the 2007 Chamber Music Society of Oregon Concerto Competition and has won several titles from the Oregon Music Teacher Association’s solo and concerto events. Outside of music she enjoys ballet, art, and reading.

On the November 14 broadcast, Adria performs Restlessness, Op. 19, No. 5 and The Spinning Song, Op. 67, No. 4 of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, and is interviewed by Christopher O’Riley. Violinist Maya Shankar, who appeared on From the Top as a teen and is now a 23-year-old Rhodes Scholar studying cognitive sciences, returns to From the Top as part of the show’s tenth anniversary celebration.Also included on the broadcast is a 17-year-old baritone from Los Angeles, CA, a 17-year-old timpanist from Wenham, MA, and a 16-year-old cellist from Natick, MA.

The episode was recorded before a live audience in Boston on October 4, 2009. It will be available online at www.fromthetop.org after the broadcast.

For the past decade, From the Top has been the preeminent showcase for America’s best young musicians. Through award-winning NPR and PBS programs, online media, a national tour of live events, and education programs, From the Top shares the stories and performances of pre-collegiate musicians with millions each week.

From the Top is made possible through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. It is also supported through the generous contributions of individuals and foundations as well as public radio stations.

From the Top on NPR is produced in association with WGBH Radio Boston and New England Conservatory of Music, its home and education partner.

Felix Mendelssohn showed tremendous potential from an early age.  He started playing the piano at four, was composing at eight, and by sixteen he had written the magnificent Octet for Strings, Op. 20, one of the most thrilling chamber works ever composed.

The “Mendelssohn Year”, the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, is a good reminder that his music deserves a more substantial place in the pianist’s repertoire than it usually receives.  He was a fine composer, leaving us many works of the highest caliber, especially in his chamber music repertoire.  We would be so much poorer without his Songs Without Words, the lovely miniatures that are indeed vocal in nature.  But the composer insisted he would not reveal the words even if they existed.  Words, he said, “mean different things to different people, but the song arouses the same feeling in everyone - a feeling that cannot be expressed in words.”

Felix Mendelssohn was probably the greatest improviser of the nineteenth century.  In a 1844 benefit concert  with Mendelssohn, Thalberg and Moscheles, all known for their remarkable improvisational skills, Mendelssohn ultimately won the day with his “wonderful shower of octaves.”  English writer and musician John Edmund Cox describes another performance: “Scarcely had he touched the keyboard than something that can only be described as similar to a pleasurable electric shock passed through his hearers and held them spellbound - a sensation that was only disolved as the last note was struck and when one’s pent up breath seemed as if only able to recover its normal action by means of a gulp or sob.” 

For more information about this great composer go to the Mendelssohn Project.

Portland Piano International’s second artist of the season, Jonathan Biss, discusses music and life on his blog:

“In my own unsafe journey towards wisdom, or maturity, I am holding on tightly to my questions, and to my vulnerabilities; or, to paraphrase Schnabel [from his book, My Life and Music] once again, I am suppressing safety in the pursuit of courage.

That’s the rare approach to music these days, since many young competition-driven artists seem to value the safety factor far more than the courage part.  

In his humorous blog bio, Biss claims that his professional debut preceded his actual birthday by several months “when he performed, prenatally, the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Lorin Maazel.” (His mother is the great violinist, Miriam Fried.)

 Biss will play several works of Felix Mendelssohn on his upcoming Portland recital, including the Variations Serieuses. 

Join Portland Piano International on November 1st for Biss’s recital of Mendelssohn, Kurtag, Mozart and Schubert (the great A Major Sonata, D. 959). 

“Keep your eye on Jonathan Biss. This pianist is going places…”  Cincinnati Enquirer

HG

Although I missed celebrating Glenn Gould’s birthday on the proper day, September 25th, it’s not too late to enjoy this short video clip showing a different side of his personality.  This time he plays a role in the Scottisch Rhapsody from William Walton’s Facade.  His musical accomplice here is Patricia Rideout.

Thanks to Roberta Pili at thepianist.com

Join the brilliant young pianist Haochen Zhang on Sunday afternoon, October 4th in the Newmark Theatre for a performance of works by Beethoven, Mason Bates, Ravel and Liszt.  We will feature an overhead video projection at this recital to give all audience members an “up-close and personal” relationship with Zhang.

Visit portlandpiano.org for ticket information.

HG

Portland is blessed with a wealth of great pianists next weekend.  One of our all-time favorites, Jon Kimura Parker, will be soloist with the Oregon Symphony in Brahms’ magnificent First Concerto for Piano versus and Orchestra beginning Saturday and running through Monday evening.  On Sunday afternoon, October 4, pianist Haochen Zhang performs in the Newmark Theatre to open the season for Portland Piano International.

Since Parker is playing Brahms instead of Rachmaninoff, I suppose it’s safe to reprint this hilarious story from his Opus3 Artists page.  It’s about a Grant Park (Chicago) performance this past June, and the conductor is our very own Carlos Kalmar.

How Not to Play Rach 3

06.19.09
Jon Kimura Parker

First of all, Rach 3 is just a terrible summer piece. I am never asked to play this in the summer. Orchestras have very minimal rehearsal time in the summer (I’ll never forget my 17-minute single dress rehearsal of the Ravel Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Vail a few summers ago…) and Rach 3 is filled with rehearsal-time-sucking rubati. There’s also something about the structural ambition of the piece - it’s a little long for a summer audience’s attention span.

But here I am in Chicago playing Rach 3 with Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Festival Orchestra, which has kept its famous name (it’s their 75th anniversary) but has physically moved to the spectacular new outdoor Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

It wasn’t a good sign that I arrived the other day in a rainstorm. I am staying with friends who live on the 58th floor of an apartment building and when I arrived I wondered why all the windows were covered. “Oh no,” my host said. “We’re just in a cloud at the moment.”

Yesterday’s rehearsal was a bit disappointing - the second half of the program is a world premiere (another oddity for a summer orchestra festival, again because of rehearsal needs) so I had to make do with a 30-minute rehearsal. (Rach 3 takes about 42 minutes to play through.) Of course, since we are outdoors, there is no question of how good the acoustics are: there are NO acoustics. Everything is dependent on mikes and a massive array of speakers dangling all over. It is incredibly difficult to play a concerto on ‘faith’ - that is, when you cannot hear the strings and winds onstage. (As I expected, hearing the brass and percussion did not present a problem.) I also seemed to be producing no sound. So I made the classic mistake of forcing my sound in a desperate bid to hear myself, and spent the rest of the day taking painkillers.

This morning’s rehearsal was when all the fun happened. It was pouring rain, and screaming thunder, making all concerns about acoustics irrelevant. I could see drops of water traveling on the wind and landing on the piano. The outside violins and celli had already stopped playing and were protecting their instruments. I asked if we could spread out the risers further, thus pushing the orchestra back, so that we could push the piano upstage ‘into’ the orchestra. “No, we can’t do that, because the riser movers are a separate union and we would have to call them in and it’s a minimum 6-hour call.” (I am not making this up.)

Finally, Maestro Kalmar relieved a few players off the back and the string sections moved back, and we shoved the piano into the middle. Then they closed enormous metal/glass doors which protected the entire stage from the elements. You cannot imagine how impressive these doors are (think James Bond movie finale…) This also turned the entire stage into a hot house. We asked about air conditioning. “Sure, we can do that,” said the stage manager, “if you don’t mind that the condensation will cause random water drops will fall on the orchestra.” We opted to stay hot.

At this point I could barely remember what note the Rachmaninoff starts on. We rehearsed, with a false sense of acoustical security caused by the large closed door, which bounced all the sound around so that we could actually hear each other.

Today’s concert was at 6:30pm, a very odd time for a concert (however, this is a common recital time in Japan) which doesn’t allow for a really full day to practice, rest, etc. Despite having intentionally dehydrated myself all day so that I wouldn’t sweat too much, I was already dripping backstage before playing. I asked about their weather backup plan. “We don’t really have one,” they said. “It never really rains in June.” Huh.

I talked to the sound guy, and asked him for a stage monitor, just like the rock musicians always use. I asked him to specifically push the piano and winds forward in the mix, so I could hear them, and hear myself.

I made the mistake of peeking out from stage right. From stage right all you can see are the seats way up front in front of the celli, and those seats are always the empty ones, because you can’t see the keyboard from there. So I thought nobody had showed up. Imagine my surprise when we walked out and there were several thousand people sitting on plastic bags on wet chairs.

Performing outdoors in summer festivals out in the countryside requires a certain patience with random sounds: a bird chirping, a distant plane overhead, a baby crying out on the lawn area. But playing outdoors in a summer festival downtown is another thing entirely. The second theme of the 1st movement was completely obliterated by a passing siren. The sounds of kids whooping it up at a nearby wading pool were clearly audible throughout. Camera flashes popped in a rhythmic counterpoint to the music.

And then there was the thunder. Orchestra players told me afterwards how much they enjoyed watching the black sky roll in during the 2nd movement. (So much for watching the conductor…) I was only aware that by the time I had started the 3rd movement the piano keys were slick with humidity and sweat, the sky had darkened considerably, and peripherally the audience had turned into a sea of bright umbrellas. Being the deeply thoughtful artist that I am, my first reaction to this was “How will everyone clap loudly enough if they are holding up umbrellas?”

This turned out to be a splendid exercise in selective focus. I forced my mind to stay relentlessly with the music, glued my ears to the beautiful sound of the Grant Park Festival Orchestra, and tried to block everything else out. It might have worked except that in the 2nd movement I got really hungry, and then all I could think about was how much I really wanted Thai food.

I find that with every work that I perform, there’s a moment, usually near the end, where the hardest bit is over. At that point I allow myself a slight smile, knowing that I can handle the ending without fear of disaster. In Rach 3 that moment happens for me at rehearsal number 68 which, if you don’t have a score handy, is right before the final coda. It’s incredibly satisfying to play the big chordal melodies at the end of the piece, and in the fast stuff, I can rationalize that nobody is really listening for the right notes anymore, and that it’s all about gestures.

We finished in a blaze of well-intentioned octaves, and I enjoyed the peculiar sight of seeing an ‘umbrella ovation.’ I was completely drenched. In fact, I’m considering throwing out my whole concert outfit and just buying a new one in the morning. The forecast for tomorrow’s concert? 84 degrees and partly cloudy. It’s almost going to seem dull.

JKP

Parker’s October performance with the Oregon Symphony will be safely inside the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.   For ticket information, visit the Oregon Symphony here.

Excellent seats are still available for Zhang’s Sunday afternoon recital. 

He also excels at ping pong and snooker.  That would be Haochen Zhang, one of the two Gold Medalists of the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and the pianist who will open the 32nd season of Portland Piano International’s Recital Series on October 4th.

A group of around forty patrons of PPI attended the Semi-Final Round of that competition in late May of this year and heard this remarkable young pianist in repertoire of Chopin, Mason Bates and Liszt.

Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News said of his performance, “Zhang . . . demonstrated a musical maturity almost unimaginable in one so young.”  I agree.  His version of the complete Chopin Preludes, Op. 28 was one of the most moving live performances of the set I have heard.  Henry T. Finck, American music critic, and incidentally, raised in Portland, Oregon, said of the Preludes, ” if all piano music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin’s Preludes.”  I could live with that.  Although you will not have the chance to hear the Preludes in his upcoming Portland recital, you can still access the live video feed from the competition by going to

http://www.cliburn.tv/#

and following the instructions there.  The technology used by the Cliburn Foundation this year continues to provide me with hours of listening pleasure from the three weeks of the competition.

In addition to performances of the Bates and Liszt works he played in Ft. Worth, Zhang will play other master works of our repertoire in Portland, including Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel and Beethoven’s great Sonata in A Flat Major, Opus 110.

Complete program notes for Haochen Zhang’s Portland recital are here.

It has been an interesting two-plus weeks for piano lovers absorbed in the Cliburn Competition in Ft. Worth, Texas.  Portland Piano International hosted a group of forty at the Semi-Finals from May 28-31.

Most people have seen the results by now, but if you’ve not read any of the bloggers, critics or other reviews or commentaries, here is one from blogger Chris Shull at Star-Telegram.com (Ft. Worth, TX).

I’ve agreed with Chris for the most part throughout the competition, and this article sums up my feelings about the winners.

All of the finalists this year were terrific pianists, and all had something important - and in some cases very different -  to say.  But it was the listeners, real or virtual, and many more than usual this year thanks to the internet broadcast, who were the real winners.

Visit Portland on July 12, just five weeks hence, to hear the Silver Medalist, Yeol Eun Son, at the Portland International Piano Festival.  Her set of Debussy Preludes in the Semi-Final round was gorgeous.

 portlandpiano.org

Probably the most important decision any of the 29 pianists in the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition can make is the choice of which instrument they will play in the series of performances.

DFW.com has an interesting story about one of the competitors, Washington state’s Stephen Beus, exploration of the three available pianos.  Did he make the right choice?

For those unable to attend the Competition, live internet braodcast of all recitals is available for the first time this year at www.cliburn.tv.  Follow the link there to download the Silverlight program that will allow you to view the broadcasts.

Several bloggers, including Portland’s own James McQuillen, will keep us informed as the Competition progresses.  Natacha Kudritskaya, a 25-year-old Ukrainian pianist drew the first position and will begin her recital at 1:00 local time today.  Beus follows her at 2:05.

For those interested in the encore at Sunday’s recital featuring pianist Arnaldo Cohen, it was Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho by Ernesto Nazareth.  My score translates the title loosely as I’ve Got a Cavaquinho.

According to Wikipedia, “The cavaquinho (pron. /ka.va.’ki.ɲu/ in Portuguese) is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings.”

Those wishing they could hear Arnaldo Cohen’s version again are in luck.  Here is a YouTube clip featuring the great pianist, obviously playing the Nazareth after a concerto performance with The Utah Synphony.

This link will take you to David Stabler’s review of the unforgettable recital.  Stabler is Classical Music Critic for the Oregonian (Portland, Oregon).

Those are Peter Dobrin’s words from his review of pianist Arnaldo Cohen’s Philadelphia recital in November of last year.  Yes, he is talking about technique, and goes on to say that “ precisely because technique is such a firmly settled question in Cohen’s playing, he was able to draw attention to so many other lovely aspects of his persona.”

“He’s a stylish musician, though not a mannered one. He’s powerful but not percussive. He emphasizes organization and structure, though the freedom of his tempos breaks through when it serves an expressive purpose.”

Cohen plays two recitals in Portland next week and also leads a master class on Saturday evening at Sherman Clay/Moe’s Pianos.  Check the PPI website for program details and for information about the master class.

He features Liszt’s B Minor Sonata on both Sunday afternoon and Monday evening here. Back to Dobrin for comments on the Liszt: “It’s a Cohen signature piece, one of those matches between player and repertoire in which one seems to complete the other. And again, the technique, as impressive as it was, receded in relation to the more important feat of uncovering musical meaning.”

Arnaldo Cohen is one of the giants of the piano world.  His understanding of inner lines and textures in music and his sense of structure is remarkable.

You can find Dobrin’s Philadelphia Inquirer website - philly.com - review here.

The world’s most important piano competition begins this month in Ft. Worth, Texas.  The 30 pianists selected for the Preliminary Round beginning May 22nd  through 26th represent an incredibly high standard.

One pianist not in the starting lineup dominates the Ft. Worth news this week, and you can read all about 12- year-old Lewis Warren Jr. in this article from the Dallas Morning News.

Warren is definitely doing his part to spread the word about classical music, and he has the secret of all successful musicians;  ” ‘He sees his talent as a gift to share,’ said his mom.”