The piano is easy to play badly, and hard to play well, and when it comes to playing well, there are a wide variety of approaches that could fit comfortably under that description. But true master pianists have one great attribute that others lack, and that’s control. When a player can control every element of his or her performance so that the interpretation comes vividly to … [Read more...]
Pianist Han makes bravura impression at Symphonia
The Third Piano Concerto of Beethoven is an indelible masterpiece, but it’s not the first choice a pianist would make for bravura display. And yet the young South Korean pianist Yoonie Han, simply by turning up the heat here and there Sunday afternoon, gave the work a bit more of the fire it must have had when it was new. And that made the Boca Raton Symphonia concert for … [Read more...]
Pianist Paremski plumbs depths of Rachmaninov
When it comes to the monumental Third Piano Concerto of Sergei Rachmaninov, the pianist Natasha Paremski comes by her affinity for it naturally. Born in Moscow, where she began piano studies at age 4 before emigrating to the United States with her family at age 8, Paremski’s family insisted on speaking and writing Russian, reading Russian books and watching Russian movies at … [Read more...]
Pianist Simmons brings new savvy to the old business of classical music
When she took part in the Musical Awakenings educational outreach program for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Jade Simmons tended to take the students she saw by surprise. “It takes you into 20 schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with a mostly minority demographic,” said Simmons, who as an African-American female is a rarity in the world of classical … [Read more...]
Pianist Cohen most impressive in Four Arts recital
One of the best versions of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations I’ve ever heard came courtesy of a YouTube video featuring a German cellist whom I’d never heard of, and whose career turned out to be largely in academia. The classical music world has many excellent players like that, artists who have low public profiles but a stellar record of accomplishment. That’s one of the … [Read more...]
French pianist Vincent original, impressive in Delray recital
Playing the music of Franz Liszt, who was born in this month 200 years ago, usually gives a pianist free rein to indulge his inner keyboard wild man. And yet Guillaume Vincent, who was born only 20 years ago Sunday, brought to his reading of Liszt’s epic B minor Sonata qualities such as introspection, deliberateness and mystery, casting this showpiece in an unfamiliar but … [Read more...]
Pianist Perez persuasive in music of Albeniz, Villa-Lobos
In an ambitious and wide-ranging recital Saturday night at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, pianist Vanessa Perez brought poetry and power to music from Mozart to Villa-Lobos. It was in the music of South America and Spain that Perez, a native of Venezuela, made the strongest impact, though in the six years since I last saw her at the Steinway Gallery, she has become a more … [Read more...]
Pianist Uryvayeva makes good showing in complete Chopin Etudes
Frederic Chopin created art amid exercise when he wrote his two collections of Etudes (Opp. 10 and 25, and not counting the three he wrote in 1839 for Fetis), and with the exception of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, they far outdistance every other such pedagogical work of their time. Perhaps the monumentality of the challenge – like doing the complete 48 of Bach’s … [Read more...]
Pianist Weisman brings meaty program to Piano Lovers series
Assaff Weisman leads a busy life as a pianist, teacher at the Juilliard School, and chief of an international chamber ensemble whose debut disc arrives later this year. To put it another way, he’s a thorough, expert musician, the kind on whom the classical world depends to keep the art form relevant and fresh for audiences and students. What remains for him is to carve out a … [Read more...]
Pianist Graffman offers left-hand music at Lynn
Sitting down at the Steinway on the stage of the Wold Center, Gary Graffman demonstrates how he tests pianos for the Curtis Institute, which has asked its former director to help choose a new batch of 20 for the Philadelphia arts school. Graffman’s test piece is a slow solo passage from the middle of second movement of the Brahms Second Concerto. And he is playing it with two … [Read more...]