Posts tagged as "piano"

QUEEN OF THE KEYBOARD

August 11, 2022

Mark Ainley surveys the artistry of Greek pianist Gina Bachauer, to mark the release of her complete Mercury Living Presence recordings. Many pianists are impossible to classify and fit no school. Gina Bachauer was one of these… unlike most modern pianists she was a romantic with a virtuoso approach to the keyboard…. She played in […]

From Shellac to Stereo

May 5, 2022

MICHAEL GRAY explores the Wilhelm Kempff legacy Wilhelm Kempff began recording for Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in the autumn of 1922. (Kempff is quoted as saying he began recording in 1920. However, his first record falls within DG’s matrix series for discs made in the autumn of 1922.) Before 1916, DG had been the German branch […]

WIDMUNG – DEDICATION

February 22, 2022

On the occasion of Wolfgang Holzmair’s 70th birthday, Imogen Cooper pays tribute to the man and musician. It is close on 30 years since Wolfgang and I rehearsed for our first concert. It was in a little church in Steinbach, on the Attersee in the Austrian Salzkammergut. We were to perform the Schubert Schwanengesang and […]

FOU TS’ONG

November 23, 2021

“I still remember the time when I played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concert No. 3 for the first time in London in 2001. After the concert, he gave me a hug with tears in his eyes, and said that he had high hopes for me. Master Fou was a great artist that I respected very much. I […]

SHAPING ‘THE SYDNEY’

July 1, 2021

Piers Lane reflects on the Sydney International Piano Competition What were you doing in July 1977? If you were in Australia and a piano-lover, you were probably heading for Sydney or tuned into ABC Radio, the national broadcaster, because the new Sydney International Piano Competition was big news and you didn’t want to miss it. […]

Nadia Boulanger – In the Boulangerie

December 11, 2020

From the 1920s till the 1960s, composers of all stripes — particularly American composers — beat a path to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger.

Réminiscences de Donna Ruth

November 26, 2020

95-year-old piano legend Ruth Slenczynska reminiscences with Eloquence Classics about studying with her legendary mentors, Josef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninov, and witnessing the creation of her classmate Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

Perfection With A Purpose – The Priceless Art of Andór Foldes

October 9, 2020

Years ago, as a youthful Bartók acolyte, I learned the three piano concertos via Géza Anda’s marvellous DG recordings (with Ferenc Fricsay conducting) and the solo piano works from György Sándor’s near-complete series on Vox. Years later I acquired Andor Foldes’ DG mono set of the solo works (less comprehensive than Sándor’s but still representative) […]

Eileen Joyce

April 20, 2018

From the goldfields in Western Australia, whose capital city is the most remote in the world, Joyce defied incongruous and humble beginnings to forge a career that took her to the international pinnacle of twentieth-century pianism.