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Tag: Piano

Menahem Pressler Beaux Arts Trio RIP

The pianist Menahem Pressler has died. Pressler was the anchor of one of the world’s most beloved chamber music ensembles, the Beaux Arts Trio. He was the only musician to perform with the group, which underwent several personnel changes, throughout its entire 53-year existence.

The serenity of his playing betrayed no indication of a harrowing start. Many of his relatives – grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins – were murdered during the Holocaust. Somehow he managed to escape Nazi Germany with his immediate family in 1939.

In 1946, he won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco. Not long after, he made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Beginning in 1955, Pressler taught at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. The same year, he became a founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio.

Following the trio’s dissolution in 2008, Pressler returned to his career as a concert pianist. He made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 90.

Pressler died yesterday at the age of 99. He would have been 100 in December.

To coincide with the birthday of Johannes Brahms, here’s a lovely Beaux Arts performance of the composer’s Piano Trio No. 1.

Pressler plays Chopin in 2018

Pressler documentary in German (activate subtitles by clicking on CC)

R.I.P.

PHOTO: Pressler (center) with Beaux Arts colleagues Isadore Cohen (left) and Bernard Greenhouse

May 7, 2023
Seymour Bernstein at 95 Piano Legend

Born and raised in Newark, NJ, Seymour Bernstein has basically been teaching piano for 80 years, ever since his own teacher, Clara Husserl – herself a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky – delegated the supervision of some of her more gifted younger pupils to him when he was 15. Today, Bernstein continues to teach and enlighten, with 95 years of accumulated wit and wisdom.

Also contributing to his own education were celebrated pianists Alexander Brailowsky, Clifford Curzon, and Jan Gorbaty, legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, and master of all trades George Enescu.

As a soloist, Bernstein gave the world premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1969. Even at the height of his career as a performer, he taught, conducting master classes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He abandoned the concert stage at the age of 50, opting instead for the quieter satisfactions of teaching and composing. He intimated to no one that his final concert, in 1977, would be his swan song.

Today, he maintains a private studio in New York City and is an adjunct professor at New York University. His books include “With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music,” “20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography,” “Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music,” and “Chopin: Interpreting His Notational Symbols.”

Warm and funny, dry, opinionated, and always full of insight, Bernstein is a larger-than-life character whose philosophy of musicmaking is always rooted in the heart. Don’t let that grandfatherly exterior lull you. Bernstein remains as sharp as C-sharp major.

In 2015, a documentary was released, “Seymour: An Introduction,” directed by Princeton’s Ethan Hawke. (If you’re a Salinger fan, you’ll doubly appreciate the title.) The film has a 100-percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch the trailer here.

A Bernstein interview at the age of 90 on “Living the Classical Life”

There are also hours of fascinating videos on the YouTube channel “tonebase PIANO.” In this one, Bernstein dismantles Glenn Gould’s Mozart.

Bernstein plays Brahms

At 19, playing Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz No. 1”

Happy 95th birthday, Seymour Bernstein!

April 24, 2023
Victor Borge Birthday A Classic Performance

An old pro, performing one of his classic routines. Happy birthday, Victor Borge!

January 3, 2023
Remembering Pianist Joseph Kalichstein

I know it’s been a few days since pianist Joseph Kalichstein died, but I can’t seem to have been able to find the time or focus to report it. Kalichstein, who was equally accomplished as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician, died at his home in Maplewood, NJ, on Thursday.

His career spanned half a century. He was part of generation of Juilliard-trained musicians, including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Slatkin, and James Levine, who rose to the top of their respective fields to become highly-visible and frequently-recorded performers.

It was Claudio Arrau who heard him in Tel Aviv, when Kalichstein was 14 years-old. (Kalichstein later stated he had been able to read music before he could read words.) Arrau arranged for him to be brought to Juilliard in 1962. Kalichstein himself later taught there, beginning in 1983.

He attracted the admiration of Leonard Bernstein, who invited him to perform on one of his televised Young People’s Concerts, and Rudolf Serkin, George Szell, and William Steinberg, who sat on the jury for the Leventritt Competition in 1969. Kalichstein won the the competition by unanimous decision.

In 1976, with violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, he formed the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The trio made its public debut at the Inauguration of President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Kalichstein’s final performance, in Phoenix on March 17, was with the ensemble, playing works by Schumann, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Brahms.

A sensitive interpreter and a self-effacing one, Kalichstein excelled as a collaborator, with a widely remarked-upon lack of ego. His peers, students, and audiences all benefited from his devotion to music.

I was privileged to attend a few of his performances with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in Philadelphia. Locally, he also appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, in 2014.

Kalichstein’s repertoire embraced the core composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, 20th century masters such as Ravel, Bartók, and Shostakovich, and, with the trio, more contemporary works by Leon Kirchner, Arvo Pärt, Richard Danielpour, and Daron Hagen.

He was 76 years-old.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 22

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Szell

Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto”

Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio perform Brahms, Dvořák and Mendelssohn

Kalichstein talks Brahms with David Dubal

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio’s chamber music recordings across a broad repertoire are generously represented on YouTube, but most of them are posted in individual movements. So if you’re interested in more, definitely poke around!

PHOTO: Joseph Kalichstein (center) with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson

April 3, 2022
Grant Johannesen A Centenary Celebration

Nobody likes a know-it-all.

When five-year-old Grant Johannesen’s first music teacher recognized his talent, as she heard him noodling on a piano across the street, her generosity soon turned to annoyance when she discovered that he could emulate anything she played. He went on to study with Robert Casadesus, Egon Petri, Roger Sessions, and Nadia Boulanger.

Johannesen was born in Salt Lake City 100 years ago today.

As an adult, he toured extensively, both with the New York Philharmonic under Dmitri Mitropoulos, and as a solo pianist. He was particularly acclaimed for his elegant performances of French music, especially that of Gabriel Fauré.

From 1974 to 1985, he served as director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was a frequent soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra and his hometown band, the Utah Symphony.

Happy centenary, Grant Johannesen!

Johannesen performs music by “American Indianist” Arthur Farwell (“Navajo War Dance”) and Samuel Barber (“Homage to John Field”)

Johannesen plays “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” with the Cleveland Orchestra

A lovely recital of French music presented at the Bergen Festival in 1973

Fauré’s Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 111

In conversation with David Dubal, now host of WWFM – The Classical Network’s “The Piano Matters”

July 30, 2021

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