Classical Music

Light and Darkness Religious inspiration: Franz Liszt´s religious compositions for piano solo. Interpreted by Martin Filjak. One of the most exciting artists to emerge in recent years, Martina Filjak is garnering international praise for her poetic passion and technical mastery at the keyboard. She came to international attention by winning the Gold Medal, the 1st prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2009. During the past seasons she has performed with esteemed orchestras that include the Cleveland Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Barcelona and the Japan Century Orchestra. Filjak’s most recent conductor collaborations include Michael Schønwandt, Heinrich Schiff, Theodor Guschlbauer, JoAnn Falletta, Alexander Shelley, Markus Poschner, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Josep Caballé-Domenech, Tito Munoz, Carlos Miguel Preto und Stefan Sanderling. Based in Berlin, Martina Filjak speaks seven languages. Fortunately, for an active performer, she loves to travel.

To transcribe is to establish a connection with the past and the present, on a path of research that is profound and complex: A "conscious invention". The piano is the ideal means for the reinterpretation of music. Franz Liszt was a master in this art. For the Hungarian composer, piano writing and orchestral writing were fields of the same research, which is an intellectual research.

Born into a musical family in Yerevan, Armenia, Vardan Mamikonian began his piano studies at the Yerevan Spendiarian School of Music with Arkui Haroutunian. He continued his studies at the Moscow Central Music School and at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory where he became a student of Valery Kastelsky.

Ukranian pianist Mykola Suk, who now lives in the U.S., won a Gold Medal at the Budapest Liszt competition and has been internationally acclaimed as an exponent of Liszt's music. American Record Guide raved about Suk: 'An astonishing blend of muscular power, poetry and utter control: one of the more formidable talents to have appeared in this country in years'.

This impressive album of music by Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is performed by pianist Dinara Klinton. This is Klinton’s second album. She has won prizes in more than 15 international competitions, and was the first recipient of the Benjamin Britten Fellowship from the Royal College of Music. Titled Etudes d’execution transcendante, this album name brilliantly describes the style of Klinton’s playing, as her virtuosity sweeps across listeners.

Classical Music

RARE PIANO WORKS

In the Romantic period, the connections between love and death were an obsession of artists. Composers were naturally drawn to explore the great themes that entered literature in the works of Dante, Petrarch and Goethe: good and evil, love and death. Liszt was no exception. The powerful, evocative works presented here range from moments of repose and contemplation to nearly unbearable contrasts of dynamics, pitch registers and tempi, dramatized by bold juxtapositions. “A fearless, flawless knight of the piano” is how Vienna’s Die Presse characterized pianist Carlo Grante.

I shall conclude with a piano recital which has greatly impressed me: The pianist Idil Biret is a marvelous musician, and, even more, gifted with a very strong personality and great intelligence.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Randall Harlow performs his own transcriptions of Franz Liszt's 12 Transcendental Etudes for piano, and two of the Grandes etudes de Paganini, upon the Casavant-Schantz pipe organ of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. Randall Harlow has long dodged conventional expectations. As a performer, he has eschewed the competition circuit, choosing instead to explore the outer reaches of the organ repertoire, from avant-garde contemporary and electro-acoustic compositions and forgotten works of the past to chamber music, concertos, and transcriptions. Performances have taken him across the USA, Russia, Germany, Greenland, and the UK. A specialist in contemporary music, Harlow was the first organist to be awarded a New Music USA Project, in support of his upcoming debut recording.

Classical Music

Classical Music