Month: October 2011
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PROGRAM NOTES: SHOSTAKOVICH PRELUDES AND FUGUES
Dmitri Shostakovich: 12 Preludes and Fugues from Op. 87 Like many of the great composers before him (Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff, among others), Shostakovich possessed the skills of a keyboard virtuoso, and might well have sustained a successful career as such. Among his prizes was one from the First International Chopin…
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GETTING TO KNOW: JUHO POHJONEN
“I receive something valuable through music – and I hope that each listener will feel that they have too.” On his music education: “I started to play violin in a children’s music school at the age of two-and-a-half. My brother – now also a professional pianist and a composer – was already studying piano at…
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GETTING TO KNOW: SIMON KEENLYSIDE
“I am a story teller, I am a narrator.” “I spend my entire working life dealing only with beauty; I rarely sing with a piece of music in front of me, so all of these beautiful songs are committed to memory.” Performing opera does not come without its risks: injuring his back in one…
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GETTING TO KNOW: MAXIM RYSANOV
“If they say the violin is a human voice, I would say the viola is the voice of the soul.” Discovery: “I studied at the boarding school, and there was a viola player in the next room. Its vibrations touched me deeply when I played it. That was how I realized that I can…