Pianist

A decade or so ago I was invited to a private performance given by this month’s cover artist, Gabriela Montero. Sitting at the piano without a score in sight, she asked the audience for melodies on which to improvise. As someone who has played with m

Answer the question below correctly, and you could be one of three lucky winners to receive Gabriela Montero’s recent album from Orchid Classics featuring Ravel’s Concerto in G and Montero’s own Latin Concerto. Deadline for entries: 15 September 2021

Although my notated composing portfolio is still quite small (a piano concerto, a piano/orchestral tone poem, a violin/piano piece and ‘Babel’ for piano and chamber string orchestra), I could argue that I have composed thousands of pieces. You see, i

The team at Johns Hopkins put me into the MRI scanner tube with a small keyboard. On this I had to respond to random instructions to play a Bach minuet, to improvise or to play a scale, without knowing which would be next. The point was to see how my

‘Iwas in the shower just now, listening to what was in my head. I realised that my inner world is not words. It’s always music. It’s almost as though nothing exists except thoughts through music.’ Gabriela Montero is reflecting on the latest twist in

In a passionate desire to become masters of our instrument, we pianists spend lots of time learning repertoire and building up a strong technique. But what use is technique without solid general musicianship, and a reliable ear? I advise my students

Pianist 121 • Read the lessons • Play the scores MELANIE SPANSWICK is a pianist, writer, teacher and composer. As an author, she is published by leading publishing houses, and has written a three-book piano course for those returning to piano playing

Key G major Tempo Andante Style Late Romantic Will improve your ✔ Legato playing ✔ Pedalling ✔ Left-hand leaps This endearing miniature was written by the little-known British Romantic composer Cuthbert Harris. It moves along calmly at a dotted crotc

Key G major Tempo Allegretto tranquillo Style Romantic Will improve your ✔ Two-against-three ✔ Understanding of structure ✔ Phrasing What is it about the success of Grieg’s piano music? I think Rachmaninov had worked it out: ‘Grieg … had the gift of

Telemann is one of the most prolific composers in history, at least in terms of surviving works. He was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time. He was also compared favourably both to his friend JS Bach

Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, American composer George Whitefield Chadwick was a representative composer of what is called the Second New England School of American composers of the late

Friedrich Kiel was a German Romantic composer and music teacher. Writing of the chamber music of Kiel, the scholar and critic Wilhelm Altmann notes that it was the composer’s extreme modesty which kept him and his exceptional works from receiving the

Tchaikovsky composed his Album for the Young in 1878, exactly 30 years after Schumann composed his volume of works which bears the same title. The German composer wrote a prolific 43 small works in his album, whereas Tchaikovsky decided on a more mod

Cuban composer and pianist Ignacio Cervantes studied with Gottschalk and Alkan, but it’s the music of his native Cuba that we hear in this piece from his six Danzas Cubanas (Cuban Dances). Cervantes’s Cuban-style music has certainly been popular with

Criticism of Nielsen’s piano music has centred on its perceived ‘unpianistic’ qualities, and it’s true that, like Sibelius, the piano was far removed from the centre of Nielsen’s composing activity. However, also like Sibelius – and Grieg – he had a

Schubert wrote his Adagio D178 in 1815 – the year which was known as the composer’s ‘annus mirabilis’ (miraculous year): He composed over 20,000 bars of music, more than half of which were for orchestra, including nine church works, a symphony, and a

Son of American choral composer Lowell Mason and brother of a co-founder of the Mason & Hamlin piano company, William Mason studied piano with Moscheles, Dreyschock and Liszt in Europe. Back in the US, he enjoyed a long career as a performer and comp

WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM French Romantic composer Melanie Helene Bonis (known as Mel Bonis) wrote some 300 works – including pieces for piano solo and piano four hands. First published in 1909, the romantically lyrical Ph

WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM Pianists often refer to the last movement of Bach’s Partita No 1 as the Gigue. But, as harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani points out in his lesson inside this issue, Bach himself was clear that it shou

For Charles Darwin, improvisation was an essential foundation of evolutionary success. ‘[It is] those who have learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively who have prevailed,’ he wrote in On the Origin of Species. For many musicians however

Barely out of her teens, Beatrice Rana took silver at the 2013 Van Cliburn Competition in Texas. Agents and record labels saw and heard something special – and she made her debut in these pages as the cover artist of Pianist 87 in 2015. More than fiv

Becoming a rounded musician of any description is about so much more than getting your hands around the notes. We all know that, which is why one of the most popular parts of Pianist is the Scores section in the middle. We’ve all made our own discove

Kawai’s KDP range has been a stalwart of the entry-level home digital piano market for years, catering for beginners and those requiring a digital instrument alongside an acoustic. In May this year the company announced a replacement for the KDP110,

Paris-born Cecile Chaminade was a prolific composer. Not only that, but her music was hugely popular in its day, especially in France, England and the United States. Readers of Pianist may remember a different, more challenging version of this piece

Key B flat Tempo Giga Style Baroque Will improve your ✔ Hand-crossing technique ✔ Use of dynamics ✔ Slurs Let us start out with a bit of informed housekeeping. If you have the volume of all Six Partitas (BWV 825-830), casually glance through it to fa

‘La donna è mobile’ is the Duke of Mantua’s canzone from the beginning of Act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. The canzone is famous as a showcase for tenors. The Italian words mean ‘the woman is flighty’. Look at the technical tips within the

The sustain pedal is the piano’s Swiss Army knife. That inconspicuous piece of brass resting under the right foot is how we access a dizzying complexity of sounds, effects, textures and colours. The other two pedals – the sostenuto (or more often a ‘