The Well-Tempered Ear
Meet and hear piano phenom Yunchan Lim
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By Jacob Stockinger
He is looks like a young, mop-topped Beatle, but he plays the piano with the lyricism of Arthur Rubinstein and the technical virtuosity of Vladimir Horowitz or Maurizio Pollini.
He is the South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim (seen below, during his winning performances at the last Van Cliburn Competition two years ago). If you haven’t yet heard of him or listened to him, you really should. Otherwise you are missing out of a phenomenal talent who is just 20 years old and offer sublimely beautiful interpretations.
Just listen to his superb and subtle performance of the “Aeolian Harp” etude, Op. 25, No. 1, by Chopin in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Recently, the British radio classical music radio station Classic FM offered a complete primer on Lim. It includes his personal and professional background and history as well as links to many of his special performances that have been acclaimed by his fellow musicians, the critics and the public.
Here is a link:
Do you know about Yunchan Lim?
Have you heard his playing?
What do you think of him?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Revisit historical and forgotten pianists with Mark Ainley’s ‘Piano Files’
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By Jacob Stockinger
Who were Jascha Spivakosky, Gitta Gradova, Wilhelm Backhaus, Marcelle Meyer, Benno Moisiewitsch, Guitar Novaes (below), Eugen Indjic and Solomon — pianists from Russia/Ukraine, the United States, Germany, France, England, Brazil, Serbia/US and England, respectively?
Who was the Polish-American Josef Hofmann (below) and why did Sergei Rachmaninoff and others consider him the greatest pianist of his day while others considered him — and still do — dangerously radical?
Why was the early death of Dino Lipatti (below) such a major loss for classical music?
Most of all: How did these performers play the piano? What made them special? And what did they sound like?
Just ask Mark Ainley (below).
Ainley’s online Piano Files goes back to the earliest days of recordings and resurrects forgotten virtuosi on Facebook and the web.
His frequently posts entries — often on birthdays or anniversaries of deaths and certain concerts — offers concise, well researched and well-written summaries of their lives and careers.
And he finds the best surviving or available recordings by those pianists — usually on YouTube or reissued CDs and LOPs (below) — and links to them so you can hear differences and decide for yourself.
For example, The Ear found the 1930 recording of Chopin mazurkas that Polish pianist Ignaz Friedman (below) recorded (on YouTube at the bottom) quite revealing about historical stylistic and rhythmic differences — freer rubato and hands not always played together — compared to more mainstream interpretations by, say, Arthur Rubinstein or Vladimir Horowitz or Martha Argerich.
You can also learn much about the Big Names, including pianists who studied with students Chopin and Liszt. Ainley celebrates well-known piano virtuosi like Rubinstein, Horowitz, Gina Bachauer, Claudio Arrau, Jorge Bolet and Dame Myra Hess as well.
Ainley’s Piano Files save you a lot of time and searching on your own, and are available for you to subscribe to for downloads and sharing on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ThePianoFilesWithMarkAinley
You can also go to his online website — which I prefer — and bookmark it if you like. There is a lot to explore, to read and listen to. The archives of past entries go back to March of 2011:
https://www.thepianofiles.com/author/Mark
And here is email if you have or a tip or suggestion for Ainley, or a reaction to his site and his written and recorded postings:
What do you think of the Piano Files?
Do you learn anything from them?
Will you use them and enjoy them?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Meet the 2024 winners of the Classic Piano International Competition in Dubai, UAE
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By Jacob Stockinger
Did you know that the fourth and final round of a major international piano competition was taking place in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates this past week?
The Ear didn’t — until now.
That when he saw the nine 2024 winners (below), chosen from 70 participants, named in a post on The Violin Channel website.
The third edition of Classic Piano International Competition — which started during the 2017-28 season — makes sense when you think about it.
Dubai has lots of oil money but not a lot of Western culture or prestige. But Piano World contains more than enough competitors and venues for the event — even after such top-ranked, career-boosting competitions as the Tchaikovsky in Russia, the Arthur Rubinstein in Israel, the Leeds in the UK, the Chopin in Poland and the Van Cliburn in the United States.
So why not a major piano event for the Middle East and the Arab world? (Readers: Do you know if any other music competitions take place in that area?)
Its format is unusual.
Pianists cannot apply directly. Instead, they have to participate in the early rounds that are held in countries around the world. Those who finish in the Top Five of a preliminary competition get invited to the final round in Dubai.
The competition’s preliminary rounds took place in the USA, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Kazakhstan, Poland, UK, Armenia, China, South Korea, Japan, Israel, and Spain.
Here is some general background:
And here are details including the jury members, the various prizes, and the restricted and required repertoire that the pianists must select from:
https://classicpiano.eu/competition
Russian and Asian pianists dominated this year, with veteran Andrey Gugnin of Russia (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom) taking home the first prize of 100,000 Euros ($108,300) plus 10 concert dates and a 50,000-Euro honorarium for performing with two different orchestras: the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. Gugnin, who protested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now lives in Croatia.
Here is a link to the story with the complete list of winners:
Like many major music competitions these days, Dubai’s was live-streamed. Its global media partners are medici.tv; euronews; and bachtrack. You can or will soon be able to find various artists and rounds of the competition on YouTube.
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How does a blind great pianist learn music?
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By Jacob Stockinger
How does he do it?
It is amazing that Nobuyuki Tsujii (below), a 35-year-old Japanese man who has been blind since birth, learned to play the piano.
It is even more amazing that he learned to play classical music well enough to perform in public at the age of 12.
And it seems to The Ear that it is still more amazing that he plays and performs well enough to win the Gold Medal at the international and highly esteemed Van Cliburn Piano Competition in 2009 and go on to establish a global career.
You might have heard of him or even heard his playing before.
Here is a link to his biography on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuyuki_Tsujii
But The Ear can’t recall hearing him discuss is such specific detail how he goes about learning a piece of music despite his blindness, his vision impairment and severe disability.
And we are not talking about easy music.
He plays and performs both books of Chopin etudes; played Beethoven’s mammoth, knuckle-busting “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Op. 106, during the Cliburn competition; tosses off Liszt’s fiendishly virtuosic “La Campanella” (in the YouTube video at the bottom he plays it live as an encore to a rapturous reception at a BBC Proms concert); and the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1.
This past Sunday, Tsjuii played the Chopin concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in a free concert at Clemson University,
Here is the revealing Q&A interview he gave to the Greenville Journal for that occasion.
The Ear finds his career an inspiring story.
What do you think?
Would you like to see and hear him play locally?
If you have attended a live concert of his, what did you think?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Remembering the classical musicians who died in 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
It remains an end-of-the-year ritual: remembering the dead who brought beauty to us through music.
Here are remembrances of the classical musicians we lost in 2023.
From Presto Music comes a list of world-known talents who died this past year — plus those who died in recent past years. It is relatively short and has links to the full obituaries, including the of American mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry (below, in 2009, in the singing the famous Habanera from Bizet’s “Carmen” in the YouTube video at the bottom). A pioneer, she was the first Black singer to perform at the annual summer Wagner festival in Beyreuth, Germany, and she performed at the Wisconsin Union Theater during the 1978-79 season:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/obituary/browse
Here is a longer, less renowned and more international list from The Violin Channel.
It includes many very well known musicians, including Menahem Pressler (below who co-founded and played for more than 50 years with the Beaux Arts Trio, which performed several times at the Wisconsin Union Theater. He also taught at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
It also includes the jazz and classical bassist Richard Davis (below), who spent decades teaching and performing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music.
The Ear especially likes this list because ordinary “house” musicians — and not just stars — are remembered. After all, the majority of musicians who add so much to our lives are not stars — but usually just mainstream workers in the arts.
Click on the names in red to see the full biographies, many of which are more touching than you might expect — for example, the Ukrainian conductor who died young while defending his country against Russia.
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New Yorker critic Alex Ross names 26 notable classical music recordings from 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
Alex Ross (below) writes for The New Yorker magazine and is perhaps the most respected classical music critic not only in the U.S. but in the world.
His bestselling book of collected essays, “The Rest Is Noise,” has been acclaimed and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. HIs latest book about Wagner, art and politics has also been highly praised.
This year, unlike in many others, Ross chose to list notable recordings along with a few general observations about the live performances and the recording scene.
For example, he has both sharp criticism and high praise of how the largest commercial labels as well as smaller specialty labels such as BIS and Hyperion are coping with the ever-growing popularity and challenge of streaming.
Ross also sounds a warning about the “transformation” of the iconic Mostly Mozart Festival by Lincoln Center to re-conceive the famous summer concert series as more “inclusive” — despite its financial and artistic success over decades.
Ross’ remarks serve as a timely warning for programmers at concert venues and radio shows to be careful of trying to increase popularity with simplistic ways to “de-canonize” and “de-colonialize” the repertoire in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion.
One suspects that what matters most of all to Ross is the quality of the compositions and the performances — not the genre, color or culture of those who are responsible for them. Not all parts of culture, he suggests in a longer version of the remarks, need to appeal to all parts of society.
Anyway, read his remarks about the best recordings and see the list of 20 others and see what you think:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2023-in-review/notable-classical-recordings-of-2023
One noteworthy fact is that he named the young Korean pianist Yunchan Lim (below, in a photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucci) to his “best-of” list for Lim’s live recording made during the Van Cliburn Competition that he won last year at the age of 18.
In the YouTube video at the bottom you can hear Lim play “Mazeppa,” perhaps the most fiendishly difficult of Liszt’s “Twelve Transcendental Etudes.” It depicts a Ukrainian folk hero who is punished for his adultery by being strapped naked to a galloping wild horse and struggles to free himself.
And if you have not yet heard Lim’s electrifying performance Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with conductor Marin Alsop during the finals of the Cliburn competition, you should check it out at YouTube.
Do you have any opinions about the recording that Ross selected?
About Yunchan Lim?
The Ear want to hear.
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Hear 25 works of Christmas-inspired classical music plus 86 minutes of background music
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today — Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023 — is Christmas Eve.
Many people and households will start celebrating Christmas today and tonight.
Then, of course, there is tomorrow — Christmas Day and especially morning,
By now you have certainly heard many hymns and carols plus the usual popular holiday musical fare.
But here are 25 works of classical music that are appropriate for today and tomorrow.
Some composers and works probably sound familiar while others are more obscure or neglected.
But each work comes with a short background story or narrative, plus an audio-visual video clip from YouTube.
Here is the link. Take a listen and decide for yourself.
In a less serious vein, the YouTube video below adds a different site with 86 minutes of traditional and familiar songs, hymns and carols — but in instrumental arrangements. It might sound a lot like old-fashioned Mantovani, but The Ear thinks that the lack of words and vocal music makes it more suitable for background to conversation and socializing.
What do you think?
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Guardian names its Top 10 classical albums of 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here’s another “Best of 2023” or “Top 10 of 2023” list of classical recordings during the past year.
This one comes come the British newspaper The Guardian. The Ear likes that the critic also refrains from calling the choices definite, but rather emphasizes personal preference that were “particularly impressive or rewarding.”.
While my own preferences haven’t been well incorporated into other lists, at least this one has one of my favorite and relatively young artists: the Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson (below).
He is noteworthy when playing Mozart, Debussy and Philip Glass.
But I find him most outstanding in Baroque repertoire, including his performances and own transcriptions of Rameau and especially Bach.
This year he is touring the world with his latest release — an astonishing recordings of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” He takes all repeats and offers 85 minutes or greater clarity, drive, left hand voicing and ornamentation. (You can hear a snippet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
But there is much more to check out.
This list lacks audio samples but does have links to the full reviews.
See for yourself:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/20/our-top-10-classical-recordings-of-2023
And here are lists to other Best of lists, which can be used for buying or receiving gifts or for exploring on various subscription services.
This is from NPR or National Public Radio:
And this is from Gramophone magazine:
Are you familiar with any of the named or honored recordings?
What ones do you recommend?
The Ear wants to hear.
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NPR names the Top 10 classical recordings of 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
Every holiday season, The Ear used to post various lists of the top classical recordings of the year as a kind of gift guide for giving or receiving CDs.
Such lists can still be used that way — especially now that audiophiles have turned to vinyl LPs that are quite expensive as well as limited in choice.
But since so many of us now have streaming services, I view such lists more and a guide to exploring rather than purchasing.
For example I can listen to the first album in 12 years by Awadagin Pratt (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom). It is “Stillpoint” and it features six pieces commissioned by Pratt. By streaming I can decide if I like it without buying it – and getting stuck if I don’t, which is often the case with new music.
Indeed, I think one of the best and most economical gifts one can gift a classical music lover is a trial subscription to a streaming service. For what it is worth, I find Apple Music and Apple Music Classical to be extremely useful and comprehensive in their offerings, including countless out-of-print vintage and outstanding recordings.
But their are several others — including Spotify, Idaho, Presto Music and Qobuz.
Plus, my hunch is that the coming year will bring improvements in offerings and user-friendly listening to all of the streaming services.
In any case, here is the Top 10 list of new recordings from 2023 with numerous YouTube samples and helpful comparisons to other composers and styles of music. It has been compiled by the veteran critic and blogger Tom Huizenga (below) of National Public Radio (NPR):
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1218517774/the-10-best-classical-albums-of-2023
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YOU MUST HEAR THIS: Pianist Vikingur Olafsson plays his Rameau transcription
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By Jacob Stockinger
Vikingur Olafsson (below) just might be the most interesting pianist in front of the public today.
He is from Iceland and was trained at Juilliard. He demonstrates a special talent and touch for Baroque music — especially Bach — which is one reason he is often called “The Glenn Gould of Iceland.” We’ll explore why another time.
Olafsson shares a gift with some of the great 19th- and early 20th-century piano virtuosos like Franz Liszt, Feruccio Busoni, Egon Petri, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Wilhelm Kempff and Myra Hess to name just a few.
That is, Olafsson composes and plays beautiful transcriptions for the piano drawn from other instrumental, choral and operatic repertoire.
One of his best comes from “Les Boréades,” the last opera composed by the French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Romeu in 1759.
His own performance of the trasnscription is in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Take a listen, It lasts about 4 minutes long.
The Ear loves it and hopes Olafsson will publish the transcription so the rest of us can play it. Or at least try to.
What do you think of the transcription and the performance?
The Ear wants to hear.
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