Japanese pianist Mari Asakawa has made a beautiful album of the works of Carter and Babbitt. She has the full measure of these works, this album presents these superb pieces in the best possible light. Mari began her piano studies in Japan at the age of five, and in 1980 moved to the United States. At the age of 15, she won the Westchester Competition, performing the Grieg concerto, followed by a performance of the Bach concerto at Alice Tully Hall. She earned a Bachelor's degree at the Julliard School, where she studied with Georgy Sandor, and received a Masters of Music at Yale University. In 1998, she moved to Italy, continuing her studies with Bruno Mezzena at the Accademia Musicale Pescarese, earning a diploma of the highest honor. Most recently, she was appointed to a teaching position at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, where she teaches piano performance.
Opening with a fleshy, resonant version of "90+," which was nominated for a 1998 Grammy award, this Carter collection is special not only for Charles Rosen's execution but also for the CD-closing conversation between performer and composer. Rosen opens the chat with a demonstration of how harmonic dissonance at once backlights and highlights Carter's famed rhythmic explorations. And Carter tells him, "This is the way we experience many things, the idea that one thing comments on another constantly." That's how Carter's music is, also constantly: frontal harmonic shocks, whether ringing tremulously or jumping in bursts of flash–as in Rosen's read of the Piano Sonata–are in dialogue with silence, rhythmic twists, and plainly beautiful constructions that sound in-process.
On 2008 came out: Oppens Plays Carter, Cedille CDR 90000 108, with piano pieces composed after 1997 (Two Diversions; Retrouvailles; Two Thoughts About the Piano; Matribute): Elliott Carter isn't the easiest composer to love, but he's an important one.
Benny Carter's MusicMasters catalogue turned up some fine sessions in which colleagues included Clark Terry, Hank Jones, and Doc Cheatham, among a raft of musicians - for the stellar singers, see the end of this review. The recordings, made in various locations, span the years 1990-95 and reveal the altoist seemingly unruffled by the reach of Time, still spinning some sublime and harmonically darting lines as if for the first time.
This CD of the complete music for solo piano by Elliott Carter, (b. 1908) offers the opportunity to get to know some of the most difficult and challenging works, musically and technically, for the instrument in American music. Although he has not written extensively for solo piano, Carter's two large works for the instrument, the Sonata (1946) and the "Night Fantasies" (1980) are extraordinary compositions. The pianist Ursula Oppens is a long-time champion of Carter and other contemporary composers.
Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov. Evgeni Koroliov is a great master of the piano, a great Bach specialist, whose recordings of Bach are an acclaimed benchmark. His piano duo with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva, has made its mark over the past few years in all the major international concert venues. Also a highly reputed teacher, Koroliov was Anna Vinnitskaya’s professor at Hamburg.
In September 2013 Anna performed Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto at the opening of the season of Sunday Morning Concerts series at the Great hall of the Royal Concertgebouw. Within two and a half a years, the recording of this concert received over 9 million views on YouTube and was highly praised among renown musicians. In November 2015 she returned to perform in the big hall of Concertgebouw in Sunday Morning Concerts series Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No 3, this performance was again steamed live on TV, internet and radio.
Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov. Evgeni Koroliov is a great master of the piano, a great Bach specialist, whose recordings of Bach are an acclaimed benchmark. His piano duo with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva, has made its mark over the past few years in all the major international concert venues. Also a highly reputed teacher, Koroliov was Anna Vinnitskaya’s professor at Hamburg.