On 3 December 2012 another piece of Valentina Lisitsa’s long awaited Rachmaninoff recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra was released by Decca: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.3. Earlier on, in October 2012, Decca released Piano Concerto No.2. In January/February 2013 Decca will release Lisitsa’s recordings of Piano Concerti No.1 and No.4 and also the Paganini Variations. The four concerti and the variations are initially released separately and online in mp3-quality. Around March 2013 the complete set will be boxed and released on CD.
For those who (keep trying to) play ragas on a piano – but do they play ragas? I don’t think so – perhaps for them this ‘fluid’ piano opens up new opportunities in regard to the use of different tunings, but also in regard to pitch shifting or bending the notes during playing. 🙂
Yesterday I published a new video of pianist Valentina Lisitsa, containing footage of not formerly published segments of an interview with her about – primarily – Rachmaninoff. I revisited and reconsidered some of my unpublished footage and photos, resulting in this new video, I thought it would be worthwhile to share it with the YouTube audience.
Still from my video (at 12’54”) and from another era it seems… Valentina as a youngster playing chess.
Earlier on I already produced and published on YouTube a documentary on Valentina’s Rachmaninoff Project with the London Symphony Orchestra. The fabulous recordings done in the Abbey Road Studios in 2009 and 2010 will be released later on in 2012 by Decca.
Eros Piano, a work by John Adams, is such a delightful piece. If I were a concert pianist it would be part of my repertory for sure! 🙂 YouTube offers only one performance of Eros Piano, the one here above, played by pianist Jay Gottlieb with L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by John Nelson.
Composer John Adams wrote the work – almost a small piano concerto in one movement – in memory of two of his composer heroes, Morton Feldman and Toru Takemitsu. About the music Adams wrote that it’s “a quiet, dreamy soliloquy for piano, played against a soft, lush fabric of orchestral screens and clusters. It was a direct response on my part to a piece by Toru Takemitsu, riverrun, that I had heard in a performance by the English pianist Paul Crossley. (..) I wrote Eros Piano as a tribute to Takemitsu, to Bill Evans, and also to Paul Crossley, whose exquisitly balanced sense of color and attack in music by Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen and Takemitsu reminded me so strongly of that of Bill Evans.”
Pianist Jay Gottlieb with L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by John Nelson deliver an enjoyable and admirable performance, but is that enough? Do they reveal the work’s sophisticated soul? I think I’ve heard better in another performance, a well known one, played by pianist Paul Crossley with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s/The London Sinfonietta, conducted by composer John Adams himself and available on the album American Elegies (1991). In my opinion Crossley, Adams and the London Sinfonietta are more convincing in revealing the work’s pleasurable sensuousness and this comes across in many wonderful tonal colours and in their highly sophisticated outline of the work’s dynamics.
From Sunday June 3rd until Friday June 8th, YouTube’s most popular classical pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, is once more streaming her rehearsals LIVE via her Ustream-channel. To watch click here.
Valentina Lisitsa’s rehearsing is a not-to-be missed event for anyone with a serious interest in classical piano playing. From her home in North Carolina Valentina is rehearsing the scheduled programme of her upcoming Royal Albert Hall concert. She’s done this before and up till now she’s the only classical musician that I know of who’s sharing this preparation process in a live event for a worldwide audience. This is really fascinating and a unique opportunity to witness Valentina Lisitsa getting prepared for this major event on June 19th in London.
promotiefilmpje voor het Royal Albert Hall-concert op 19 juni 2012
Vanaf het moment dat ik enkele jaren geleden met Valentina kennismaakte – zie mijn bijdragen op YouTube en op mijn weblog – heb ik geen moment getwijfeld dat haar ster naar de hoogste platforms zou reiken. Het wonderlijke is wel, voor ieder die haar muzikale verrichtingen goed heeft gevolgd, dat de gang naar het grote succes nog zo lang op zich liet wachten, maar ach, over een paar jaar heeft niemand het daar nog over. 🙂
een door mij gemaakte Valentina Lisitsa promo-video van voorjaar 2010
(click on picture to enlarge)
An article on Friday 20 January 2012 about virtuoso classical pianist and YouTube-sensation Valentina Lisitsa in dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant. Valentina plays in The Netherlands, on Sunday 22 january 2012 in Delft and on Friday 27 January 2012 in Haarlem. The article in De Volkskrant shows that more and more big media finally begin to recognise what I (see my videos of Valentina on the web) and so many people on YouTube have known for years already… the unique stature and greatness of Valentina! 🙂
A couple of days ago – on 18 December – Valentina Lisitsa published on her YouTubechannel a wonderful performance of Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, transcribed for piano by Liszt. In the comment on her video Valentina made this suggestion: “If you feel creative, please go ahead and make better visuals – or just use it as a soundtrack for a self-made Christmas card (..).” As I was planning to make a Christmas & New Year-video, I took my chance and combined Valentina’s awesome playing with some footage that I thought would fit in nicely and so on the evening of Thursday 22 December I made this video… and oh, don’t forget to play in HD. 🙂
My video Valentina Lisitsa: a somehow impossible combination of Backhaus and Argerich, published in March 2010 – and having more than 47.000 views on 13 November 2011, when this message was published – deserved a remake, a promotion from SD to HD.
Here’s the ‘makeover’, published on YouTube on 12 November 2011. Play the clip in 1080p to see the best result in High Definition.
