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George Walker: A Snapshot
George Theophilus Walker (1922-2018) led a life of many “firsts.” In 1945, his list of achievements included becoming the first black student to receive the artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music; the first black instrumentalist to give a recital at the New York Town Hall and the first black soloist to play with…
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On Michael Tippett’s Piano Sonata No. 2
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, February 2022. https://pianotuner.org.uk I see mirrors, Myriad upon myriad moving The dark forms Of creation —King Priam, Act 3 Scene IV ‘All things fall and are built again and those that build them are gay’: so the words of W. B. Yeats conclude the final act of The Midsummer…
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Marcelle Meyer: L’art de toucher le piano
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, August 2021. https://pianotuner.org.uk In the early 1940s, the French pianist Marcelle Meyer (1897-1958) gave a performance of Mozart’s Concerto in A Major K. 488 with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra, who were then visiting Paris. Her contemporaries regarded her appointment with a German symphony orchestra, during the height…
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Einojuhani Rautavaara: the Gift of Dreams
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, June 2021. https://pianotuner.org.uk “For beauty really is nothing, but the beginning of terror we are only just able to bear” “Denn das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen” —Rainer Maria Rilke In the summer of 1939, Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) [AY-no-yu-hah-ni ROW-ta-vah-ra]…
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Domenico Scarlatti: Style, Philosophy, Technique
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, April 2021. https://pianotuner.org.uk “Few composers of the stature of Domenico Scarlatti have been so neglected in the literature of music.” —Ralph Kirkpatrick Domenico Scarlatti is a strange composer. His keyboard sonatas — at least 555 of them extant —have reached us without the extramusical paraphernalia commonly attached…
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Gould, Guerrero and the Legacy of Finger Tapping
“One does not play the piano with one’s fingers, one plays the piano with one’s mind” —Glenn Gould Glenn Gould’s obituary in the New York Times was full of veiled superlatives. Edward Rothstein described the deceased as an ‘always unorthodox pianist’ who chose ‘isolation over society…and idiosyncratic reinterpretations over respect for musical “authenticity.”’ By then,…
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Chopin & the Parisian Salon
“But if indeed he wrote for a salon of any sort, it was for a salon frequented exclusively by geniuses.” — Heinrich Schenker The music of Frederick Chopin has been so successfully adopted into our twenty-first century culture of large-scale recitals and international competitions that it is worth revisiting the social setting in which his music…
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The Sound of Light: Scriabin’s Clavier à lumières
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, April 2020. https://pianotuner.org.uk “Colours blaze up, feelings and vague dreams emerge. I want. I create.” — Alexander Scriabin Across the plaza from the Palais Garnier (home of the Opéra de Paris) lies the Café de la Paix, an unofficial cultural institution whose patrons once included the…
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Debussy’s Pianism: a Consideration of Resonance
Originally published in the Piano Tuners Association Newsletter, April 2020. https://pianotuner.org.uk Achille-Claude Debussy was accepted into the Paris Conservatoire in 1872 at the age of ten, and there are various and conflicting accounts of his time there; he excelled at solfège and was a notoriously ferocious sight-reader, but his potential to forge a career as…
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Finishing the Unfinished: Schubert and Artificial Intelligence
Originally published by the Oxford Review of Books (ORB) in Summer 2019. You shall live as few live, but of course you cannot die an ordinary death; you will die of eternity. –Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis) In 1814, the Leipzig-based Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung published the first version of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s…
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Edward Campbell-rowntree 