August 21, 2019
A few years back, American pianist Lara Downes found a quote by Georgia O’Keefe that stuck in “my head and my heart”, which inspired the title for her new collaboration: “I want real things – live people to take hold of – to see- and talk to – music that makes holes in the sky …
August 8, 2019
This is the debut disc by Hee-Young Lim, a Korean-born cellist who started her path in music in her parents’ living room. A neighbor brought over a cello that wasn’t being used, and it remained unplayed until one of Hee-Young’s friends showed interest in it. Hee-Young determined that she would play that cello. Her years …
July 15, 2019
Polish-Canadian pianist Katarzyna Musiał loves to play Chopin. She also loves Gershwin. However, the music that truly stirs her heart? The music of Spain. With good reason, too. In her conversation with program director John Pitman, Musiał shares how Spanish music and culture became her passion: it was a part of her upbringing, thanks to …
July 1, 2019
Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki continues his exploration of, an interest in the different facets of Romanticism, following his Chopin CD with this new one of Mendelssohn’s piano concertos. The concertos anchor the CD, but are not the only highlight: Lisiecki tells me (in our conversation), that from the beginning he wanted to incorporate the “Serious …
June 23, 2019
Matthew Lipman is a 2015 Avery Fisher Grant winner, has recorded with Rachel Barton Pine and Sir Neville Marriner. Since graduating from Juilliard Lipman is now on the viola faculty at Sony Brook University and concertizes around the world. His debut CD, Ascent, is in tribute in part to his mother (d. 2014), and commissioned …
June 4, 2019
Soprano Joyce DiDonato’s recording projects are seldom conventional. Her last, “Hopes and Dreams: The Lullaby Project” featured original songs to texts by new mothers, some of whom were experiencing financial insecurity. Her newest, Songplay, goes back to her roots as a budding singer. She rediscovered the arias that all young singers are taught, and then …
May 21, 2019
British-born Nicholas McGegan has been directing San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra since the 1980s (about the time that this interviewer started in radio), and has had many sweet successes during that time in bringing great Baroque works to audiences around the world. One of the sweetest for McGegan happened just a few years ago, when …
May 10, 2019
Any time that a pianist undertakes to record a complete set of anything in classical music, it’s bound to be an endeavor taking considerable time and effort. Take on the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven, plus all the other solo piano pieces by one of music’s giants, and I imagine that it must be daunting. …
April 23, 2019
The great 20th century cellist, Pablo Casals, was the first in the world to record all six of Bach’s suites for unaccompanied cello. This was in 1939. Before this, people only considered the suites as study pieces. Casals proved them wrong, and now the suites are among the most beloved works for the instrument of …
April 10, 2019
Early in her career, violinist Hilary Hahn took on music that many before her wouldn’t approach until they were a little older. She chose three of the six unaccompanied violin works of J.S. Bach, a set regarded as the pinnacle of solo violin repertoire. Now, 21 years later, Hahn returns to complete the set. Naturally, …
