(This is a contribution to the Johnson Studio Blog from one of my adult students. Enjoy!)
I grew up in a household where music was easily available to me. We had a stereo and records of orchestral music and popular musicals, such as My Fair Lady. We often sang in the car on long trips. I studied piano from ages 8 to 13, which made it easier to return to playing many decades later. As I grew older, I listened to the radio and collected recordings of popular musicians.
As part of my music theory homework, René has tasked me with finding out details of the personal and musical life of a number of prominent 20th century pianists and with listening to a performance by each person. I prefer to find videos where I can watch (often in awe) the person playing the piano. Below is one example of my research into four pianists. I also have had several assignments in which I compared and contrasted the music of three composers, each from a different musical period. These two types of assignments have allowed me to better understand the differences in the musical periods and how different pianists interpret the music of a particular composer.
Terry Burridge
Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941; she is 78 years old. She is of Spanish and Russian descent. She started playing piano at age 3; at 5 she began lessons with Vincenzo Scaramuzza, who stressed the importance of lyricism and feeling. Her concert debut occurred at age 8. The family moved to Europe in 1955, when she was 14, aided by President Peron appointing her parents to a diplomatic posts in the Argentine Embassy in Vienna. There she studied with Friederich Guida, Stefan Askenase, and Maria Curcio. She won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965 when she was 24. She has recorded compositions by Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schumann, and Prokofiev. I listened to her 2016 performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat Major, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Daniel Barenboim, born 1942, is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of Argentinian-Jewish parents. He started piano lessons at age 5 with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. He gave his first concert at age 7. He and Martha Argerich were childhood friends in Buenos Aires. In 1952, the family moved to Israel. Two years later, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch’s conducting classes. During that summer, he also met and play for Wilhelm Furtwangler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. In 1955, he studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He made his debut as a conductor in 1966 in London. As a pianist, in the beginning of his career Barenboim concentrated on the music of the Classical era, such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as some Romantic composers, including Brahms and Mendelssohn. He recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacquelin du Pre, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zuckerman. In 2015 Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano, in conjunction with Chris Maene and with support from Steinway & Sons. The piano features straight parallel strings, instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. He is currently general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin. He previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and La Scala in Milan. He is known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli Musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. I listened to a video of Barenboim, called “5 Minutes On...Debussy – Clair de Lune,”, in which he played the composition, but stopped at various points to explain what to listen for in the piece, before playing it in its entirety.
Arthur Rubinstein was a Polish-American pianist who many regard as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He was born in Lodz, Poland (part of the Russian Empire for the entire time Rubinstein resided there) in 1887, to a Jewish family, and died in 1982. At age 2, he demonstrated perfect pitch and a fascination with the piano, watching his older sister’s piano lessons. By age 4, he was recognized as a child prodigy and the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim offered to supervise his piano education. His father offered Rubinstein a violin, but Rubinstein rejected it. In 1894, the 7-year-old Rubinstein had his debut with pieces by Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. When he was 10, Rubinstein moved to Berlin to continue his studies, giving his first performance with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13. Joachim recommended Karl Heinrich Barth as the boy’s piano teacher. In 1904, Rubinstein moved to Paris to launch his career, where he met Maurice Ravel and Paul Dukas. He was not well received during a United States concert tour in 1906; by 1908, he was destitute and desperate, making a failed suicide attempt. Subsequently, he said he felt “reborn” and endowed with an unconditional love of life. In 1912, he made his London debut and found a musical home in the salon of Paul and Muriel Draper, in the company of Kochanski, Stravinsky, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals, and Pierre Monteux. He toured the United States again in 1937, remaining here during the World War II years. Rubinstein was disgusted by Germany's conduct during the war and never played there again. His last performance in Germany was in 1914. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946. Although best known as a recitalist and concerto soloist, Rubinstein was also considered an outstanding chamber musician, partnering with such luminaries as Henryk Szeryng, Jascha Heifetz, Pablo Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky and the Guarneri Quartet. Rubinstein recorded much of the core piano repertoire, particularly that of the Romantic composers. At the time of his death, The New York Times in describing him wrote, "Chopin was his specialty ... it was [as] a Chopinist that he was considered by many without peer." Due to deteriorating eyesight, Rubinstein retired from the stage at age 89 in 1976. I listened to Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, No. 1 in B flat minor. Here’s a video link of Rubenstein performing
Mitsuko Uchida was born in 1948 in a seaside town close to Tokyo, Japan. She moved to Vienna, Austria, with her diplomat parents when she was 12 years old. She enrolled in the Vienna Academy of Music to study with Richard Hauser, and later Wilhelm Kempff, Stefan Askenase, and Maria Curcio. She and Argerich have Askenase and Curcio in common as teachers. She remained in Vienna to study when her father was transferred back to Japan after five years. She gave her first Viennese recital at age 14 at the Vienna Musikverein. In 1969, Uchida won the first prize in the Beethoven Competition in Vienna and in 1970 the second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition. She is noted for her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Schoenberg, and particularly feels connected to Schubert, according to a June 14 article in the New York Times. Uchida is also a conductor, known for conducting from the keyboard. She performed at Carnegie Hall on May 4 and June 18, part of a two-season survey of Schubert sonatas. I listened to her performing Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat Major, D. 960.