Dear readers,
Though I am back in the United States, there are still many more stories and pictures to share from the summer. One of them is from a highlight of Hungary this year, which was my debut as a recitalist with Maria Pantyukhova, mezzo-soprano. Maria was a student at Crescendo in 2012, and she possesses a formidable vocal talent, tremendous spirit, and fabulous musicality. She presented a "greatest hits" of Russian romances from Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff. And thus I got to play a rewarding, challenging, and very inspiring program.
We worked together once or twice a day before the recital. Upon getting the music, I practiced like a fiend. Some of the Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky were of particular challenge. There was one Tchaikovsky song that was more like a piano concerto than a song, including two pages of the "song" where the singer didn't sing at all! What rewarding, beautiful music.
She was quite a wonderful partner on stage - such a beautiful sense of the spirit of the texts and music, and plus, her vocal ability is really the whole package - beautiful lower range, nice even middle, powerful top. She's a native Russian speaker, so her descriptive and storytelling abilities were fantastic.
The audience received the music enthusiastically. Their behavior included my favorite Hungarian audience mannerism - that instead of yelling, they all synchronize their clapping. This clapping makes an accelerando and crescendo.
The audience, after leaving, greeted us with praise and thanksgiving for a beautiful concert. They also complimented me on my Russian spirit. I owe that to several things - to the affinity that I've always had for Russian music, to my undergraduate piano teacher at Oberlin, who was Russian-Armenian, to my partial Eastern European heritage, and the sense of home that I have felt in places that used to be behind the "iron curtain" (Czech Republic, Hungary, China).
PHOTO: Our recital poster, and some wonderful spotted horses who were waiting outside our dress rehearsal.
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