Last night was a bit of a strange concert, at least speaking for myself from my vantage point on the stage. First of all, there was the sobering sight of empty seats in the hall – lots of them. It’s not as though this is a strange program – Brahms d minor piano concerto is [...]
by Charles Noble on December 7, 2008
We all know the pianist Stephen Hough as one of the most briliant pianists on the concert stage today, but he’s also very much in demand as a teacher. Here’s an excerpt of a master class DVD on which he teaches the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12.
by Charles Noble on February 17, 2008
Last night we played the first of four concerts of the latest Classical Series (3 shows here in Portland, and one run-out to Salem). It’s a big program. Usually we start at 7:30 on Saturday evenings, and I pretty much expect to be walking in my front door around 10:00 p.m. Last [...]
Last night, after his brilliant performance of the Beethoven Second Piano Concerto, Kirill Gerstein played an encore that I’d never heard before, at least on piano alone. It was Erlkönig – originally a song by Schubert, transcribed for solo piano by Liszt. I had heard a similar transcription, by the violinist Max Ernst, [...]