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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?

I started playing on a whim. My mother walked in from work one evening and asked out of the blue if I wanted to learn the piano. Neither of my parents are musicians but they have the broadest musical tastes of anyone I know and had a wicked sound system which was playing music constantly. I gave an offhanded “yeah why not” and it all snowballed pretty quickly from there.

After a year or so I started participating in local competitions in Philadelphia where I was brought up and when it looked like I was taking music seriously we moved to England so I could attend the Yehudi Menuhin School.

When I was eleven one of my teachers told me I’d never be a pianist because I started too late. That was it – I had to prove her wrong and here I am! Maybe she was flexing her reverse psychology knowhow.

Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?

I spent some time in the Gambia to study Wolof drumming and in Bali playing and listening to lots of Gamelan. Both of those trips had a huge impact on my playing. Mostly they changed the way I listen. Especially coming from a background which is so focused on learning visually – from a score. They were incredibly liberating experiences for me.

Some other important influences are watching dance and doing it, the photographs of Ansel Adams and practicing meditation.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Staying balanced, healthy, positive and productive in a life which can fluctuate between breathless busy-ness and the threat of total stagnation.

After finishing my formal education and years of having the luxury of playing for my teachers on a regular basis it took some time to start trusting my own musical instincts and to believe my own feedback.

Which repertoire/composers do you think you play best?

All the music I haven’t played yet.

How do you make repertoire choices from season to season?

Often a venue will request a specific piece or composer and I’ll build a programme around that. I also keep an eye out for anniversaries and featured composers in up coming festivals.

I’m all for choosing pieces that really suit my playing. It can be tempting to perform works I think I ‘should’ play or adhere to what I think will placate a certain kind of audience but if it doesn’t suit me and I don’t totally love it then there’s a risk of a performance falling flat (and it has!)

I always have something on the go that pushes me to my limits and balance that with pieces that come more naturally.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of? 

I don’t get much enjoyment out of recording as a soloist but absolutely love recording with ensembles. I used to be a member of the band Jetsam and we wrote and recorded an album called Disruption which was commissioned by the Barbican in collaboration with the street dance company Boy Blue Entertainment. We wrote most of Disruption as we recorded which allowed for our imaginations to run wild. There’s a big Japanese Taiko and Noh theatre influence in the piece which meant a lot of recording us stamping in a padded hallway. I spent a couple days at the piano recording every sound I could think of on the strings, metal frame and wood. Playing with harmonics, using chains, plastic, glass and rubber. It was a proper prepared piano geek-out and the album sounds amazing.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

I recently played at Café OTO which was so much fun. It’s small, dark and intimate – I think I nearly head butted someone in the front row when I bowed. The audience was one of the most attentive, supportive an electric I’ve ever played for which restored my faith in the contemporary classical music audience. I also love performing in the Barbican. I’ve performed in every one of their performance spaces as a soloist and in ensembles and bands I’m involved with and it has such a stimulating and creative atmosphere. On any given day there is something weird and wonderful happening in one of its nooks and crannies.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I’m very fickle. I tend to think that whatever I’m playing in the moment is the Best Thing Ever!

I love performing George Crumb’s ‘Makrokosmos’. I have a secret predilection for a bit of theatre and because of the extended techniques, singing and moaning involved in its performance it’s a full body theatrical experience. I used to get so frustrated by the static nature of the piano and was hugely jealous of my cellist friends. The process of learning ‘Makrokosmos’ taught me how to overcome that immovability, become more malleable and dance with the instrument.

To listen to…shall we just say for the Spring/Summer season? Otherwise we’ll be here forever.

Appalachian Spring which, thanks to my dad, is my first memory of music. Lately I’ve been listening to John Legend and The Roots album Wake Up which transports me back to growing up in Philadelphia. Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Partita for 8 Voices by Caroline Shaw, Chaka Kahn. I’m always inspired by hearing what my friends make and have been listening non-stop to Sam Mumford’s album Scatter and Old Man Diode The King Krill. 

Who are your favourite musicians?

There are so many I admire for different reasons and on different days. To name a few: Glen Gould, Bjork, my husband and saxophonist Jon Shenoy, John Adams, Beyoncé, John Cage, Seth McFarlane, Joanna Newsom, Pat Metheney, Punch Brothers, Joan Baez, Charles Ives.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

A few years ago I performed ‘Phrygian Gates’ for John Adams. Before the concert there was a Question and Answer session in which he said he didn’t like the piece very much anymore. After I performed he came up on stage with tears in his eyes, gave me a hug and said to the audience “I’ve changed my mind, I like it again.”

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Keep your ‘don’t know’ mind. Play with musicians who challenge you. Get involved with projects that scare the hell out of you. Make mistakes – they could turn into something wonderful. Learn how to meditate. Meditate. Practice as much as you can while you can but remember that it’s only a small part of the process.

You have been working with the composer Mica Levi on some new works for piano. Tell us more about this collaboration and the pieces….

Working with Mica has been my ideal collaborative process. We’ve had the time and space to learn each other’s processes. Trying out loads of ideas, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, trying something else. It’s been such a valuable experience to learn her compositional language in every stage of the works progress. From conception to performance. The pieces she’s writing are a collection of short piano studies. I performed three at Café OTO at the beginning of the year and will be performing three new ones at the Forge in June.

Each of the six pieces presents a single theme, for example an interval, the resonance produced in a particular register of the piano or a specific attack on the keys. They are really ‘studies in piano’ in the purest sense. Beautiful, raw and a little bit dirty. At times quite exposing for the pianist, which exhilarates me. Mica is extremely specific about what she wants to hear and it’s been exciting for me for me to work with her in finding the best way to translate that on to the piano – playing around with notation which can perfectly capture both the sound in her ears and how I can best physicalise it.

What are the particular challenges and pleasures of working with a living composer?

The moment I start playing someone their piece the doubting voice in my head immediately shouts “Ah, you’ve completely misunderstood everything they’ve written – you’re going to embarrass them and yourself”. That voice is a total liar but the fear creeps in nonetheless.

The beauty is that the composer is there to answer every question and wonderment that’s come up for me during the learning process. To help me get down to the bare bones of their work and discover the weird and wonderful processes a composer goes through to translate an idea into sound. The defining moment for me is when a composer trusts me enough to cut the umbilical chord and hand me the ownership of their work.

What is your most treasured possession?

My Yamaha grand piano which has travelled with me from Philadelphia to London with many stops on the way. But if there were a fire I’d grab my red Versace wedding dress.

What is your present state of mind?

Open, alert, mischievous, spacious and a little self-conscious.

Eliza McCarthy premieres new works by Mica Lewis, together with music by Henry Cowell and John Adams at The Forge, Camden, north London on Wednesday 3 June. Further information and tickets here

www.elizamccarthy.com

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?

Music was an inseparable part of my life from the very beginning. I heard it from the day I was born, beginning with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Just as most people don’t remember when they learned to speak, I don’t remember when I learned to make music. The act of performing music came entirely naturally to me. My first interest is music, then comes the piano. I always enjoyed music more than anything else, so I always wanted to make it my career.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

Most important were probably my piano teachers: Lea Agmon and Yuval Cohen. My recent musical thinking has been heavily influenced by several workshops I attended with Leon Fleischer.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

The greatest challenge has always been keeping up with my ever increasing standards. Today I’m highly critical of recordings that once seemed to me stellar artistic achievements.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of? 

In general, the performance I’m most proud of is my last one. But this ties in with the previous question. As my expectations of myself increase every day, performances I used to be proud of a few years ago strike me differently today.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

The composer to whom I feel closest at the moment is Beethoven. I played his works extensively, including solo works for the piano (like the cycle of the last three sonatas), chamber works, and concertos. I don’t want to create the impression that I’m specialising. In the next two recitals I’ll be playing in London are works by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Ravel – and not a piece by Beethoven.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I don’t have any guidelines for making repertoire choices, and I tend to avoid programming pieces with some common factor – a recital of “last sonatas” for example (I realise these clever extra-musical organising principles are quite fashionable today…) My programs consist of selections of compositions I’m working on at the moment. My only guideline is that the programs be balanced and make sense in musical terms.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I haven’t performed at enough venues to say which one is my favourite. Generally, I like venues with an intimate atmosphere, where there is an easy and sympathetic give and take between performer and audience. This is why, among others, I don’t do competitions, where the mood in the hall is judgemental and potentially negative.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I find myself nowadays listening more and more to music that is not for the piano. I very much enjoy opera, chamber music and symphonic works. My favourite pieces to perform change all the time. Right now they probably include the works of Beethoven, among many others…

Who are your favourite musicians?

I cannot say. I don’t rank and I don’t think in ranking terms. Moreover, they are simply too many to list…

What is your most memorable concert experience?

The one that is yet to come.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

I don’t have a set of aphorisms at hand. My advice is to be curious and open to new ideas, both musical and cultural, and to question generic advice. (I don’t think the next Richter will come from reading my blog.)

 

What is your most treasured possession?

A wonderful coffee machine. My mother got it as a New Year’s present, but I’m its primary employer.

What do you enjoy doing most?

Writing blogs?.. (Not really, although it is a form of relaxation and it forces me to clarify issues I haven’t given enough thought to.)

 

Ariel Lanyi, born in 1997, began piano lessons with Lea Agmon just before his fifth birthday and made his orchestral debut at the age of 7. Since then, he has given numerous recitals in London, Paris (including Radio France), Rome, Prague, Belfast, and regularly in concerts broadcast live on Israeli radio and television. He has appeared as a soloist with a variety of orchestras in Israel, and has participated in the Israel Festival, Prague Music Performance, Tempietto Festival in Rome, the Ravello Festival, and the Young Prague Festival. As a chamber musician, he has appeared with members (including leading members) of the Prague Philharmonia, the Czech Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic, among others.

In 2012, Ariel released Romantic Profiles on LYTE records, a recital album featuring Schumann’s Carnival Scenes from Vienna, Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the theme B-A-C-H, Brahms’ Fantasies Op. 116, and Janacek’s Piano Sonata I.X.1905.

Ariel has recently participated in three workshops with Leon Fleisher: the Beethoven and Schubert Institute in Prague (2013), the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Lübeck (2014), and the Menuhin Festival and Academy in Gstaad (2014). He played in masterclasses for renowned artists such as Richard Goode, András Schiff, Emanuel Ax, Murray Perahia, Thomas Adès, Andrei Gavrilov, Yefim Bronfman, Paul Badura-Skoda, Ivan Moravec, Imogen Cooper, Pascal Devoyon, Angela Hewitt, Dénes Várjon, Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, and others.

Ariel studied at the High School and Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music, in the piano class of Yuval Cohen. He also studied violin and composition, and was concertmaster of the High School and Conservatory Orchestra. Currently, he studies as a full scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Hamish Milne.

 

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?

We had an upright piano at home as my mother studied at the musical school. I was trying to play something on it at the age of four and asked my parents to bring me to musical school.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My teachers – Yuri Slesarev, Dmitri Alexeev, Boris Petrushansky, Oxana Yablonskaya and Aquiles Delle Vigne.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I try to create an interesting programme, making an unusual combination of pieces or adding some not overplayed compositions. In future I want to play more contemporary music. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much time for working on it now due to learning more “core repertoire”.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I really enjoyed playing in Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Triphony Concert Hall in Japan. Those halls have an amazing acoustics.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I love every single piece I am performing and I am convinced it has to be like that.

I listen to a lot of orchestral and chamber music. Now my favourites are Schubert and Tchaikovsky Symphonies, piano trios by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Arensky, etc.

Who are your favourite musicians?

My favourite pianists are Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Grigory Sokolov.

Vitaly Pisarenko gave his first public recital at the age of six. His initial musical training was in Ukraine (in Kiev with Natalia Romenskaya and in Kharkov with Garry Gelfgat). From 1999 to 2012 he studied at the Central Music School and State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Yuri Slesarev. From 2009 to 2012 he also studied with Oxana Yablonskaya at her Piano Institute in Italy. Since 2012, Pisarenko has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music. He completed his Master’s degree at the RCM (with distinction) in 2014; and is currently studying at the RCM for an Artist Diploma and is an Emma Rose Scholar supported by a Kenneth and Violet Scott Award. He is also studying at the Piano Academy in Imola, Italy with Boris Petrushansky.

In 2008 (aged 21) he won First Prize at the Eighth International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht. Since then he has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras and ensembles, and as a recital soloist, throughout the world.

The Keyboard Charitable Trust is funded entirely by voluntary donations. Detailed information about the Trust may be found on its website.

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?

My older brother used to play the piano, so there was a piano in the house which I ended up spending more time with.   I loved to imitate what I heard and to improvise.  I went to study piano at conservatoire and even though music was my life-blood, I was interested in so many things – I studied maths, Italian literature, Latin and musicology at University, but in the end, the piano just stuck very naturally.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

The professor who had the strongest influence on me was undoubtedly Dominique Weber. He was taught by Eduardo Vercelli and Leon Fleisher, where he also served as an assistant at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. His instinct and his musical intelligence make him an extraordinary pianist and outstanding pedagogue. During the 4 years I studied with him, he helped me consolidate my technique and develop my sense of structure, rhythm and beauty of sound. He taught me the need to be engaged fully, to communicate and to search for my own sense of expression. He was an ideal professor. Dominique Weber’s recitals, which I am delighted to have listened to, have been unforgettable moments in my life as a musician.

I often played for Paul Badura-Skoda, the most illustrious representative of the Viennese tradition. With him, I had an opportunity to study works of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert on original instruments. His open-minded approach and broad interests enriched his understanding of art and this was a major source of inspiration to me.

I also have regularly taken classes with John Perry in Germany. John Perry is one of the most talented musicians I have met. His knowledge of the repertoire is impressive. He is a magnificent artist, able to move his audience as he sits at the piano. He can draw out the best out of each student while respecting their own personality.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

There have been so many.  One recent example which springs to mind was recording two discs at the same time of Schumann Lieder and Haydn sonatas in four days.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

Even if I would do everything again differently today, I still have a close recognition of those recordings and I don’t know which ones I prefer of the three for solo piano – Schumann, Schubert or Haydn.  This is compounded by the different circumstances – all three in 3 different halls with 3 different pianos – so they all have their own personalities and reflect where I was at the time of playing them.

A challenge presented itself recently which I am particularly happy about.   I was due to go to hear a concert at a festival an hour and a half away from home.   I had bought the ticket online, and I was just walking out the door, when the festival director gave me a ring to say that the pianist due to perform that evening was ill and did I want to play instead. I went back inside to change and I arrived on the stage at the last minute.  The strange thing is that probably if the director had phoned me the day before, I’d probably have turned it down, but the fact that the suggestion had come just at two hours notice, it was was so mad that I had gone ahead with it without thinking and chose the programme in the car on the way.  The concert went very well and it was the first time that I had bought a ticket to my own recital.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

That’s something to ask the audience.   I’m particularly drawn to the German repertoire, and audiences seem to find that I have a particular affinity for Schubert.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

There are promoters who ask me to perform certain works.  If not, I try to find a balance between something new and pieces I already have in my repertoire.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

There are so many, but I am very happy to be returning in a couple of weeks time to Sala Mahler di Dobbiaco in Italy for the next recording of Bach (French Overture, 4th English Suite and the 1st Partita).    The acoutic is fabulous, and I will be playing a very wonderful piano – a Steinway D which is called Rufus, prepared by my favourite technician.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

It’s always a pleasure to play Schubert, which is often requested by promoters.   I often go to concerts, not only of classical music, and I seldom listen to piano discs.  At home, I willingly listen to jazz, lieder and string quartets.   A disc I particularly like is of pieces for lute by Bach played by Jakob Lindberg. 

Who are your favourite musicians?

It’s difficult to make a complete list.   I admire many pianists – Radu Lupu, Sergio Fiorentino, and amongst the musicians I have recently listened to live and which made a big impression, I’d mention Christoph Pregardien accompanied by the pianist Michael Gees, the Belcea Quartet, pianist Grigory Sokolov.   And that’s without forgetting jazz musicians like Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau and Bill Evans….

What is your most memorable concert experience?

I don’t know what to say.  I love playing solo in recital but I have experienced some magical moments on the stage with cellist Henri Demarquette or with the baritone Roman Trekel, a sensation of something truly unique, poetic and spontaneous.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

From a performer, I expect musical honesty and respect for the work. The performer should always provide the musical structure intelligently and be able to communicate this fluently.  One has to search to understand and to make understood what is hidden behind a musical score, all the things that the composer couldn’t write on a page. Sound is most important. It is the fundamental ingredient of everything.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently studying works by Bach which I am about to record.  Then also numerous concerts (recitals and chamber music) with works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Janacek, Stravinsky, Britten and Kurtag. 

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

I’d like to be a lottery winner like everyone else so that I could construct a concert hall and record the complete works of Schubert in it! And if it happens in 10 weeks or 10 months, that’s fine too.
Fabrizio Chiovetta studied the piano and music theory at the Superior Conservatory of Geneva, his hometown. He obtained diplomas in piano and theory  as well as the City of Geneva’s Adolphe Neumann Prize, an award bestowed upon particularly distinguished artists. He pursued his education with Dominique Weber at the Tibor Varga Academy in Sion until he obtained his Soloist Diploma in 2003 with the highest level of distinction. He has regularly worked with John Perry, Marc Durand and Paul Badura-Skoda – notably on the classical Viennese repertoire on original instruments – and has participated in the Master Classes of Gyorgy Sebok, Julian Martin, Yoheved Kaplinsky and Irwin Gage for the Lied. Recipient of the Göhner Foundation scholarship in 1999, he received the Audience Award at the Klaviersommer Festival (Cochem, Germany) in 2001 for his interpretation of Mozart. He has won the New Talents (Genoa, 2002) and the Orpheus (Zurich, 2003) competitions and has received the Honorary Mention Award of the Seventh International Web Concert Hall (USA, 2005). Fabrizio Chiovetta regularly gives concerts across Europe, North America, the Middle East ans Asia both in recitals and chamber music. His performing partners have included Henri Demarquette, Katia Trabé, Roman Trekel, Julian Bliss, Nicolas Gourbeix, Brigitte Fournier and Gérard Wyss. He has notably played under the direction of Gabor Takacs-Nagy and Ovidiu Balan and has accompanied Lady Jeanne’s and Sir James Galway’s Master Classes. His recordings include works from Honegger, Schumann and Schubert. His Schumann recording received the 5 Diapasons Award and Fanfare Magazine described his Waldszenen as “one of the best ever silver-disc’d”. Talented in improvisation, he performs with ensemble Piano Seven and with diverse musicians such as Anna Prucnal, Masako Hayashi, Levon and Gregoire.
Fabrizio Chiovetta’s new disc of Haydn Sonatas and Variations is available now on the Claves label