Catch me on YouTube & PianoSociety.com
My new YouTube channel has two playlists: one for tutorials, and one for videos in which I’m performing music my students and I love to play. In the second category you’ll find everything from baroque to jazz.
If you’d like to hear me playing standard (more difficult) repertoire, you can do that at PianoSociety.com, where I’ve recently become a contributing artist. For those not familiar with PS, here’s a description from their home page:
“With more than 100,000 unique visitors and over 1,000,000 downloads per month, the Piano Society is the largest resource of free classical piano recordings on the Internet.”
As you might expect with a site that has such a large collection and distributes music for free, the quality of the recordings at PS varies enormously (in terms of both performance and sound). So to help make your first visit memorable, here are some PS pianists I’ve enjoyed listening to. (Bear in mind that I’m just getting to know the site myself—I’ve had time to sample but a small fraction of the musicians listed.)
(Listed alphabetically)
John Clement Anderson. Don’t miss his colorful “Reflets Dans L’eau” by Ravel.
Alfonso Bertazzi. A nice range of repertoire beautifully played. His instrument may not be impressive, but what he does with it certainly is.
Rami Bar-Niv. The distinguished Israeli concert pianist has provided a couple of concertos. I just listened to his gorgeous Schumann.
Daniel Blanch. More fine Schumann.
Benjamin Kopp. I was going to tell you about his delightful Brahms Concerto movement, but then I heard his crystalline Mozart, which may be even better.
Sarara Momokawa. Listen to her rendition of the Barber Sonata, at times soulful and thrilling.
Hanna Shybayeva. She tackles some of the most difficult Rachmaninoff and does it impressively.
It is indeed an honor to have my recordings on the same site as these artists.
By the way, PS really is a community. When you audition to become a member (as I did), you post a few mp3’s in their “Audition Room” section, where anyone can download your playing and comment on it. This sometimes leads to spirited discussions on various aspects of playing and recording.
The level of expertise of members and administrators is excellent—I’ve gotten some candid feedback that is proving quite helpful.
So far, I’ve contributed recordings of Chopin, Beethoven, Joseph Lamb, and Frederic Mompou, and a few others.
As I said, I’ve heard only a small fraction of the PS artists so far. So if you visit the site and find other artists and recordings especially to your liking, please let me know about them!
[Update: I just visited PS after posting this, and had the unexpected pleasure of hearing two lovely recordings, just posted, of music composed by one of Chopin’s students at age 11 or 12. (He died at 15.) You can catch the music and the discussion here. What a great find this site is.]
