Skip to content

Posts Tagged ‘Steven Vanhauwaert’

On “All-Italia”: an interview with pianist Steven Vanhauwaert

May 29, Piano Spheres will be featuring Belgian virtuoso pianist Steven Vanhauwaert in a solo recital, “All-Italia.” As the name suggests, the program will exclusively feature works by Italian composers, ranging from Busoni‘s epic Fantasia Contrappuntistica to later Italian works by Scelsi and Bussotti. I had the chance to ask Steven about the program, his inspirations, how he selects new works, and more. Here’s what he said: 

The Piano Spheres program features works exclusively by Italian composers. What was the motivation behind an all-Italian program?

Pianist Steven Vanhauwaert

I am inspired by Italian music and its fascinating history, and I’ve always wanted to program the Fantasia Contrappuntistica by Ferruccio Busoni; an epic ode to Bach’s Art of the Fugue. It features four massive fugues interspersed with Busoni’s own unique harmonic language and it is bigger than life in all aspects! Around the beginning of the 1900’s, there was a search for a unique national voice in many European countries. In Italy, this was personified in people like Casella, Malipiero, Busoni, Respighi, and many others. They looked for inspiration to their own past (like Gregorian chant, harpsichord music) and to a new future (with people like Russolo and their Futurist movement). I wanted to situate the Busoni Fantasia along with a more individual work of his, the Indian Diary, in their historical context (with the early futurist Pratella) and features some of the later Italian works as well (Scelsi, Bussotti).

You’re known for discovering less familiar works in the classical repertoire, and for collaborating with today’s leading composers. How do you normally go about selecting new works to perform?

I have a strong appetite for new repertoire. I collect scores whenever possible, and I sightread through music very frequently to get a feel for a particular composer’s total output and style. I have a bucket list of pieces I want to program that is so long I will likely never be able to play all of them! For this particular recital I was toying around with the idea of doing music by Busoni, Casella, Respighi, Francesconi, Malipiero, Scelsi, Bussotti, Berio, Nono, Dallapiccola, and many others. I usually try to narrow down the program closer to the concert, but I will often make some substitutions a week before the concert if I feel it benefits the flow or audience experience of the concert. Sometimes I wish I could tell the audience – after we all had a post-concert drink – to go back inside the hall so I can share some more pieces that I couldn’t include in that evening’s program.

What do you enjoy most about solo recitals versus performing with orchestras or other collaborative performances?

I enjoy all three of those formats. Playing with other musicians often brings in the magic of playful communication through music. When I’m playing by myself I enjoy striving for the feeling of being a prism through which the composer’s intentions flow. When it all works out well it’s a very rewarding experience.

What would you say is your biggest inspiration in music, and how does this influence your playing technique and style?

My biggest inspiration in music is the giddy effect that music has on me when I listen to it myself. As for influence, I find myself more influenced and inspired by other instruments, opera, and orchestral music. It helps me get out of the rather closed ‘piano world’ and focus more on the imagination and purely musical ideas.

For more information about the upcoming concert or to get tickets, check out Piano Spheres.

Hear the Magnetic Resonator Piano this weekend, help commission composers!

People Inside Electronics has been busy lately — fresh off the heels of their concert with Gnarwhallaby, they’re presenting a concert this Saturday of new works for the Magnetic Resonator Piano, with pianists Nic Gerpe, Aron Kallay, Richard Valitutto, Steven Vanhauwaert, and Genevieve Lee. What the heck is the Magnetic Resonator Piano, you ask? In the words of its creator, Andrew McPherson:

“The magnetic resonator piano (MRP) is an electronically-augmented acoustic piano capable of eliciting new sounds acoustically from the piano strings, without speakers. Electromagnets induce vibrations in the strings independently of the hammers, creating infinite sustain, crescendos, harmonics, pitch bends and new timbres, all controlled from the piano keyboard.”

This is gonna be awesome.

In addition to the concert, there’s also a Kickstarter campaign to commission four local composers — Julia Adolphe, Jeremy Cavaterra, Alex Miller, and Elise Roy — to write new works for the Magnetic Resonator Piano that will be premiered this weekend. Here’s a video about both the MRP and the campaign:

Which you can help support here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pielectro/new-music-for-the-magnetic-resonator-piano/

If you can’t make the Saturday concert, on Sunday at 4:30pm McPherson will present a free lecture demonstration at Keyboard Concepts in Van Nuys that will include performances by Gerpe, Kallay, Valitutto, and Rafael Liebich.

Full details and tickets are at http://peopleinsideelectronics.com/mrp.

Interview: Patrick Scott on Jacaranda’s upcoming season

Back in July I was invited to a garden party hosted by Jacaranda, at which they featured five pianists and an incredible lunch [I don’t usually plug businesses on here, but Cafe Luxxe in Brentwood provided the coffee service and dude, their stuff is delicious]. They also announced the concert lineup for their 2012-13 season, which features composers John Cage and Benjamin Britten, and works inspired by or connected to them. It’s an impressive one to say the least, kicking off on with a four-day Cage festival on September 6 that includes a complete (read: 24 hour long) performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations. I caught up with Artistic Director Patrick Scott to talk about what’s coming up. Check it out:

Okay, the garden party was epic. Tell our readers about it.

The party celebrated the end of the season and announces the new one. We featured five of the pianists who will perform in the next season. They each played 10-15 minutes of music (total 70 in two sets) that is in some way related to the upcoming concerts, including this year’s special pre-season Cage 100 Festival. A fabulous lunch was served between the two sets. The first set includes solo and four hands music played by Danny Holt and Steven Vanhauwaert, aka 4HandsLA.

Danny played music by David Lang and Nico Muhly. Excerpts of Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion will be included in the December concert, “Winter Dreams,” as will Knee Play V from Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass, Muhly’s mentor. Steven also played Old & Lost Rivers by Tobias Picker. Picker’s piece The Encantadas will receive its LA premiere in October’s concert, “Different Islands.” Together they played Eric Satie’s own 4 hands arrangement of his ballet, Parade. Satie was a major influence on Cage and his Vexations will be played over 24 hours by 32 pianists (including all 5) in the festival. Danny and Steven will perform in Steve Reich’s City Life in October. And they will both play the original 4 hands arrangement of The Rite of Spring in February. Steven will perform with the Pantoum Trio in the US premiere of Eric Tanguy’s Trio in November’s “Seduction.” Steven is also prominently featured on the season finale playing a rare Benjamin Britten concerto.

Genevieve Feiwen Lee played more Satie, and Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields) by Alvin Lucier, a disciple of Cage. Aron Kallay will perform the Lucier in the festival. Genevieve will also play sampling keyboard in City Life. Aron, who will join her on the second sampling keyboard, played three Un-intemezzi by Veronika Krausas, just because I wanted to hear them live and the pieces fit the program well. To close, Grammy-winner Gloria Cheng played Cage’s In a Landscape and Les sons impalpables du rêve from Messiaen’s Preludes. Messiaen was deeply influenced by Debussy, whose 150th anniversary we celebrate in November. Gloria will open the season with music by Esa-Pekka Salonen written for her. She will also perform the Ligeti Piano Concerto in January’s “Fierce Beauty.”

Quite a few party guests to bought subscriptions and festival tickets.

The next season, the one the party is supporting, features 100 year shindigs for both Cage and Britten. They seem like an unlikely pair, but the music you program with Jacaranda is really wide ranging. What are your thoughts going into programming?

Cage’s actual 100th birthday is September 5, 1912 in Los Angeles. We start celebrating the next day in our regular venue First Presbyterian. It’s a really unusual, fun and wild program with a lot of short pieces including a super-rare performance of an organ work based on 18th century New England hymns. Chance is a factor as three “assistants” pull the stops according to I Ching tosses. We then move to the Miles Playhouse in the middle of a park for 24 hours for Satie’s Vexations. The next venue was a place Cage regularly lectured about contemporary art and premiered his earlier music: Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club. To close we will be at the Annenberg Beach House. Brooklynite Adam Tendler will play from memory the complete Sonatas & Interludes by Cage — his gentle gamelan-like masterpiece for prepared piano. I think Cage is attractive to a younger audience and I hope they will come back for the Steve Reich.

We love Britten and think he is under-appreciated and under played here. Both Cage and Britten were gay, but very different. Britten’s birthday was November 22. 1913. We are dedicating three consecutive concerts to Britten, as well as including a work for children’s chorus and organ in December’s “Winter Dreams.” The programming takes a biographical approach and one that emphasizes his relationship with the tenor Peter Pears and their life in Brooklyn during WWII. A bunch of American composers and the Canadian Colin McPhee were their friends. So the March concert will put Britten in this milieu. We will stage our first opera, Britten’s Curlew River, a one-act chamber opera intended for church performance. There is an all male cast and the central role of the Madwoman was originally created by Pears in 1963. Internationally, the most exciting young opera director, LA-based Yuval Sharon, will direct. The season finale is full of contrasts, super popular and super obscure, solo piano to string orchestra with string quartet and piano.

We are celebrating Britten in the early part of 2013 because the 2013-14 season is our Tenth Anniversary and we cannot devote so many concerts to one composer.

Great programming takes a very deep knowledge of repertoire, history and culture. It depends on alchemy and intuition as well. I am not a trained musician so I have the advantage of approaching programs from the audience’s point of view. I want the atmosphere of the intermission to be charged with the afterglow of excitement, of shared discovery, of intense sensation and emotion. That state readies the audience for the substantial journey of the second half — full of surprises and challenges. At the end of a concert I want the audience to feel deeply satisfied and on a high.

How do you think programming such a range of music affects audiences’ experience? Do you find the same crowd at most of your concerts, or does the audience change drastically from say, the Debussy concert coming up in November to the second Viennese school one set for February?

I like variety — within a concert and within the season. But I also like things to be connected in unusual ways. The Jacaranda audience is quite loyal because the performance quality is super high and the adventure is planned to span the whole season, sometimes reflecting back on season’s past. I hope each concert will attract new listeners that will become loyal because they trust that the journey will be an exciting one, full of dazzling virtuosity and musical commitment. Among our audience development strategies, we do targeted outreach through the Consulates General. This year the consulates of France, Hungary, Austria and Britain will help.

What excites you about presenting this music in LA?

The amazing talent pool of musicians here makes almost anything possible; and the sophisticated audience in LA really has an appetite for new and modern music.

What would you like to see change here, whether about your own series or our town’s scene in general?

The geography of LA traffic is making it harder for people downtown, in Hollywood, and Pasadena to attend our concerts in Santa Monica. Eventually the train will help. In the meantime, we need more support in the media to inspire people to make the trek across town, by making a whole afternoon of their Santa Monica visit. There are awesome restaurants nearby, as well as the beach, shopping and movies on the Promenade, Bergamot Station, the newly renovated Santa Monica Mall, and two parking structures nearby. We have people regularly driving from Riverside, Whittier and Long Beach! There is a guy who actually drives from Arizona once a year! It just takes a little more planning.

For more details and tickets, visit jacarandamusic.org.