The Chopin Project » Byron Janis

The Chopin Currency – April 11, 2008

bkr — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:13:00 +0000

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Finale at the Wichita Symphony
The Wichita Eagle – Wichita,KS,USA3

Three-paragraph preview of Ingrid Fliter’s appearance in Kansas:

1) Fliter won the Gilmore Artist Award in 2006, with its top prize of $300,000. The cachet that came with the award elevated her career. Her calendar filled with concert dates and she signed on with the EMI record label to produce an all-Chopin CD. It was released this month.

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Review: Orchestra of Opera North with Evgenia Rubinova *****
Yorkshire Post – Leeds,England,UK

More praise for Evgenia Rubinova in Yorkshire…

A young musician who understands a composer’s intentions and successfully conveys that to an audience is a delight indeed.

So it is with Evgenia Rubinova, a pianist fully in command of any technical difficulties. Her performance of Chopin’s 1st Piano Concerto was enthralling, from her first entry, through the slow movement with which she held our breath with astonishing gentleness, to the light exhilaration of the finale. She is an artist with penetrating musical insight and a self-effacing calm that holds her listeners – not so much in the palms of her own hands, but more so within the composer’s spirit.

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Famed pianist visits site of his debut at age 10
Pittsburgh Post Gazette – Pittsburgh,PA,USA

Acclaimed Chopin interpreter Byron Janis returns to his Pittsburgh hometown, filmmaker in tow…

He is in town as the subject of a documentary on his life by filmmaker Peter Rosen. With Janis’ wife, Maria Cooper Janis (the daughter of actor Gary Cooper), they also are visiting the pianist’s childhood home in Squirrel Hill and his elementary school, Colfax. Janis went on to a celebrated career as a interpreter of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and more.…
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Read Byron Janis’ essay on Chopin here

A cultural plenary: Heritage label, jobs in culture, subtitles
EurofundingMag – Paris,France

A Chopin 2010 bill is afoot in the European Parliament…

Another proposal is for 2010 to be made the European year to celebrate the life of Chopin and 2011 the European year of Greek and Latin classics. …
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Musical Interlude
By Mirek(Mirek)

A montage from a Chopin film…

… lonely day outside or that the actor reminded me somewhat of my son. Whatever the reason, this clip melted me. It is a montage of photos from a Polish Chopin film (CHOPIN PRAGNIENIE MILOSCI, 2002) scored with Chopin’s Waltz no. …

mirek blog – http://mireklipinski.blogspot.com/

The Chopin Currency – March 8, 2008

bkr — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:45:00 +0000

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Music and ‘the Man’

In-depth profile of pianist Byron Janis, who describes his affinity for Chopin:

But it was a Polish composer who may have had the greatest influence: Chopin was always a favorite, and Janis returned the favor, credited with discovering two once-lost Chopin waltzes, a find called “the most dramatic musical discovery of our age.”

At 80, Janis reflects: “It was a defining moment of my life; I felt like I was being led to them.”

He has taken the lead since that 1967 discovery of the 1832 waltz works, which Chopin had written “for a lady friend; how he loved the women.”
Jewish Exponent – Philadelphia,PA,USA
And Chopin has touched his lively life in many ways. The McKeesport, Pa., kid of Russian-Jewish heritage who was born Byron Yanks is a Yankee Doodle Dandy …
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Two-Part Tribute to Byron Janis Begins March 8

The Chopin Currency – Feb. 21, 2008

bkr — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Chopin News, Reviews, & Previews:

Byron Janis Celebrates 80th Birthday 3/10 in Concert with Hensley …

Celebrated Chopin interpreter (and more recently, composer of Broadway songs) Byron Janis is set to present two shows – celebrating his 80th birthday (and Chopin’s 198th!) in March at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza in New York….

Broadway World – New York,NY,USA
The birthday festivities continue with “An Evening of Song with Pianist as Composer with a Touch of Chopin,” a concert on Monday, March 10 at 8pm where he …
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Pianist follows own jazz road

Previewing an appearance in Detroit’s Orchestra hall, notes about the classical roots of jazz pianist Jacky Terrasson…
DetNews.com – Detroit,MI,USA
… to a French father and an American mother, the classically trained pianist says he still loves to work his fingers in Bach and Chopin. …
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Chopin Photos

Chopin’s family church

Nice photo of medieval Polish village church where Chopin’s parents were married. “28.06.1806. I, Ignacy Marzański, the curate of this church, having delivered three banns on Sundays and not having found any canonical obstacles, this legal marriage of Mr Mikolaj Chopin, tutor in Zelezowa Wola, a bachelor and Ms Justyna Krzyzanowska…”
Church of St. Roch and st. John the Baptist in the village of Brochów, close to the village of…
TrekEarth – Europe Travel Photo Gallery – http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Thursday Thirteen #25

13 things to know about Chopin, part of an entertaining series from a Southern California blogger. “#13 — It was not ‘love at first sight’ for Frederick and Georg [Sand]. “Something about her repels me,” he wrote his family. Sand, however, in a letter to a friend in June, 1837, debated whether she should end a current affair to begin one with Chopin — repelled be damned! — even though she knew he was reportedly engaged to a woman named Maria Wodzińska.”

By Lara Angelina(Lara Angelina)
We were big faves of Frederick Chopin as I was growing up and I’ve carried that love into my adult life. My mother and I would watch “A Song To Remember” (Cornel Wilde played a robust Frederick and Merle Oberon played a beautiful Georg …
Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing – http://larachronicles.blogspot.com/

Tudor and Limon Celebrated

From the excellent blog danceviewtimes, a review of an American Ballet Theatre 100th birthday retrospective on the works of Anthony Tudor and Jose Limon:

This “Suite from ‘Mazurkas,’” staged by veteran Limón dancer Sarah Stackhouse, includes eight of the work’s twelve sections. In a post-performance discussion, she explained that the work was inspired by the company’s visit to Poland as part of a 1957 European tour, during which they paid a visit to Chopin’s home. She described the individual sections as “little gifts” from the choreogrpaher to each dancer who had been on that tour. Certainly Limón can be seen as being ahead of the curve in creating a Chopin piano ballet, something that became a more familiar type of dance about a decade later.

By Susan Reiter
Limón’s 1958 “Mazurkas,” which served as the evening’s appetizer, is an uncomplicated and sweetly open-hearted piano ballet to Chopin, and thus quite different from what one generally associated with the choreographer. …
danceviewtimes – http://www.danceviewtimes.com/