samedi 28 février 2015

World Class Pianist Names To Know

By Olivia Cross


The piano is an instrument that requires many years of hard work and dedication to master. To be rated as a world class pianist is a huge honor, and very few of the numerous musicians world wide get to experience such a title. These are some of the names to know when it comes to such a rating.

Yuja Wang was born in Beijing, China and she is 28 years old. She is the daughter of musical parents, with a dancer for a mother and a percussionist father. She started learning to play the piano at the age of six and studied at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music before entering the Morningside Music Bridge International Festival in Calgary, Canada at the age of 11, where she was the youngest of the students.

Yuja Wang had barely entered her 20s when she was already a performer of classical piano in recitals worldwide. She has won numerous awards and accolades in her time, including Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition and the Gilmore Young Artist award at the beginning of the millennium. Her record company is Deutsche Grammophon, where she is exclusively signed to a 5-disc deal.

Born to Russian and Jewish parents in Los Angeles in nineteen forty-six, Rebecca Penneys began her journey with piano from an early age. She started learning when she was just 3 years old. By the time she was 9, she had already performed in her first solo recital and became a soloist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 11.

In the mid 60s, Penneys entered the International Chopin Competition in Poland, and she was the competition youngest ever entrant. The same event eventually created an award in her honor, called the Special Critics' Prize. Penneys performs and teaches, particularly in summer festivals.

For almost thirty-five years, Penneys has been a teacher at the Eastman School of Music. She is particularly recognized for teaching the keyboard technique known as Motion and Emotion, which is a focused method of improving a pianist's individual performance. She is a teacher at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival, and a lot of her students from this festival and elsewhere are international award-winning pianists and teachers in their own rights.

Hailing from Pennsylvania, Albert Frantz began his piano career very late in life at the age of seventeen years old. This is quite remarkable considering that a piano teacher of his in his childhood recommended that his mother throw her money away rather than give him piano lessons. He has achieved much in his short career, becoming the first pianist in over ten years to Fulbright scholarship for studies in Vienna.

Frantz attributes his success in playing the piano to those teachers that understood his natural talent and took on the task of helping him hone his skills at such a late age. His greatest advice to learners and parents of young children looking to take piano lessons is to find the best possible teacher from the very start, and not just an entry-level teacher. He performs in concert halls and also teaches as well as playing endorsements for producers such as Bosendorfer.




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