Here’s an excerpt from Steven Ritter’s Audiophile Audition review of Inna’s recent Beethoven CD:

“Faliks is an excellent Beethovenian with keen insight into this most elusive of structures: the variation. … I was not familiar with Inna Faliks until now, and neither apparently is our site, but one hopes that the newfound acquaintance will be developed further. She is a remarkable Ukrainian pianist with chops to burn, a forceful technique and extremely attentive spirit to that of Beethoven. This is a fine recital in warm, resonant sound that highlights the clarity and reasonable sense of balance and voicing that Faliks brings to the instrument. With a desirable program to boot, this is an easy item to recommend.”

—Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition, January 12, 2014. Read entire review here.

In this video, Inna plays one of two polonaises written by the master composer. You can own a recording of this piece on Inna’s new CD from MSR Classics.

MUSIC/WORDS, the acclaimed music-poetry series (NY, Chicago and LA), invites the audience to be moved by free associations, interplay of moods, genres and different mediums in its 6th season.

Inna Faliks, left; Vera Pavlova, right

Pianist Inna Faliks, with poet Vera Pavlova, appear in Music/Words: Chopin edition on Sunday October 27th, 2013 at 4 pm at the Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture, Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY. Admission is Free. For more information, call (312) 787-7070.

Celebrated pianist Inna Faliks is the founder and curator of the award-winning interdisciplinary series Music/Words, which explores the connections between poetry and music. She is joined by Vera Pavlova, one of Russia’s most important contemporary poets, whose first poetry collection in English, If There Is Something to Desire, was a bestselling title in 2010. Faliks will perform works by Chopin.

In this performance, Vera Pavlova’s passionate, sensuous poetry, with English translations, will intersect with selections of Frederic Chopin, including the Sonata # 2 in B flat minor. Music/Words has been featured in regular live broadcasts on WFMT Radio in Chicago, in collaboration with Poetry Foundation, at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, and at UCLA in Los Angeles.

The series MUSIC/WORDS was recently praised by Lucid Culture as being “surreal, impactful, and relevant” and was described as “a throwback to the Paris salons of the late 1800s.” It celebrates links between poetry and music by presenting collaborations between exciting solo performers and acclaimed contemporary poets in the form of a live recital/reading. Music/Words partnerships have included some of the most celebrated American poets.

Inna Faliks created the series in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration.

According to Faliks, “I pair performers together based on their personalities and styles, and encourage them to choose the poems and music in varied ways that are strongly and intuitively connected.”

Please visit www.verapavlova.us for poet bio.

As it turns out, Inna Faliks’ television debut was also a debut for Marc Vitali, segment producer for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. As Vitali reports on Artbeat: Inside the Arts Blog: “In 1994, Inna was one of the stars of WTTW’s annual program, The Illinois Young Performers Competition. At the age of 15, she performed Tchaikovsky with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. … [T]hat story was the first story I ever did that made it to air.”

Inna was 15 at the time of the segment, as Vitali says, “a teenager brimming with talent and charm,” whose playing developed into the artist and teacher we know today. Vitali calls her a “concert pianist of the highest order” whose playing “can be as dramatic or as subtle as a great stage actor.”

Read the complete post (and view a video of teenage Inna) here. And taking Vitali’s tip, “if you want to hear the piano played with power and grace, Faliks has just released a new recording of Beethoven masterworks on the MSR Classics label.”

On Thursday, August 15, Inna Faliks will make her Peninsula Music Festival debut. Fresh from her debut at the Newport Music Festival, Faliks looks forward to the all-Prokofiev program, which includes two “athletic and exhilarating” concerti by the Russian composer.

The concert will take place at 8:00 pm at the Door Community Auditorium, 3926 Wisonsin 42, Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Tickets are $10-60. A pre-concert talk will take place at 6:30 pm, available with the purchase of an additional $5 ticket.

COMPLETE PROGRAM 

Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10, D-flat Major
Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26, C Major
Prokofiev, Symphony No. 6, Op. 11, e-flat minor

Inna will make her Newport Music Festival debut on Wednesday, July 17, 2013 at the Breakers mansion, 8 p.m. Presenting works by Shchedrin, Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Schumann, she will be one of 88 artists performing from July 10-28 in the Gilded Age “summer cottages” of Newport, Rhode Island.

Inna will play a second concert at the festival, performing the “Heavenly Music of Franz Schubert,” which features an international quintet of performers from Germany, Russia, Canada, and the United States. Faliks, a Ukranian-American, will be joined by a cellist from Russia and an American violinist to provide Schubert’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major.  The concert begins at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 18, at the Casino Theatre.

The Breakers mansion (location of her solo recital on 7/17) is at 44 Ochre Point Ave, Newport, RI. Tickets are $42. The Casino Theatre (location of the Schubert quintet on 7/18) is at 9 Freebody Street, Newport, RI. Tickets are $32 for orchestra seating, $27 balcony seating.

For tickets, please call 401-849-0700 or visit newportmusic.secure.force.com/ticket. For further information on these concerts, please call 401-846-1133 or write to staff@newportmusic.org.

SOLO RECITAL PROGRAM INCLUDES:

Shchedrin Prelude for Piano
Beethoven Polonaise in C Major and Piano Sonata No. 23, “Appasionata”
Schoenberg Three Piano Pieces
Schumann Davidsbündlerstänze

“SCHUBERTIAD” PROGRAM INCLUDES:

Schubert Trio in B-flat Major
performed by Inna Faliks (piano), Corinne Chapelle (violin), and Sergey Antonov (cello)

This Sunday, June 9, in Los Angeles, pianist Inna Faliks will perform Schumann’s romantic masterpiece The Davidsbündler. These eighteen short pieces offer a valuable insight into Schumann’s aesthetic vision, as well as an interesting analog to the persisting debate about contemporary music. In brief, the composer places the two sides of his personality in a musical conversation about his personal vision versus his public persona. 

The concert will also include the Shchedrin’s Basso Ostinato and Beethoven’s Polonaise in C. It will take place at 6:00 pm at Bing Hall, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd  Los Angeles, CA. Admission is free.

(You can also stream the concert from the link on this page: www.lacma.org/event/inna-faliks-0)

COMPLETE PROGRAM: 

Robert Schumann, Davidsbündler, op. 6

Rodion Shchedrin, Basso Ostinato

Beethoven, Polonaise in C, op. 89

Inna appears on April 8th and 15th as part of National Poetry Month on 98.7 WFMT-FM Chicago. Inna Faliks’ Music/Words series is an interdisciplinary live performance series founded by NYC-based pianist Inna Faliks, exploring connections between poetry and music by presenting collaborations between exciting solo musicians and acclaimed contemporary poets in the form of a live recital/reading.

Inna Faliks created the series in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration.

April 8 will feature a broadcast of October 2012’s concert with Chicago’s Poetry Foundation. Faliks was joined by Valzhyna Mort, winner of Poetry magazine’s Bess Hokin Prize and the author of Factory of Tears and Collected Body, as well as Vera Pavlova, whose first poetry collection in English, If There Is Something to Desire, was a bestselling title in 2010. Works by Gubaidulina, Tchaikovsky, Lera Auerbach, Shchedrin, and Schumann were performed by Faliks.

April 15 will feature Faliks with a poet to be announced.

On March 30, Inna will present “Three Jewish Composers Three Centuries” at Baruch Performing Arts Center, Baruch College, 25th Street, New York City. This lecture is combined with performances of the work with Schoenberg, Gershwin, and Zhurbin. This concert is part of Baruch College’s SOLO IN THE CITY SERIES:  JEWISH WOMEN JEWISH STARS. Click here for more information.

Called “adventurous” and “passionate” by The New Yorker and “poetic” by Time Out New York, Ukrainian-born, New York City-based pianist Inna Faliks (www.innafaliks.com) has established herself as one of the most passionately committed, exciting and poetic artists of her generation. After her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she has performed on many of the world’s great stages, with numerous orchestras, in solo appearances, and with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart. Critics praise her “courage to take risks, expressive intensity and technical perfection” (General Anzeiger, Bonn), “poetry and panoramic vision” (Washington Post), and “riveting passion, playfulness” (Baltimore Sun). Her acclaimed CD on MSR Classics, “Sound of Verse”, was released in 2009.