Pianist
Listen to this interview on WNYU about Inna’s upcoming Music/Words performance at the Meisel Gallery in New York!
Guest conductor Thomas Heuser led a reconstituted Vallejo Symphony in its first concert of the new season Sept. 20 in Vallejo’s Hogan Auditorium. Mr. Heuser is the first of three candidates for the position of symphony artistic director, and each will conduct one concert.
There were familiar faces on the stage though most of the musicians are new to the VSO since last season, as many long-time members left the Orchestra after long-time artistic director David Ramadanoff departed last year.
Mr. Heuser chose some blockbuster works for his trial by fire, which, as he quipped on the stage Sunday, was an appropriate phrase given the near-100-degree temperatures outside. He sparked that fire conducting a brisk, pre-program Star Spangled Banner, for which virtually everyone in the audience stood, either with a hand over the heart or in formal salute. It was a refreshing surprise and a unifying icebreaker, for the orchestra as well as the audience. After the rousing rendition of the National Anthem, the orchestra proceeded with the first of three classical favorites, Smetana’s The Moldau. The Moldau, or “Vltava,” named after a majestic Prague river, is part of a series of six symphonic poems the composer completed late in his career, collectively titled “Ma Vlast,” or “My Homeland.”
“Each work takes its inspiration from a different aspect of Bohemian/Czech culture, landscape or history,” said the VSO‘s Mary Eichbauer, and “Vltava expresses the renewed strength and unified spirit of Bohemia.” In his introduction to the audience Sunday, Mr. Heuser described the piece as a contrast between the rugged and serene aspects of the river as it courses along toward its end, ultimately emptying into the Elbe River. “Rachmaninoff also had intense sadness and joy in his life,” he added, suggesting that the Smetana piece is also reflective of the life of its composer. The work is bold and elegant, containing obvious suggestions of flowing water (a steady beat emanating from the cellos and basses) as the violins play a sprightly melody accentuated by clear winds. The music is powerful in a gentle, aesthetically pleasing way. There was great majesty and confidence in the performance, but it is a happy confidence, a celebration of life and progress, devoid of fury.
The audience showed its admiration for the performance with a standing ovation. Rachmaninoff’s C Minor Concerto, Op. 18, followed with Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks as the soloist. Ms. Falik’s mastery is solid, and her performance with the symphony was strong and polished. Her precision and power was impressive, though piano and orchestra could have meshed more smoothly. In fact, while for the most part the orchestra sounded cohesive, the instrumental sections were not consistently in sync. The final movement was played energetically, and again audience applause was loud and long.
The program concluded with Dvorak’s “New World” Ninth Symphony, Op. 95. The smoothness of the phrasing in the strings provided a foundation for the familiar themes and was reminiscent of the Smetana work. This E Minor work from 1893 contains fewer contrasts than the expressive Moldau and flows more steadily forward without marked passages of serenity or tumult. The music had quite a lulling effect in the warm Hogan, especially in the Largo where the instruments sounded most graceful and closely attuned to each other. As the piece gained momentum in the final Allegro the orchestra gained sonority and power, becoming more unified at the end.
It was a successful audition for the conductor. The fact of repeated standing ovations spoke volumes for the quality of the performance, but in addition there was a sense in the auditorium that many would be returning for the next two concerts and their candidate conductors, Christian Baldini (Nov. 8) and Marc Taddei (Jan. 31).
Photos from our wonderful Music/Words performance at the PianoForte Foundation on May 29, featuring Jesse Ball!
Tune in tomorrow to catch a live stream of Inna and Jesse’s performance of Music/Words at Chicago’s PianoForte Foundation, co-sponsored by the Poetry Foundation! The program begins on Friday May 29th at 7:30pm CST.
You can listen to the concert live here:
http://www.pianofortefoundation.org
Inna Faliks began the “Music/Words” series in New York, and with her recent relocation as head of the Herb Alpert Piano Department at UCLA, has continued this unique and memorable practice to our state and county. In Ellen Bass, she could not have picked a better partner. Our poet said that for her this new way of thinking about music is “a conversation.” It began with her quiet reading of “Relax,” about bad things that will happen, such as fungus on tomatoes, cats run over, even a lesbian wife, all stated with a wry humor: like those to follow, what she called “talking poems” meant to be read aloud, something she is very good at. Faliks then took to the keyboard in Schedrin’s (b. 1932) “Basso Ostinato,” a blizzard of sound that was wild, fast, jazzy like Gershwin and reflective of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, a tour de force with underlying humor and perfect control.
Then Ellen Bass read again, this time, “Jazz,” about sending her poems out into the world as if a child, a modern take on our great 17th century American Ann Bradstreet’s own similar feelings. In “Waiting for Rain” she tells how the ancient philosopher Lucretius got her through the night with his idea of atoms “combining” and “recombining” amid the void. “When you return,” magically has eggs going back to shells, “letters unwrite themselves” and diamonds to coal to rotting leaves. Amazing imagery, fresh and immediate.
Next, Inna Faliks played the Mozart (1756-91) “Fantasie in D Minor K. 397,” a brief, intensely moody departure from his sonatas, which she made startling with its shifts between the opening Andante, then Adagio than a Presto played almost too fast to hear, but with perfect accuracy to end the high mini drama. Then, in “If you know,” Bass told of ticket takers touching palms with concert goers, followed by “God’s Grief” with startling images of God, Joan of Arc, Houdini – her words as magical as his magic tricks. In “God in Trouble” a beached whale decomposes, then in “Listening” she imagines having heard Keats read his “Autumn” to a friend. To “words like wine/ I listened with my spine,” both funny and profound.
Then in a brilliant stroke for both performers and audience, Faliks departed from the printed program which had Bass reading between movements of the huge Brahms (1833-97) “Sonata No. 2 in F Sharp Minor,” written and played by the composer in 1853 when he was “only” 20 and full of storm and stress along with tenderness. In the often fiendishly difficult and architecturally perfect four-movement work, played straight through and received with tumultuous applause, the noble work was the best-performed these ears have heard on this mighty Yamaha since Yevgeny Sudbin in a big Scriabin sonata almost two years ago. The Brahms began with a huge attack blaring forth the “allegro, not too fast but with energy.” The “andante with expression” was a stroll with purpose, a meditation that becomes intense and moody, alternating playfulness with severity, then lushness – typical of Brahms, and with Faliks sitting, as usual, with her face right over the keys, as expressive as the notes she was playing. The moving Scherzo was hardly a musical “joke,” but a brief lead up to the “Finale,” played with a gripping intensity, blazing keys played flat-fingered for speed like Horowitz, then a maternal tenderness like the famous Brahms “Lullaby,” coherent in all its many moods, and ending with a big bang. All gave a standing ovation.
Then Bass read three concluding poems, ending with “Reincarnation,” not returning as the “totem of a shaman,” but rather as an OYSTER! Very funny, very apt, very original, like all of her works. Faliks then concluded the intermissionless 110-minute program, which passed as if in a dream, with Liszt’s (1811-86) “La Campanella,” a glittering whimsical bon-bon that left a grateful audience with church bells ringing in our heads.
“…in a brilliant stroke for both performers and audience, Faliks… had [Ellen] Bass reading between movements of the huge Brahms (1833-97) “Sonata No. 2 in F Sharp Minor,” written and played by the composer in 1853 when he was “only” 20 and full of storm and stress along with tenderness. In the often fiendishly difficult and architecturally perfect four-movement work, played straight through and received with tumultuous applause, the noble work was the best-performed these ears have heard on this mighty Yamaha since Yevgeny Sudbin in a big Scriabin sonata almost two years ago. The Brahms began with a huge attack blaring forth the “allegro, not too fast but with energy.” The “andante with expression” was a stroll with purpose, a meditation that becomes intense and moody, alternating playfulness with severity, then lushness – typical of Brahms, and with Faliks sitting, as usual, with her face right over the keys, as expressive as the notes she was playing. The moving Scherzo was hardly a musical “joke,” but a brief lead up to the “Finale,” played with a gripping intensity, blazing keys played flat-fingered for speed like Horowitz, then a maternal tenderness like the famous Brahms “Lullaby,” coherent in all its many moods, and ending with a big bang. All gave a standing ovation.”
In addition to this month’s world premiere of Polonaise Fantasie at The Ebell of Los Angeles, I’m pleased to announce additional dates and information for Music/Words this season!
On February 22, Inna Faliks will perform with Poet-Laureate Ellen Bass at the Cabrillo College Distinguished Artist Series. The performance will be held at 4:00pm at Peace United Church in Santa Cruz, CA. Tickets can be purchased at www.distinguishedartists.org.
On March 20, Faliks will perform the World Premiere of “Godai,” an original composition by Clarice Assad with poems by Steve Schroeder at Bargemusic (New York City’s “floating concert hall”) located just off Fulton Ferry Landing near the Brooklyn Bridge. Tickets can be purchased here.
On March 22, Music/Words will remain in Brooklyn for a special engagement at the Brooklyn Public Library‘s Classical Interlude Series, featuring poet Sophie Cabot Black. Admission is free!
Finally, on May 29, Music/Words will come to Chicago for a collaboration with the Poetry Foundation at PianoForte, featuring poet Jesse Ball.
See you at the show(s)!
Coming to The Ebell of Los Angeles on January 25!
Polonaise Fantasie: Story of a Pianist
by Inna Faliks
Directed by Cameron Watson
Internationally renowned pianist Inna Faliks tells her own story through a unique blending of music and words. Her acclaimed interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Chopin, as well as new compositions including her own, illuminate her dramatic story. Interwoven with the music, actress Rebecca Mozo reads the monologue of Faliks’ life: as a young girl in the 1980s she came to the U.S. from Odessa, Ukraine with her parents to escape oppression and pursue her dream of becoming a concert pianist.
The Ebell of Los Angeles
Saturday, January 25 @ 5:00pm
To purchase tickets online, please visit www.EbellEventTickets.com
After last year’s exciting Music/Words season, with performances in NYC, Chicago and LA, excellent reviews and collaborations, 2014-15 has much in store. This is a season of innovations for Music/Words, including newly composed works, recordings, and theater, as well as collaborations with already established and favorite partners, such as the Poetry Foundation, the Brooklyn Public Library, WFMT, and UCLA.
For the first time, the Music/Words season includes special commissions by brilliant composers – the Brazilian phenom Clarice Assad, and UCLA’s own David Utzinger. In these works, both composers have had the liberty to create using not only musical language but poetry or words of their choice. I cannot wait to share the phenomenal results with my audiences. They may include movement, scatting, prepared piano, singing and/or recitation, in addition to playing.
In January 2015, the PLAYdate series at the historic Ebell of Los Angeles will present a theater piece based on the Music/Words concept, a monologue devised in collaboration with producer Cynthia Comsky from my musical memoirs, alternating with piano works, including the music of Mozart and Chopin, my own compositions and works of renowned Israeli composer Jan Freidlin. The performance will be recorded live by Yarlung Records, in a first recording of its kind.
Please stay tuned for dates and more information about this awesome season!
Inna Faliks,
Music/Words Artistic Director and Founder
“…authoritative and incisive performances of the Eroica Variations and the Op.111 Sonata… Faliks’ honest technique and meticulous filigree merit admiration and respect.”
By Dorothy Andries for the Glenview Announcements, Chicago Sun-Times
Sometimes a concert is so graceful and so unusual that it must be mentioned. Such was the program “Music/Words” the evening of Saturday May 2 in the Music Institute of Chicago’s Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston.
Pianist Inna Faliks performed three works by Beethoven, interspersed by three sets of poems by German poets Goethe and Schiller, read by Peter van de Graaff. Faliks has a national career and was featured in MIC’s fourth annual Distinguished Alumni Concert because at one point she studied with the late Emilio del Rosario, one of the community music school’s outstanding teachers.
Van de Graaff is a bass-baritone, who sings with numerous area groups and has performed internationally. He is also a long-time announcer on radio station WFMT, and it was for his speaking voice that he was engaged for this enterprise.
The evening opened with three poems by Goethe. There’s nothing like a good radio voice and van de Graaff has one of the best. He presented the poems with clarity and precision and, when appropriate, decidedly cheerful animation.
Who can object to an all-Beethoven program? Faliks eagerly embraced the challenge of that monumental composer. She opened with his Polonaise in C, which begins with crashing chords, but includes delicate moments. She handled everything deftly, displaying speed and her formidable technique throughout.
Her second number was Beethoven’s Fantasia, Op. 77, a free flowing fire-and-ice composition. It seemed an ideal match with her temperament.
Van de Graaff demonstrated his dramatic abilities in the poems by Schiller. Especially memorable was “The Breeze,” in which his voice dropped to a whisper as the words tell of sleep. The well-chosen finale was “Elysium,” which bespoke eternal rest and joy.
Faliks concluded the night with Sonata No. 32, giving the work a nimble, graceful performance, showing off her dexterity, as well as her dynamic reach.
She is associate professor of piano at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. The Music/Words, now in its sixth season in New York City, is her own creation. The MIC concert was so carefully crafted and delightfully done that it resembled a salon experience.
This imaginative event lasted just over an hour, but was as satisfying, actually even more so, than a program twice its length.
More programs of the Music Institute of Chicago at musicinst.org.