by Chang Tou Liang
“Inna Faliks is a brilliant pianist whose instinctual approach to music, makes these new works relevant, and just as importantly, come to live.”
News
Los Angeles Times review
by Mark Swed
Commentary: What is Ukrainian music, and what does it say about the war?
The first week of May, I attended four concerts. All four, whether by chance or intent, had a connection with Ukraine. That was obvious the first day of May at a benefit concert for Ukraine put on by the Wende Museum and Jacaranda Music at the Robert Frost Auditorium in Culver City. And while Ukrainian American pianist Inna Faliks’ Ukraine-centric recital several days later at the Wende contained no Ukrainian music, its programmatic theme was “The Master and Margarita,” a novel by the Ukraine-born author Mikhail Bulgakov.
At her Wende recital earlier this month, Faliks premiered Veronika Krausas’ “Master & Margarita” Suite, written for the occasion. In the Russian novel, the devil visits and wreaks marvelous havoc on Soviet Moscow. In her suite of seven sly dances, Krausas, who is a Canadian American Los Angeles composer of Lithuanian heritage, lightly waltzes around and toys with fanciful passages from Bulgakov’s novel. As with Silvestrov, what isn’t there is as intriguing as what is. Each dance is a kind of fantasy, full of musical hints. Crossing borders is, and has always been, the way of music.
Spring News
• Inna Faliks’ book, the musical memoir Weight in the Fingertips, will be published in 2023 by Globe Pequot.
• Inna was recently profiled in a Cleveland Classical feature by Jarrett Hoffman titled “The Story of a Pianist” —Ukrainian-born Inna Faliks on her monologue-recital & her home country”. You can read the article by clicking here.
• More performances on the horizon! Be sure to check the calendar for upcoming dates.
Ihr Opernratgeber review
by Sven Godenrath
The Bagatelle by Peter Golub, played by Inna Faliks, impresses with its sparkling elegance and the subtle sparkling piano. The same applies to Bagatelle No. 1, no. 3 , no. 5 and no. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, the Bagatelle by Richard Danielpour, Sweet Nothings by Mark Carlsons… The Bagatelle by Tamir Hendelman is rhythmically accentuated, as is Bagatelle No. 2 and no. 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven, Etude 2a by Ian Krause, Bagatelle by Daniel Leikowitz.
January Radio spots
• On Sunday, January 16 at 8 pm EST, Inna Falik’s performance of Pursuit by Billy Childs will be featured on Modern Notebook on WSMR-FM. Tune in online here.
• Jed Distler devoted an hour-long episode of his award-winning radio program, Between the Keys to Inna Faliks, including an in-depth interview. The program aired on WWFM radio on January 11 and 12, and is available on demand at this link.
‘Reimagine’ featured on two Best of 2021 lists
My album Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel has been chosen for two ‘Best of 2021’ lists!
This includes San Francisco Classical Voice (courtesy of Peter Feher), and American Record Guide (thanks to James Harrington).
ConcertoNet
Review of Inna’s performance at NYC’s Bargemusic Here and Now Winter Festival
Whew!!! No other words describe it.
Stunning performance by Inna Faliks … a BargeMusic concert which whirled away from its hour-plus duration to a minute-to-minute revelation.
The last two works showed two miracles: First was the Pursuit (in response to “Scarbo”) by Billy Childs.
Mr. Childs’ piece was unfamiliar. The familiar miracle was Ms. Faliks. She succeed with digital faultlessness in Ravel’s original.
Ravel wrote [“Scarbo”] the year of Einstein’s great time/space discovery, yet Ms. Faliks turned his pre-quantum mechanics into a personal cosmic journey of hide-and-seek shadows and blazing light, a cosmic chase and a moonlit nightmare.
Berkshire Fine Arts
Review of Inna’s performance at NYC’s Bargemusic Here and Now Winter Festival
Inna Faliks is a superb concert pianist, who also heads the piano studies department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her recordings are devoted to revealing kindred spirits. … You too can be a kindred spirit.
Husband and wife, Robert and Clara Schumann, are offered together in The Schumann Project. Faliks has kept the composers’ magical, whimsical, heart-felt language central to her repertoire. … Her appreciation for Clara’s individual voice is clear in her recording of the Piano Sonata in G Minor. [Clara Schumann’s] Etudes move from dark to ebullient. Faliks places them where she feels they speak most powerfully and dramatically.
For the recording [Reimagine: Beethoven and Ravel, Faliks] asked a group of contemporary composers to respond to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, his last work for piano and also Ravel’s notoriously challenging Gaspard de la Nuit. Worth listening.
Pizzicato review
by Remy Franck
Ukrainian-born American pianist Inna Faliks has asked nine contemporary composers, including Richard Danielpour, Paola Prestini, Billy Childs, and Timo Andres, to write a short piece of music on each of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126, and Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.
The results, as might be expected, are of varying interest. Richard Danielpour, Ian Krouse and David Lefkovitz have succeeded in creating particularly characteristic new Bagatelles.
In contrast to Beethoven’s Opus, where each new Bagatelle is followed by Beethoven’s, in Ravel’s case only the contemporary interpretations of Ondine, le Gibet and Scarbo are heard, with Paola Prestini’s vision of Ondine and Billy Child’s “Pursuit” to Scarbo being particularly pleasing.
In all the pieces of this original program, ultimately the pianist herself impresses the most thanks to a technically brilliant playing, which is rhythmically immensely secure and also sensitive enough to make the right moods audible with dynamic as well as color nuances, both in the Beethoven original and in the new compositions.
The album contains detailed texts by Inna Faliks, and also from the composers, who report about their own pieces.
Fanfare (“Best Of” list)
by James Harrington
“Best Of” list, Fanfare: for Reimagine Beethoven and Ravel, and Bargemusic recital
Inna Faliks told me when I wrote my original review last September that she hoped to be in New York City to play her Reimagine program. I ended that review saying, “You can be
sure that I will be there.”
I was there—on a cold December night—and she played exceptionally well at Bargemusic, a unique floating concert hall below the Brooklyn Bridge. With the Manhattan night skyline in the window behind her, we all bobbed up and down a little with the waves and heard the pieces on this program. She began with a world premiere of Voices, a work by Ljova for historical recordings and piano, followed by the Reimagine pieces and topped off with Ravel’s Scarbo.
There is no question that she is one of the best and most creative American pianists these days.