Links to all Corona Fridays performances:

Since March 20, 2020, Inna has been presenting short informal concerts from her home, dubbed “Corona Fridays.” Here are the 12 installments, thus far, of the video series – written about beautifully in this article on the Ampersand blog. Each episode features music that is newer, older – and words, of some kind – whether poetry that stands on its own, or is part of the piece, as in the case of Veronika Krausas’s “Master and Margarita” Suite.

Corona Fridays 1: Shchedrin, Chopin, and more 

Corona Fridays 2: Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin

Corona Fridays 3: Beethoven, Golub, Danielpour, and more

Corona Fridays 4: Pajama Children’s Edition

Corona Fridays 5: Beethoven, Paganini-Liszt, and poetry by Jesse Ball

Corona Fridays 6: Mozart, Takemitsu, and Chopin

Corona Fridays 7: Pajama Children’s Edition

Corona Fridays 8: Tchaikovsky and Freidlin

Corona Fridays 9: Ljova and Wieck-Schumann

Corona Fridays 10: Krausas and Wieck-Schumann

Corona Fridays 11: Krausas, Ljova, and Liszt

Corona Fridays 12: Kids Edition

Corona Fridays 14: Scarlatti and Maya Miro Johnson

Corona Fridays 15: Pajama Fridays with Frida and Nathaniel

Corona Fridays 16: Chopin Etude Sandwich

Corona Fridays 17: Schumann, Rachmaninoff

Corona Fridays 18: Curtis Summerfest Young Composers Celebration 

Corona Fridays 19: Pajama Fridays Edition: Schubert, Mark Carlson, Beethoven. Poetry by Helen Winslow and Carl Sandburg read by Frida and Nathaniel

Corona Fridays 20:  Brahms, Tamir Hendelman, Beethoven

Corona Fridays 21: Chopin, William Carlos Williams, Richard Danielpour

Corona Fridays 22 :Beethoven, Paola Prestini, Oni Buchanan poem

Corona Fridays 23: Rilke poem and Chopin (Polonaise-Fantasie)

Corona Fridays 24: Ravel and Timo Andres 

Corona Fridays 25: Friday the 13th Edition. Emily Dickinson poem, Chick Corea, Franz Liszt

Corona Fridays 26: Giraud, David Serkin Ludwig, Brahms

Corona Fridays 27: Brahms, Danielpour, Corea, Gershwin

Corona Fridays 28: Waltzes by Brahms, Krausas, Tchaikovsky

New Isler’s Insights Mini-Review

By Donald Isler

Voices – A Three Movement Suite for Piano and Historical Recordings by Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin
Inna Faliks, Pianist

This work should be of interest to those interested in Jewish traditional music, modern compositional techniques, and excellent pianism. The first movement was completed some years before the other two, and I liked it when I first heard it. The idea of a pianist on stage accompanying musicians from long ago struck me as wild, but exciting, and still does.

In that first movement one hears a repeated D minor chord over and over, but it has a mesmerizing effect, and leads into the body of the movement, where the pianist accompanies a 1912 recording of the famous cantor, Gershon Sirota (born 1874 – died in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising – 1943) and his choir.

Is the past, past, or is it really part of the present?! This performance makes you rethink this………

The second movement, Zhok, features Ms. Faliks playing with a recording of a klezmer trumpet player, and that, in turn, leads to the finale, Freydele, in which she plays with a 1953 recording of the Yiddish cantor (they had female cantors in those days?!) and actress, Freydele Osher. The Suite concludes with a calmer, smaller version of the D minor motive which one heard at the beginning of the work.

A very big part of the success of this performance is the fact that the pianist, Inna Faliks, who commissioned Voices, is so impressive. She has strength, technique, intensity, and an ear for interesting sonorities that’s constantly at work.

Well worth hearing!

Donald Isler

Corona Fridays 5th episode

This episode of my weekly Spring 2020 concerts from my home features many of the poets I have worked with over the years.

This one features a reading of work the founding poet of Music/Words – Jesse Ball.

Program is Beethoven Fantasie op 77, Corigliano Fantasia on an Ostinato and Paganini-Liszt La Campanella.

 

Los Angeles Times Op-Ed: “Hashtags from my Soviet childhood”

by Inna Faliks

“We now live in a realm of buzzwords, hashtags, slogans that can seduce us with the neatness of tidily packaged concepts in our desire for change. But “equality,” “revolution” and “proletariat” are rendered meaningless in environments where they are overused. We’ve entered an age of Newspeak – though, unlike in “1984,” this is not part of government indoctrination but our own doing.”

Full Article

  1. La Campanella, Paganini - Liszt Inna Faliks 4:53
  2. Rzewski "The People United Shall Never Be Defeated" (excerpt, improvised cadenza) Inna Faliks 8:36
  3. Beethoven Eroica Variations Inna Faliks 9:59
  4. Gershwin: Prelude 3 in E-flat Minor Inna Faliks 1:25
  5. Mozart Piano Concerto #20 - II Inna Faliks with Chamber Orchestra of St. Matthews 10:27
  6. Gaspard de la Nuit (1908) : Scarbo - Ravel Inna Faliks 9:07
  7. Sirota by Lev 'Ljova' Zhurbin Inna Faliks 7:45