Arts & Culture

More Tricks Than Treats?: Pianist Tamara Stefanovich at Barnes

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Toward proving that “solo piano” is a misnomer, I might present Friday night’s recital by Tamara Stefanovich as my Exhibit A. Stefanovich knows that the piano is more than a single entity, that the trials of other composers and performers before — if not also echoes of those after — graft their own wires into its evolving circuitry. Not only did she seem to make reference to these histories, but also created an alternative one of her own. Her program was a formidable one. Titled “35 Études,” it brought together knuckle-busting pieces of varying temperament. By way of Frédéric Chopin’s “Étude in F minor (Op.

Arts & Culture

SWAN | Trying to Be Relevant

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I was at a party one time and I was introduced to someone through a mutual friend. “This is Nick,” my friend said. “He’s really into music and he plays the piano.”

“Cool, that’s sort of interesting! What do you like to play on the piano?”

“Well, I’m classically trained, and my favorite composers are Bach and Chopin.”

“Wow, you must be really sensitive and have an exquisite taste for the nuances of creating art, like Bach’s subtle suspensions and dissonances in ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ and other works!”

Or, some derivative of that story occurred, sans the closing remark. Being introduced as a musician of the western classical tradition often garners a vague, uninspired response of awe and not much further dialogue.

Arts & Culture

Concert Pianist Buechner Wows At Barnes Hall

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Solo piano concerts have come to hold a dual, contradictory status. They are ubiquitous in classical circles, where they serve didactic and diagnostic purposes through competitions and senior recitals. They’re also something of an anachronism in the contemporary sonic landscape, where digital listening threatens its live counterpart. Last Wednesday night, pianist Sara Davis Buechner brought something essential back to the Barnes Hall stage that too often eludes the musically inclined among us: humility. It was evident in her curatorial preambles, in which she waxed to the audience anecdotally, passionately and honestly about the history of each piece before playing it.