![]() “It probably sounds corny,” she says, “but the music is very nostalgic. And Lisitsa has a strong personal response to the concerto. She has had some experience with it, however she once played the piano reduction of the orchestral part, accompanying a student who was working on the solo part. Never mind that she hasn’t tackled the piece before. Sweetening the deal was her offer to play without compensation, a gesture of support for the financially troubled orchestra. Lisitsa seemed to fit the bill perfectly. No soloist had yet been found for the Rachmaninoff concerto scheduled for the October program. The conductor offered to engage the pianist as soon as possible, which turned out to be very soon. She could be somebody on the verge of a major career.” It was not just a case of the usual super Russian fingers she has a great sense of lyricism. Philharmonic music director James Judd, who heard Lisitsa play the Strauss-Godowsky Paraphrase on Themes from “Die Fledermaus” after a dinner at Kreeger’s home, shared his host’s enthusiasm. The colors she gets from a piano are amazing she creates wonderful pedaling effects.” There are some wrong notes, but it doesn’t matter. In 15 years, there isn’t anybody we have recorded who produced this volume of extraordinarily difficult music without the need of editing. “Everything on her solo discs is unedited. As I listened to Valentina, I thought she is the closest pianistically to [the Argentinian super-virtuoso) Martha Argerich of any female pianist I’ve ever heard. “I was so taken by her playing, as well as by the two of them,” he says, “that I figured we ought to record as much as they were willing to play. “It was crazy.”īut Kreeger didn’t want to miss any potential gem. “Julian kept saying, ‘What else do you have?'” Lisitsa says. The solo programs include works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, as well as Grigori Ginzburg’s wild transcription of Figaro’s aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. The original Audiofon plan soon doubled – enough material was recorded for two CDs of solo music, two of dual piano music. Before the recording session at the University of Miami’s Gusman Hall in August, the pianists added Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival to their growing list of well-received appearances. Kreeger became interested in a joint project – a compact disc of two-piano material with Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff, another one of Lisitsa alone. If I had recorded that, I could have released it without edit. Then she sight-read the Shostakovich Cello Sonata with Bill. ![]() With no advance warning, Valentina sight-read Mozart and Brahms sonatas with Ida. Violinist Ida Haendel and cellist William de Rosa were there, too. “Then two days after their Temple Beth Am recital in April, they came to the house again. “You could tell there was something very, very special about her. “Valentina sat down at the piano and played a phrase or two of Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody for maybe 10 seconds, just to see what the piano sounded like,” Kreeger says. But last spring, the pianists stopped by his Miami Beach home. When an SMU professor suggested that Audiofon record Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff, Kreeger had not heard the duo, only their reputation. Among the noted artists who have recorded for the label are Earl Wild, Nelson Freire, Seymour Lipkin and Joseph Kalichstein. Reflecting Kreeger’s lifelong devotion to piano music, most of the Audiofon discography has featured the keyboard. “It will be my first time playing this piece.”Įnter Julian Kreeger, a Miami lawyer and founder of Audiofon Records. “It’s so scary,” Listisa, 26, says of the engagement from her home in Dallas. This week, audiences throughout the area will get that chance, when Lisitsa performs Rachmaninoff’s evergreen Piano Concerto No. There was always plenty of praise for both musicians (Kuznetsoff’s skills could hardly be overlooked), but the keyboard aficionados kept wishing for a chance to hear the duo’s distaff side alone. That buzz intensified over the years, as Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff, who emigrated to this country in 1992, returned to Miami for assorted concerts. Several veteran piano watchers suggested she would be make a formidable impression by herself. But from the preliminary rounds through the finals, the buzz centered on just one: Lisitsa. At the 1991 Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, the first prize was shared by two bravura husband-and-wife Russian teams: Maxim and Irina Jeleznov, and Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff.
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