I plan to attend a bunch of the Rediscovering Rachmaninoff festival throughout April, schedule here, with more details here.
Today I attended the master class at the PNC Recital Hall, which is tucked away in Duquesne's Mary Pappert School of Music. The class was led by Maxim Mogilevsky (bio), a Russian pianist who studied under Vladimir Ashkenazy's teacher, has taught at Oberlin and other music programs and toured and performed extensively. Mogilevsky will be performing pre-concerts at Heinz Hall the weekend of April 17th.
I've never sat in on a master class before, and it was interesting, although I'm not sure I'd crash one again unless the guest artist were, like, Yo Yo Ma. Three local college piano students-- Helga, Javier, and Vivian, if I recall-- each played a short piece, followed by about 25 minutes of comments and guidance by Mogilevsky. Helga played Scriabin's famous Etude Op. 8, No. 12, and Javier a part of a movement of a Scriabin piano concerto (i *think*), with an accompanist playing the orchestra part.
As classical music fans, most of what we hear are the A++ artists, the cream of the cream who tour, perform professionally, and record CDs. We rarely hear student-level performers, and it was interesting in and of itself to hear a college student perform a Scriabin Etude I've only previously heard performed by Vladimir Horowitz, a piano god. It was fun, like watching a minor league baseball game-- more exciting because it's messier, more real, more human, with the possibility that a mistake could actually happen raising the stakes as a spectator.
The students did 3-5 minute performances followed by 25 minute of private piano lessons by Mogilevsky, which is what a master class is, I suppose, but it got a bit boring for an audience schmuck like myself. I stayed for an hour and left.
Rachmaninoff Rediscovered: zero.
2/5 Duchamps
Classical Music and Nature
5 years ago
