Pianist Gleb Ivanov
TAOS CHAMBER MUSIC News:
The Taos Chamber Music Group’s (TCMG) 30th Anniversary Season celebrates the holiday season with two of its most popular programs.
Both feature the immensely gifted pianist Gleb Ivanov who will be presented in a solo piano recital, “Winter Scenes” Friday, Dec. 9, and then join TCMG musicians for a chamber music program, “Journey Into Winter” with two performances Dec. 10 and 11.
All concerts begin at 5:30 p.m. and take place in the Arthur Bell Auditorium at the Harwood Museum of Art.
A TCMG regular – this year marks Ivanov’s 10th season of appearances with the group. He has been called “a young super-virtuoso with musical sensitivity and an appreciation of style to go with the thunder and lightning” by the New York Times. The winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2005, he was presented at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as well as Lincoln Center‘s Alice Tully Hall. As a protégé of Mstislav Rostropovich, Ivanov played under the maestro with the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic and also performed as soloist with the Moscow State Orchestra, the Kremlin Orchestra, and at the Pushkin, Glinka, and Scriabin Museums in Moscow.
In 1994 and 1996 he won First Prizes at the International “Classical Legacy” Competition and at the First Vladimir Horowitz Competition in Kiev. Ivanov has appeared as a concerto soloist around the US and has performed in recital at Princeton University, The Paramount Theater in Vermont, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Pianofest in East Hampton, Bargemusic in NYC, and at the Louvre in Paris. He is currently on the faculty of the Bluthner School of Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, passing on his amazing talents to children of all ages.
Ivanov’s recital program Friday is replete with virtuosity, eloquence and festivity. Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Dumka in C Minor, Op. 59 (Scenes from a Russian village)” gives the program its title, “Winter Scenes”. Dumka is literally a reflection and refers musically to an Eastern European form of improvised song with variations. It is thought that Tchaikovsky encountered this kind of music in Ukraine, and the piece takes as its starting point a folk-inspired lament which then alternates with lively dance sections.
The centerpiece of the program is Sergei Rachmaninoff‘s rarely performed “Sonata No. 1 in D minor”. Perhaps that is because of the super-human demands placed on the pianist or the intensity of the material, thought to have been based on Faust and informed by Liszt’s similarly themed “Piano Sonata”, which Ivanov performed in Taos last December.
To lighten the mood, Ivanov will play Debussy’s love-drenched “Lisle Joyeux”. Sublime beauty also infuses Ottorino Respighi’s “Notturno” and the program will be capped off with Alfred Grünfeld‘s “Soirée de Vienne”, a sparkling paraphrase of Johann Strauss‘s famous “Die Fledermaus” waltz.
Saturday and Sunday, Ivanov will be joined by Laupheimer, violinist LP How, cellist Sally Guenther and pianist Kim Bakkum in a program called “Journey into Winter”. Like the piano recital, the chamber music selections include a composition by Rachmaninoff, one of Ivanov‘s favorite composers. In “Six Morceaux Op. 11” for piano four-hands, Bakkum, a well-known local pianist and teacher who met Ivanov in Taos several years ago, will sit alongside him.
“Due to the pandemic, I returned to solo playing, studying virtually and benefiting from the expertise and pianistic genius of Gleb as my teacher. It was actually Katia, Gleb‘s wife, who suggested over lunch last December that we should play the Rachmaninoff together,” Bakkum said.
Laupheimer, who is known not only as an accomplished flutist but also for her widely praised creative programming, will join Ivanov for Philippe Gaubert‘s gossamer “Second Flute Sonata”. How, Guenther and Ivanov, who have performed many of the great piano trios together on TCMG programs over the past 10 years, will join forces once again for Bedřich Smetana’s impassioned “Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15”. How is a violinist with the critically acclaimed Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York City and was in the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra for many years. Guenther plays with Santa Fe Pro Musica, having held the solo cello position with the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway for 20 years before moving to New Mexico.
More information on artists and programs are available at taoschambermusicgroup.org. Tickets may be purchased at taoschambermusicgroup.org or harwoodmuseum.org.