Friday, February 20, 2015

World Class Pianist Names To Know

By Olivia Cross


The piano is an instrument that requires many years of hard work and dedication to master. To be rated as a world class pianist is a huge honor, and very few of the numerous musicians world wide get to experience such a title. These are some of the names to know when it comes to such a rating.

Yuja Wang was born in Beijing, China and she is 28 years old. She is the daughter of musical parents, with a dancer for a mother and a percussionist father. She started learning to play the piano at the age of six and studied at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music before entering the Morningside Music Bridge International Festival in Calgary, Canada at the age of 11, where she was the youngest of the students.

Yuja Wang had barely entered her 20s when she was already a performer of classical piano in recitals worldwide. She has won numerous awards and accolades in her time, including Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition and the Gilmore Young Artist award at the beginning of the millennium. Her record company is Deutsche Grammophon, where she is exclusively signed to a 5-disc deal.

Rebecca Penneys was born in America in 1946 to Russian and Jewish parentage. She spent her childhood in Los Angeles and began playing the piano at the age of three. At just nine years old, she performed in a solo recital and was a soloist at the age of eleven for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Rebecca Penneys was, in 1965, the youngest individual to ever have entered the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland. The competition eventually created the Special Critics' Prize in her honor. She both performs and teaches in summer festivals all over for many years now.

She has been a member of the teaching staff at the Eastman School of Music since the beginning of the 80s. The Motion and Emotion technique, which is a keyboard technique that helps one's individual performance levels without stress or strain, is something Penneys is particularly recognized for. A teacher at the Piano Festival in her own name, Rebecca Penneys can boast of numerous award-winning students and also students that have gone on to teach internationally.

Hailing from Pennsylvania, Albert Frantz began his piano career very late in life at the age of seventeen years old. This is quite remarkable considering that a piano teacher of his in his childhood recommended that his mother throw her money away rather than give him piano lessons. He has achieved much in his short career, becoming the first pianist in over ten years to Fulbright scholarship for studies in Vienna.

Frantz attributes his success in playing the piano to those teachers that understood his natural talent and took on the task of helping him hone his skills at such a late age. His greatest advice to learners and parents of young children looking to take piano lessons is to find the best possible teacher from the very start, and not just an entry-level teacher. He performs in concert halls and also teaches as well as playing endorsements for producers such as Bosendorfer.




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