Monday, February 23, 2015

World Class Pianist Names To Know

By Olivia Cross


If you play the piano, or any instrument for that matter, you will know how much time and effort it takes to become really good at it. It takes even more to become a professional, and to be recognized as a world class pianist is a huge feat that not many are able to accomplish in their careers. The honor of being called as such belongs to a few of many musicians, and these are some of those pianists that you should know about.

Yuja Wang is a twenty-eight-year-old pianist from Beijing in China. Her mother was once a dancer and her father a percussionist, making her background and upbringing and truly musical one. She was introduced to the piano at the age of 6 years old and was a student at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She was the youngest entrant in the Music Bridge International Festival in Canada when she turned 11.

Yuja Wang had barely entered her 20s and was already a classical piano performer in recitals across the globe. She has won a number of awards and prizes over the years. In 2003 she was the winner of the Gilmore Young Artist award and prior to that, she won the concerto competition in the Aspen Music Festival. Wang is signed to Deutsche Grammophon, where she has an exclusive five-record deal.

Rebecca Penneys is American-born to Russian-Jewish parents in the mid forties. Her childhood was spent in L. A., where she started learning to play the piano when she was just three years old. When she was nine, she had her first solo recital and by the age of eleven, she was a Los Angeles Philharmonic soloist.

In the mid sixties, she was the youngest person ever to have entered Warsaw's International Chopin Competition in Poland. The same competition created an award in Penneys' honor, the Special Critics' Prize. She has been both a teacher and a performer in a number of summer festivals over the years.

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.

Albert Frantz only really started playing the piano when he was seventeen, which is quite astonishing. Earlier lessons in childhood proved futile and his then piano teacher told his mother she would be better off throwing away all her money. One of his greatest achievements to date is being the first person in over 10 years to win a Fulbright scholarship, which he used to study in Vienna.

Frantz thanks the teachers he had over the years for taking the time to hone his God-given talent and perfect his skill. He advises anyone wishing to learn the piano, or who would like their children to start taking lessons, to find the absolute best instructor possible from the very beginning. Albert Frantz is also a teacher and counts producers like Bosendorfer as clients for playing endorsements.




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