JEFF MANCHUR: PIANIST
  • Home
  • Biography
  • News and Updates
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Praying with Bach
  • Blogger
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Biography
  • News and Updates
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Praying with Bach
  • Blogger
  • Contact
Search

Concert Reflections: Joel Schoenhals

4/9/2018

Comments

 
On March 23rd, I had the pleasure of seeing a recital by Joel Schoenhals, a pianist I’ve happily gotten to know this year. He’s embarked on a couple remarkable projects: performing all 32 Beethoven Sonatas in 8 programs over 4 years, and now the Bach Partitas and Brahms short pieces on 4 programs over 2 years. This concert was the last of that latter series.
 
I’d encourage you to check out the write ups that he has linked on his website about learning the Beethoven cycle (here and here). I love his dedication to the music and sharing it in both intimate and large environments.
 
I also appreciate that he has focused on presenting complete and unedited performances of these concerts online. He sure doesn’t make many mistakes-whatever that term even means!-but the musicality and personality from doing it live is so engaging. I’ve never done studio recordings where every mistake can be rerecorded and spliced in, but I love the magic, the humanness of live performances.
 
Check out the back catalogue of all of his recitals. What I love about Joel’s playing is that I’m always drawn in to what he’s doing that it never occurs to me to question or criticize his playing. I’m not actively thinking about reviewing or analyzing his playing as a musician myself. There’s something in his playing that invites trust in the work that he’s done and the performance journey that we’re on together. The music exists and for whatever period of time that he’s playing, it needn’t exist any other way.
 
This was especially evident in the Brahms Ab Waltz that he played as an encore. You can check out his performance of the whole set here. 
Comments
      Built with ConvertKit
      Sign up for my e-mail list and receive my free guide "Listening to the Mozart Piano Sonatas

      ​"Modern performers seem to regard their performances as texts rather than acts, and to prepare for them with the same goal as present-day textual editors: to clear away accretions. Not that this is not a laudable and necessary step; but what is an ultimate step for an editor should be only a first step for a performer, as the very temporal relationship between the functions of editing and performing already suggests." -Richard Taruskin, ​Text and Act

      Archives

      March 2021
      November 2018
      October 2018
      September 2018
      August 2018
      July 2018
      June 2018
      May 2018
      April 2018
      March 2018
      November 2017
      October 2017
      September 2017
      August 2017
      July 2017
      June 2017
      May 2017
      April 2017
      July 2016
      June 2016
      May 2016
      June 2012
      January 2012
      December 2011

      Categories

      All
      Alex Ross
      Amy Beach
      Artistic Messages
      Artistry
      Audio
      Bach
      Best Practices
      Boring
      Chamber Music
      Chiara
      Chopin
      Clapping
      Cliburn Competition Report
      Competitions
      Concert Reflections
      Contemporary Music
      Creativity
      Enjoying
      Extraordinary Recordings
      Glenn Gould
      Influential Books
      Intellectual
      Learning
      Listening
      Liszt
      Messiaen
      Mozart In A Month
      Nature
      Performance Practice
      Performance Traditions
      Pianistic Intentions
      Piano Business
      Practicing
      Richard Dare
      Richard Taruskin
      Rising Stars
      Serialism
      Subjectivity
      Teacher Sayings
      Teaching
      Textual Fidelity
      Time
      Video

      RSS Feed

    Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
    • Home
    • Biography
    • News and Updates
    • Pianist
      • Mozart in a Month
      • Choosing Joy
      • Audio and Video
      • Repertoire
    • Praying with Bach
    • Blogger
    • Contact