July, 2001

New for "Yesterday's Concert Pianists"
Updated information and links supplied for:

Maryla Jonas (1911-1959)
Dr. Nigel Nettheim recently added to his website another rare, historical and absolutely amazing article from 1947 about this Polish pianist, her childhood and life during the second world war and her eventual Carnegie Hall debut in 1946. A must read!

Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel
These two links have been redirected to two fascinating articles by Dr. Jill Halstead published on "Music for Pianos" .

By the way, the biography of Fanny is the subject of this month's editorial , NEW to this site -- take a look!
and Thank You to Eric Halstead for mentioning "Women at the Piano" in the latest "Music for Pianos" newsletter.

New for "Other Contemporary Women Pianists"

The big news in the piano world this past month was that, along with Stanislav Ioudenitch, Olga Kern , 26 years old from Russia, was named a gold medalist of the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition on June 10, 2001, the first woman to have achieved this distinction since 1969. Read all about the competition and the other six women of the thirty contestants at http://www.cliburn.org/competition/eleventh.html.

Besides Olga Kern , several other pianists were added this month. Websites were found for Lori Kaufman , Ingrid Fliter , and Mihaela Ursuleasa , the last two of whom were finalists in the October 2000 International Chopin Piano Competition (Ingrid Fliter took Second Place). Of the top eight finalists, five were women, but only these two have web pages. The other three are mentioned in the following paragraph from The Warsaw Voice :

"Russian Valentina Igoshina was one of the few stage-two participants who understood how to play the famous Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op. 53. A majestic interpretation was also given by Mika Sato of Japan. The highlight of stage two, however, was the performance by Etsuko Hirose, a Japanese pianist from France. She uniquely expressed Chopin's romantic spirit. Her performance of even the smallest pieces (Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Op. 45, Etude in C Sharp Minor, Op. 25) were masterful. She charmed listeners with the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A Flat Major. She is definitely a major discovery of this year's competition. Will she be appreciated by the judges?"

A search through the "Web Concert Hall" yielded several fascinating interviews of artists:
Petronel Malan was very insightful about balancing life as a graduate student and world-traveling pianist;
Vaila Mead spoke frankly about returning to the piano after breast cancer treatments;
Marie-Luise Hinrichs expounded on the magic of Soler's music; and
Aglika Genova described the events that led to the formation of the prize-winning, duo-piano team of Genova and Dimitrov.