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MARSHA
HALPER / HERALD ARCHIVE
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Giselle
Brodsky is founder of the Miami International Piano
Festival of Discovery.
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Pianomania will have its grip on South Florida again next
week, with the Miami International Piano Festival of Discovery,
Part II, running Tuesday through April 12 in Miami Beach's
Lincoln Theatre. Last month's first part, in Fort Lauderdale,
featured pianists in recitals and in Mozart concertos with
orchestra. Part II, dubbed the ''Discovery Series,'' brings
back Italian pianist Pietro Di Maria, but also introduces
Mihalea Ursuleasa, Steven Osborne and Emanuele Arciuli, all
in recitals of solo piano literature.
Di Maria opens the series Tuesday night at 8, playing Mozart's
Sonata in B-flat, K. 333, Beethoven's Appassionata, Mendelssohn's
Fantasy in F-sharp minor, Op. 28, and Ravel's three-part mystery,
Gaspard de la Nuit.
Ursuleasa, 24, a Romanian, won the 1995 Clara Haskil Competition
and launched her career playing Beethoven's Third Concerto
with Claudio Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic. She went
on to major bookings all over Europe, including concerto engagements
led by Paavo Jrvi and Wolfgang Sawallisch. This season she
bowed with the Cincinnati Symphony and last month made her
London recital debut at Queen Elizabeth Hall.
For her Florida debut recital at 8 p.m. on Wednesday in the
Lincoln, she'll play Schubert's Klavierstuecke D. 946, Enesco's
Sonata No. 3 in D major, Bartok's Romanian Dances, Op. 8,
Nos. 1 and 2, and Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor.
Steven Osborne, 31, is a rising British pianist who has played
with major English orchestras and at the 1998 Proms, as well
as in the United States, Europe and the Far East. He also
has a CD of the Tovey and Mackenzie piano concertos on the
Hyperion label. His April 11 recital will open with Bach's
Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor and continue with Debussy's
Preludes, Book II, rounding out with Rachmaninoff's 13 Preludes
of Op. 32.
Emanuele Arciuli, completing the festival lineup, has recorded
contemporary American piano music and lists Frederic Rzewski's
Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues on his April 12 program, alongside
Szymanowski's Sheherazade from Masques, Debussy's Preludes,
Book I, and Beethoven's Sonata Op. 111.
In addition to the pianists, whose recitals all begin at
8 p.m., you can attend 7 p.m. lectures by piano experts, preceding
each concert, included in the price of the ticket. Tuesday
night, the University of Miami's Frank Cooper and Florida
International University's Kemal Gekic will present Conversations
on Piano Styles. Wednesday night, Cooper and Di Maria converse.
April 11 brings Bruce Payne from Duke University for a lecture
''Listening and Self-Discovery in American Life.'' And April
12, Rachmaninoff biographer Geoffrey Norris delivers a talk
``Rachmaninoff lived his life in a perpetual minor key. Myth
or reality?'
'Tickets range $15 to $50. Call 305-935-5115.
MORE PIANISTS
What happens to pianists ''discovered'' by the Miami Festival
of Discovery? Some keep coming back. Ilya Itin will play Liszt's
E-flat Concerto with Manuel Ochoa and the Miami Symphony Orchestra,
April 12 and 14 at UM's Gusman Hall and the Lincoln. And Denis
Burstein is due in recital April 21 at Miami's Temple Beth
Am.
Meanwhile, Michele Levin, a Miamian turned New Yorker, ''discovered''
here decades before the festival existed, played Mozart's
Concerto No. 24 in C minor with Burton Dines and the Miami
Chamber Symphony Tuesday at UM. It's sober Mozart to begin
with that Levin played cleanly but too deadpan and evenly,
without that clairvoyant colloquy with the winds that makes
it magical.
Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes, scored for piano,
clarinet and strings, went better for her, with Richard Hancock's
clarinet catching much if not quite all the music's pungent
flavor.Dines waved his arms aptly, but nobody, including Hancock,
seemed to looked at him, as if to avoid confusion. But there
was odd, momentary muddling in the Mozart.
James Roos is The Herald's music critic.
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