Haydee Schvartz

A debut recital of incredibly varied and fascinating music from Argentinean pianist Haydée Schvartz. Her teachers include Roberto Brando, Dora Castro and Nikita Magaloff. Ms. Schvartz continued her studies in London with Maria Curcio and subsequently received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Buffalo, New York with Yvar Mikhashoff, where she won the Cameron Baird Competition in 1990.

Mikhashoff brought Ms. Schvartz’s incredibly sensitive pianism to our attention, and together they imagined this colorful combination of musics from Europe and the Americas.

Arvo Pärt’s two piano miniatures are typical of this composer: with an economy of music, Pärt creates a tremendously sensitive and powerful framework under the hands of a responsive pianist. These simple works become things of transcendental beauty.

Luciano Berio’s recent miniatures are part of a folio of works and receive their first recordings here.

Giacinto Scelsi’s Quattro Illustrazioni is a tour-de-force of exotic, erotic illustrations depicting the different incarnations of Vishnu.

A native Argentinean now living in Germany, Mauricio Kagel’s An Tasten is a work of music theater in keeping with the composer’s style. Here, a virtuoso minimalist study in perpetual motion is combined with a pianist’s frustrated sense of ‘practicing’.

John Cage’s Perpetual Tango is a score to be realized by the pianist. Here Ms. Schvartz has chosen 5 of Argentina’s leading younger generation composers to create their own realizations.

Gerardo Gandini’s Eusebius is metamorphosis on Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze #14, hence the title is Schumann’s alter-ego name of Eusebius. Subtitled 4 Nocturnes for Piano or One Nocturne for 4 Pianos, the work is presented in its two possible versions, as four independent variations and as an alternate version for 4 pianos, combining the four simultaneously. It is a truly magical work, where each nocturne selects some notes from the original Schumann, with the remaining notes used in the successive nocturnes.

The disc is finished with Gabriel Valverde’s devastatingly powerful Ek-Stasis for piano and tape. Valverde’s analog tape technique is quite amazing (no digital effects used), with the power of Stockhausen’s early tape works, combined with a piano score of equal gravity.

Arvo Pärt (b.1935), Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka (1990), Für Alina (1990)
John Cage (1912-1992), Perpetual Tango (1984), 5 realizations by Manuel Juarez, Erik Oña, Cecilia Villanueva, Mariano Etkin and Gabriel Valverde
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), Quattro Illustrazioni (1953)
Mauricio Kagel (b.1931), An Tasten (1977)
Luciano Berio (b.1925), Brin (1990), Leaf (1990)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Davidsbündlertänze #14
Gerardo Gandini (b.1936), Eusebius (1984)
Gabriel Valverde (b.1957), Ek-Stasis for piano and tape (1986)

Haydée Schvartz, piano