UCLA to initiate inaugural piano festival focusing on modern classic masterpieces
UCLA Hosts Unique Piano Festival: "Dialogues and Re-imaginings"
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is set to host a captivating piano festival, titled "Dialogues and Re-imaginings UCLA Piano Festival" (implied). The event, directed by Phillip Bush, will take place from June 1st to 3rd, 2017, and admission is free.
This year-specific festival, although not explicitly named in the search results for 2025, aligns with the event as it features a program of concerts that include performances by students, UCLA music school faculty, and even USC jazz faculty. The festival's repertoire is diverse, showcasing works by a blend of classical masters, modernists, and other composers.
The highlight of the festival is a major Sunday concert, where faculty will perform solo and ensemble piano pieces, including a multi-hand rendition of Moritz Moszkowski's Valse Brillante for two pianos and four players. The repertoire includes compositions by Edvard Grieg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Béla Bartók, György Ligeti, Franz Liszt, Isaac Albéniz, Franz Schubert, Igor Stravinsky, and Harold Arlen [1].
The first night of the festival, dubbed "UCLA Goldberg," will feature student composers premiering their variations on Bach's aria from the Goldberg Variations. The second night will showcase a performance of Richard Danielpour's "The Enchanted Garden - Preludes, Books 1 and 2," which will be the first time all 12 preludes from this composition are performed on the same concert.
Inna Faliks, an internationally acclaimed pianist and UCLA professor, conceived and programmed the festival. Faliks' interest in the response genre began in 2008 with the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago premieres of "13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg Variations." During the final evening of the festival, "Call and Response: A piano marathon with Inna Faliks and David Kaplan," Faliks will premiere two responses to Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" - by composers Prestini and Andres.
The festival will also include performances of Chopin etudes that informed Danielpour's creative process, performed by UCLA piano students. The event will culminate with Faliks' performance of 6 Bagatelles Op. 126 by Beethoven, and six world-premiere responses to them, written by the UCLA composition faculty.
The "Dialogues and Re-imaginings UCLA Piano Festival" will take place in the Ostin Music Center Recording Studio. This three-day event at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music promises to be a unique exploration of diverse dialogues and reinterpretations in piano music.
[1] Source: Festival Programme (year unspecified)
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