Dear friends,
I hope this finds you well and safe. As we approach the end of this second year of the pandemic, we’re getting some mixed signals as to the progress of this crisis. Let’s remain optimistic that growing vaccination rates will help us overcome this virus globally—and that new variants won’t throw a wrench into the works.
Despite further cancellations of concerts and tours I feel very fortunate to have returned to a busy concert and travel schedule. It has been incredibly gratifying to perform again for live audiences and reconnect with concert goers. Below are some and highlights from news of the past few months and announcements of forthcoming projects.
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
There are many exciting concerts lined up for the rest of the season, including a performance of Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer at London’s Royal Festival Hall; a pair of recitals at Portland Piano International, in a series curated by Angela Hewitt; performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Sinfonieorchester Basel at the Stadtcasino Basel; and a packed summer with appearances at leading festivals across North America and Europe including Toronto Summer Music and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Information on some of the upcoming concerts is already available in the calendar on my website and many more dates are being added in the coming weeks.
AWARDS FOR BOWEN DISC
A few months after the spate of honors my disc of York Bowen’s piano music won upon its release at the beginning of the year, the album was awarded the Choc de Classica, a prize for exceptional records presented by the French magazine Classica. The distinction is accompanied by a rave review, which begins thus (translated):
“A dazzling technique at the service of a very sure poetic instinct, a youthful exuberance that morphs, when necessary, into a tender reverie, an extreme precision capable of bringing out details in the most dizzying accelerations, a brilliant and sonorous timbre that can round off in portamento singing for lyrical effusions: the pianist and composer Nicolas Namoradze stands out as the ideal performer of this elegant music to the point of dandyism, with the grace, humor, naturalness and restraint of an authentic gentleman.”
I’m also thrilled to share that the disc was recently named among 2021’s best albums in BBC Music Magazine and Presto Classical.
MORE GLOWING REVIEWS
I’ve been honored to receive some enthusiastic write-ups of my recent performances, a highlight of which is a stunning review in International Piano magazine of my appearance at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival. Read the full piece here, and below is an excerpt:
“His beautifully considered programme, delivered at Kapelle Gstaad, showcased his skills in Baroque music (the First French Suite and two Contrapuncti from Die Kunst der Fuge), late Romantic repertoire (a Bach/Busoni chorale and Liszt’s virtuoso Totentanz) and six of his own Etudes… His intellect, coupled with a superb, fearless technique and great inner musicality, makes for an intriguing mix.”
DISC RELEASE
January sees the release of my solo album on the Steinway & Sons label. The disc, entitled “Arabesques,” is a program of music by Robert Schumann and myself, presenting some of my reflections on Schumann’s work from both pianistic and compositional viewpoints. It includes Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (“Songs of Dawn”) Op. 133, Humoreske Op. 20 and Arabeske Op. 18, my Arabesque (influenced by Schumann’s work of the same name) and three of my piano etudes.
In conjunction with this upcoming release, my performances of Schumann’s music recently landed on Steinway’s player-piano Spirio system, which you can watch here. If you’d like to hear me perform “live” anytime, just visit your nearest Steinway dealership and play one of my tracks on a piano with the Spirio function!
FURTHER RELEASES AND LAUNCHES
The coming month will be an exciting one for a few more reasons too. For one, my forthcoming book, published by Springer, will be released in the Computational Music Science series. The monograph, called “Ligeti’s Macroharmonies”, explores the late etudes of Ligeti through a novel lens of statistical-graphical analysis and discusses questions regarding listeners’ perception of stability in musical texture. I will also be featured in a major piece of press coverage, and a project I have been working on for most of the year, in association with a major digital platform, will finally be launching. Official announcements for these are coming very shortly, so stay tuned, and also consider following my social media pages (such as my Facebook, Instagram and YouTube) for the latest updates.
Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season, and all the very best for the coming year—one which, we must hope, will mark the end of this pandemic and a true return to normal.
Kind regards,
Nicolas
Soundbite
You can watch my recital at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival on the festival’s official digital streaming platform, Gstaad Digital Festival.
Review
Here, for German speakers, is a review of my recent performance at Bavaria’s Weissenhorn Klassik Festival.