Silver Medalist: Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Featuring

Beatrice Rana
Robert Schumann
Maurice Ravel
Béla Bartók

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Performer Biography

Beatrice Rana, the pianist on this album, won the Silver Medal and the Audience Award at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Compositional Technique

Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit includes 'Scarbo', recognized as one of the most difficult piano pieces ever written, demanding extreme virtuosity from the performer.

Compositional Technique

In Bartók's 'Musettes' from Out of Doors, the piano is reimagined as Hungarian bagpipes, with the performer having the option to repeat sections to caricature the instrument's sound.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Schumann's Symphonic Études reflect his split personality, embodying two fictive personas named Eusebius (contemplative) and Florestan (active) that frequently appear in his music.

Composer Biography

Robert Schumann, a composer on this album, suffered a right hand injury in the 1830s, forcing him to abandon his career as a pianist by 1839.

Historical Context

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was established in 1962 to commemorate Van Cliburn's historic victory at the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1958.

Composer Biography

Béla Bartók, a composer on this album, amassed around 10,000 folk melody transcriptions from various countries by the time of his death in 1945, driven by his passion for folk music.