2/27/2015

World Class Pianist Names To Know

By Olivia Cross


The piano is an instrument that requires many years of hard work and dedication to master. To be rated as a world class pianist is a huge honor, and very few of the numerous musicians world wide get to experience such a title. These are some of the names to know when it comes to such a rating.

Yuja Wang was born in Beijing, China and she is 28 years old. She is the daughter of musical parents, with a dancer for a mother and a percussionist father. She started learning to play the piano at the age of six and studied at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music before entering the Morningside Music Bridge International Festival in Calgary, Canada at the age of 11, where she was the youngest of the students.

Yuja Wang had barely entered her 20s when she was already a performer of classical piano in recitals worldwide. She has won numerous awards and accolades in her time, including Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition and the Gilmore Young Artist award at the beginning of the millennium. Her record company is Deutsche Grammophon, where she is exclusively signed to a 5-disc deal.

Rebecca Penneys was born in America in 1946 to Russian and Jewish parentage. She spent her childhood in Los Angeles and began playing the piano at the age of three. At just nine years old, she performed in a solo recital and was a soloist at the age of eleven for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In the mid 60s, Penneys entered the International Chopin Competition in Poland, and she was the competition youngest ever entrant. The same event eventually created an award in her honor, called the Special Critics' Prize. Penneys performs and teaches, particularly in summer festivals.

Rebecca Penneys has been teaching at the Eastman School of Music since 1980. She is recognized for the Motion and Emotion keyboard technique, which focuses on the individual performance of each pianist. She also teaches at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival, and many of her students have gone on to win prizes internationally and teach on an international level.

Hailing from Pennsylvania, Albert Frantz began his piano career very late in life at the age of seventeen years old. This is quite remarkable considering that a piano teacher of his in his childhood recommended that his mother throw her money away rather than give him piano lessons. He has achieved much in his short career, becoming the first pianist in over ten years to Fulbright scholarship for studies in Vienna.

Albert Frantz says that all of his success in piano comes from not only his natural ability, but also the wonderful teachers who have taken the time to perfect his skill over the years. In fact, he strongly advises all those wishing to learn to play to really try to find the best teacher available. Frantz performs and is also a teacher of the instruments. He has played endorsements as well for producers like Bosendorfer.




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