Sunday, January 22, 2012
Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen has a reputation for astonishing his audiences with the musical authority and blistering virtuosity of his performances. His graceful and unaffected platform manner belies playing of white-hot intensity, intellectual probity, and glittering bravura technique bordering on sheer wizardry. He has performed internationally with, among others, the Royal Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and in the U.S. with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and many more.
In the 2011-12 season, Arnaldo Cohen will be the soloist with the symphonies of Seattle, Oregon, Kansas City, Jacksonville, and Toledo, and recital engagements will take him to Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Palm Beach, and La Jolla.
Arnaldo Cohen came to prominence after winning First Prize at the 1972 Busoni International Piano Competition and making his debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He is a frequent recording artist, with recent discs including a 2007 rendering of the two Liszt Piano Concerti and the “Totentanz” with the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra for BIS Records. His other two critically acclaimed CDs on the same label are an all-Liszt solo disc, and his pioneering CD, “Three Centuries of Brazilian Music.” In 2009, he recorded Rachmaninoff’s 4th Concerto with the Sao Paulo State Symphony with Yan Pascal Tortelier conducting as a part of the complete cycle of the Rachmaninoff Concerti.
Concert Program
- Haydn: Sonata in F Major, Hob: XVI:23
- Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
- Chopin: The Four Scherzos
Master Class Program
Sonata in A Major, K. 331, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
I. Andante grazioso
Audrey Kaltenbach, Willamette University
Ballade in G minor, Op. 118, Johannes Brahms
Eve Wiggins, Willamette University
Sonata in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3, Ludwig van Beethoven
I. Presto
Sherry Liang, Clackamas High School, Portland
Barbie Noyes, Willamette University