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gpmf.orgNATASHA PAREMSKI
was born in Moscow, moved to
the United States at the age of eight, and is now based
in New York City. She won several prestigious prizes
at a young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists
Prize in 2006 at the age of 18 and Prix Montblanc and
Orpheum Stiftung Prize in 2007. In September 2010,
she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s
Young Artist of the Year. Ms. Paremski’s first recital
album was released in 2011 to great acclaim, topping
the Billboard Classical Charts, and was re-released on the Steinway & Sons
label in September 2016. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto
No. 1 and Rachmaninov’s
Paganini Rhapsody
with the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra and conductor Fabien Gabel on the orchestra’s label, distributed
by Naxos. The 2017–2018 season includes return recitals at Wigmore Hall
and Istanbul Resitalleri, as well as return engagements with the North
Carolina Symphony, Oregon Symphony (playing Prokofiev’s Second Piano
Concerto with Carlos Kalmar), Winnipeg Symphony, Colorado Symphony,
Columbus Symphony, and her debut with Kansas City Symphony. Natasha
Paremski’s recording of Fred Hersch’s
Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky
,
commissioned for her by the Gilmore Festival, and Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at
an Exhibition
on the Steinway & Sons label is scheduled for imminent release.
Walter Piston
(1894–1976)
SYMPHONY NO. 6
(1955)
Scored for:
piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn,
two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon,
four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion, two harps and strings
Performance time:
28 minutes
Grant Park Music Festival premiere
Walter Piston, one of America’s most distinguished men of music, taught
himself to play violin and piano but trained in draftsmanship and architecture
at the Massachusetts Normal School of Art. He worked as a draftsman for the
Boston Elevated Railway while still a student but also played violin in pickup
bands and theater orchestras around Boston. After graduating in 1916, he
enlisted in the Navy as a bandsman and was assigned to play saxophone; he
learned the instrument by himself in a few days from an instruction manual.
Piston determined to follow a musical career after his stint in the Navy, and he
enrolled at Harvard upon his discharge in 1919; he graduated summa cum laude
in 1924. After spending two years in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger and
Paul Dukas, he accepted a teaching position at Harvard, where he nurtured such
notable musicians as Carter, Bernstein, Berger, Fine, Pinkham and Kubik during
a tenure that lasted until 1960. Piston’s distinctions included two Pulitzer Prizes,
a Naumburg Award, memberships in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the French
Officier dans
l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres.