My guest on the 70th episode of Dress Rehearsal is Bulgarian pianist Ivo Varbanov, who is a leading figure of Bulgarian music and culture abroad. After a forced hiatus from performing between 2009 to 2012 due to leukaemia he has returned to the stage with impressive performances at the Royal Festival Hall, King’s Place, Cadogan Hall, and the Bulgaria Concert Hall. He is a recipient of the Ivan Vazov Award for the popularization of Bulgarian Culture abroad, and in 2011 he also received the Silver Lion Award. Ivo started to play the piano at the age of six in his home town with Eleonora Karamisheva (who was one of the last pupils of Dimitar Nenov). After emigrating to Italy with his mother (a professional cellist) at the age of nine, he continued his studies with Riccardo Bertazzolo and in Milan with the Hungarian pianist Ilonka Deckers, who left an indelible mark on his personal, musical, and pianistic development. After his graduation at the age of twenty, he came to England to work with Sulamita Aronovsky at the Royal Northern College of Music and with Frank Wibaut at the Royal Academy of Music, completing his postgraduate studies in 1998 (on a Rotary Foundation Scholarship). He also studied privately with Dennis Lee and was inspired in masterclasses by Alexander Lonquich, Barry Douglas, and Lev Naumov. He has toured extensively the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA and his performances have been broadcast on national radio and television around the world. His partners in chamber music concerts include his wife Fiammetta Tarli and Konstantin Lifschitz (two pianos/four hands), the violinist Ofer Falk, cellists László Fenyo, Jozef Lupták and Hillel Zori, the Allegri Quartet, and the Voland Quartet (a two pianos and percussion ensemble founded in 2001 with Michał Drewnowski). In 2014 with his wife Ivo started an independent audiophile record label, ICSM Records (Independent Creative Sound and Music Records). Don't miss it! 

My guest on the 69th episode of "Dress Rehearsal", is New York-based pianist Eleonor Bindman, who is also an educator and a recording artist. Originally from Riga, Latvia, Ms. Bindman is known worldwide for her continued passion with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and for her dedication in creating “transcriptions” of Bach’s orchestral music for either piano solo or for piano duet. Ms. Bindman’s arrangement of the Six Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach, was a very extensive project that took several years to complete and which we featured here on this radio program in March 2021. Furthermore Ms. Bindman also transcribed all of the Cello Suites for piano solo, which she also recorded and which we also featured in our previous interview but today we are here to talk about another titanic project, the transcription of all of Bach's Orchestral Suites for piano duet and the recording that was released earlier this year by the label Grand Piano. Don't miss it!

My guest on the 68th episode of "Dress Rehearsal" is Pianist Danny Holt, who has been called “phenomenal” by the late music critic Alan Rich and hailed as one of the “local heroes” of the Los Angeles music scene, pianist Danny Holt brings his boundless energy and wit to unique interpretations of new music, 20th-century music, and obscure, unusual, and neglected repertoire from past centuries. Holt performs around the globe in concert halls (Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hollywood Bowl), clubs (Joe’s Pub, The Blue Whale, Copenhagen Jazzhouse) art galleries (MASS MoCA, Hammer Museum), churches, living rooms, and wherever else he can find a piano and someone to listen. Danny is also a fine percussionist, composer, teacher, and scholar and he splits his time between Maine, Los Angeles and Desert Hot Springs, in California, where he runs Desert Hot Springs Classical Concerts, an annual concert series for residents and visitors to the Palm Springs area. During the hour we will talk about Danny's latest CD release, published by Innova Records, featuring piano music by Mike Garson, a classically trained pianist (and a composer) who is mostly known for his collaboration with David Bowie. Mike Garson's extreme virtuosity and improvisatory style, requires a delicate process of transcription featuring a Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano that can "record" and notate what Mike plays. Over the years Mike has collected several pieces using this process and later Danny recorded them, and during the hour we will have a chance to hear a few of them. Mike's music is very improvisatory in breath and requires a monster technique, which Danny has no problems in displaying. Don't miss this very exciting podcast and a chance to hear great piano music. 

My guest on the 67th Episode of "Dress Rehearsal", is Pianist Yerin Kim, who has been praised by the International Piano Magazine as a “pianist of beautiful finesse and golden tone” and “powerful and engaging, poetic and expressive with some truly original interpretive insights, all performed with a great technique” by Phoenix Classical. Dr. Yerin Kim is a recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. She has given concerts in various festivals and recitals in major venues internationally, including The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Carnegie Hall in New York. Her solo debut album "First and Last Words" can be heard on Sheva Recording Label and her duo album “The Sound and the Fury” with violinist Brendan Shea by the Blue Griffin Recording Label. Her duo has been praised by major magazines and critics such as Strings Magazine, the BBC Music Magazine, and the Calgary Herald. Dr. Kim is also passionate about outreach and education and she is the founder and director of Sensory Friendly Music and Autism Concert Series, Co-artistic Director of Chamber Music in the Bend, as well as Pianofest at Central Washington University and Music & Autism concert series. Dr. Kim is currently the Director of Keyboard Studies at Central Washington University where she teaches piano and chamber music. Prior to CWU, she taught at the University of Notre Dame as Adjunct Assistant Teaching Professor and has taught at pre-college programs at Indiana University Bloomington and Stony Brook University. Dr. Kim holds a Double Degree in Piano Performance and Psychology from Oberlin Conservatory and College, a Master of Music from Indiana University Bloomington, and Doctor of Musical Arts from Stony Brook University. During the hour we will touch on a few topics, first on the concept of "neurodiversity" and how it can help the process of teaching music to people with learning diversities and then we also talk about Robert Schumann and how his mind led him to compose some of the most touching music. We'll also listen to Dr. Kim perform the first and the last piece, written for the piano, by Robert Schumann, plus some other music by Alfred Schnittke. Don't miss it!

In this episode of Dress Rehearsal we listen to some of Bach's music rendered through a less orthodox instrument, the Moog synthesizer. From the famous "Switched on Bach", a great album of the eighties, during the hour also featuring "The Art of Moog", a UK-based band that uses the Moog instrument to perform early music.

My guest on the 65th episode of "Dress Rehearsal" is British Violist, Educator and Record Producer, Annette Isserlis, who is a founder member of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra Revolutionnaire et Romantique as well as a member of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, The London Classical Players and Andrew Parrot’s Taverner Players, where she became principal viola. She was also a founding member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 1986, and appeared several times as guest-principal viola in John Butt’s Dunedin Consort and in 2014 became a permanent member of Sir Andras Schiff’s ensemble, the Cappella Andrea Barca. With all of these groups she has toured, recorded and broadcast worldwide. As a chamber-musician she has performed extensively in the UK, and she is a regular attendee at IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music. As a recording-producer she has worked with Steven Isserlis, Sir Roger Norrington, Catherine Mackintosh, Lisa Beznosiuk, Maggie Cole, Philippa Davies, Adrian Butterfield, Melvyn Tan and Sam Hayward. The interview is divided into two parts, the first will air on Friday March 17th at 8am PST and the second part on Sunday March 19th at 5pm PST, in which we talk extensively about Annette's career and her involvement in early music groups up until close collaborations with Sir Andras Schiff. Don't miss it! 

My guest on the 64th episode of "Dress Rehearsal" is Italian pianist, fortepianist and harpsichordist, Gian Maria Bonino, who graduated in piano performance at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan with Prof. Lydia Arcuri and at the Lucerne Conservatory with Maestro Myeczislaw Horszowski. He also graduated in harpsichord at the Conservatory of Genova in Italy with Prof. Alda Bellasich. He has played as a soloist and in formation in international festivals such as the music festival in Ljubljana, the Festival of Mediterranean Sounds, the Floraisons Musicales, the Emilia Romagna Festival and many others. Together with flutist Andrea Oliva, he has recorded the complete sonatas for flute and harpsichord by George Friedrich Handel and with flutist Luca Ripanti the complete sonatas for flute and harpsichord by J.S. Bach and he has recently recorded the complete Etudes by Frederick Chopin. Gian Maria Bonino has also played and collaborated with the Virtuosen of the Berliner Philharmoniker and at the Luzern Festival in Switzerland with the Kamerata Berlin and with oboist Albrecht Mayer. Gian Maria Bonino since more than two decades has dedicated himself to the exploration of historical keyboard instruments and historically informed performance. Gian Maria Bonino also holds the professorship of “historically informed performance for keyboard instruments” at the Conservatory of Alessandria, in Italy. During the hour will hear M.stro Bonino speak about historically informed performance and will listen to the complete recording of Beethoven's Sonata Op.2 N.2, recorded on a Viennese Johann Schantz fortepiano from early 1800. Don't miss it!

Sir András Schiff in conversation about the Piano Concertos of Johannes Brahms performed on a historical piano with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. To fully bring out the characteristics of Brahms’s music Schiff’s choice of instrument is a Blüthner piano built in Leipzig around 1859, the year in which the D minor concerto was premiered. The historically informed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment plays with the flexibility, attitude, and responsiveness of a chamber music ensemble, as they work without a conductor, listening attentively to each other.  András Schiff’s collaboration with the orchestra in a series of concerts was widely acclaimed:  “Brahms’s First Piano Concerto was reborn thanks to the OAE’s incisive playing and András Schiff’s characterful phrasing”, The Guardian exclaimed. 

My guest on the 62nd episode of  "Dress Rehearsal" is violinist Valeria Zorina, who is an award winning performer and educator currently living Madrid, Spain. Ms. Zorina recently released a CD dedicated to the "scordatura" in violin repertoire through the centuries. The "scordatura" is defined by the Harvard Dictionary of Music, as “abnormal tuning of a stringed instrument in order to obtain unusual chords, facilitate difficult passages, or change the tone color.”. In her latest CD titled "Soundmaps, Extended Realities" Ms. Zorina, along with pianist Evgeny Sinaiski, proposes an excurses of pieces spanning from Heinrich Biber to Eugene Ysaie and Camille Saint-Saens and through new compositions that she commissioned to Cuban Composer Louis Franz Aguirre and Italian Composer Giacomo Platini. During the hour we will also have a chance to talk about the process of choosing these pieces, recording the CD, but also what it really means to be a musician and which mission we should accomplish as musicians. Don't miss it!

My guest on the 61st episode of "Dress Rehearsal" is Italian harpsichordist, clavichordist and fortepianist, Enrico Baiano. Maestro Baiano is considered one of the most complete and interesting interpreters on the ancient music scene. In his interpretative approach, historical-stylistic rigor, expressive freedom and great virtuosity are wisely combined. The French music review “Le Monde de la Musique” wrote: “The exceptional combination of wit and flair in compositions and performer make this one of the most significant harpsichord recordings of the decade”. During the hour we will discuss of M.stro Baiano's approach to the harpsichord and how this led him to a flourishing career. Don't miss it!