Continuing its lead up to celebrate its 50th anniversary next spring, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation will feature the 1978 gold medalist from its International Artists Piano Competition in a Nov. 14 solo concert featuring music by Bach, Liszt, Beethoven and Chopin. The concert will take place at 7:30p.m. in the Jeanné Wagner Theatre at the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts.
A member of the piano faculty at The University of Michigan, Arthur Greene has enjoyed a long fruitful international performing career and is widely recognized as a leader in piano pedagogy. After winning the Bachauer competition, he also took top prizes at the Kapell and Busoni Competitions. One of his first major international tours after the Bachauer competition was in Japan, where he performed 12 concerts around the country.
Greene has recorded the complete Etudes of Alexander Scriabin for Supraphon, and piano works of the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko for Toccata Classics. He has made many recordings together with his wife, the violinist Solomia Soroka, for Naxos and Toccata. He has performed the 10 Sonata Cycle of Alexander Scriabin in many important international venues, including multi-media presentations with Symbolist artworks.
In an interview with The Utah Review, Greene said that he looks back on the competition as “a golden time” and the “incredible warmth” with which he was greeted when he came to Salt Lake City to participate. As a young artist, he remembers how much he looked up to 20th century great pianists such as Arthur Rubinstein and Rudolf Serkin. Today, thanks to omnipresent digital platforms such as YouTube, one can easily carry videos of legendary musicians from the 20th century in their pockets, thanks to their smartphone.
This advantage of access has also inadvertently made many rising young musicians obsessed with the idea of trying to produce a perfect recording, especially when they are trying to qualify for competitions. Greene believes newer generations should not overlook their earlier predecessors when looking for role models to appreciate and learn from, not only for ideal execution of technique but also for finding one’s way toward soulful musicianship and emotional connection to the music they are studying. Greene added that it is not just pianists to whom he has turned to for examples of musicality and phrasing. This includes tenors Jussi Björling from Sweden, and Mario Lanza, who were among the most prominent singers in the middle of the last century.
During his tenure in Ann Arbor, he won the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Studio Teaching at the University of Michigan. He joined his students in a recital series of the complete solo works of Chopin, in nine concerts. He also was a professor at Korea National University of Arts in Seoul during the 2023-24 academic year.
Some of Greene’s most memorable travels have included locations such as Brno in the Czech Republic, where he had the pleasure of playing on older keyboard instruments. A center for classical music, Brno is known as the home to the work of composer Leoš Janáček, its extensive tradition of Moravian folk music and the distinguished Brno Conservatory, which was established more than a century ago. Close to his heart is Ukraine, where his mother, sister and godson reside, and where he has spent summers until the war.
Many audience members will recognize the works Greene has selected for his concert, with the theme of Passages. He opens appropriately with Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826, ambitious and daunting for any keyboardist. Take the opening Sinfonia, for instance, where in the space of just a few minutes, Bach keeps us on stage one alert mode because he has shifted three times in his musical ideas. Every movement is similar to that opener, as Bach crafts transitions from one passage to another, in order to create a new scene.
A work that needs very little introduction for Bachauer audiences is Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 35, with the famous Funeral March third movement, which actually was composed first and became the motivator for Chopin to round out the remainder of the sonata. Greene mentions Robert Schumann, who had some surprising things to say about the piece: “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!… The idea of calling it a sonata is a caprice, if not a jest, for he has simply bound together four of his most reckless children, thus under his name smuggling them into a place into which they could not else have penetrated.”
Greene said he finds a similar dualism in the rising spirit and the sinking body of the Chopin sonata in Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110, which he also will perform. The work is just 19 minutes in length but like Bach it sets up many passage transitions within a compact timeline. Austrian pianist Jörg Demus wrote, “The structure of Op 110 is too vast, and its message too rich, for it to be possible to convey it with simple words. So I suggest that we commit ourselves entirely to it and its twists and turns, from the state of innocence on the first pages to the conflicts, the suffering, the despair, and to the vigorous return of the Spirit. For this is where the simultaneously overwhelming and exhilarating power of Op 110 resides: the triumph of the Spirit.”
Interspersed in Passages will be Liszt’s Bénédiction. “There is not a clear narrative moment and writing this piece was unique for Liszt,” Greene explained. He sees this piece as Liszt’s opportunity to impart wisdom directly to the audience, by renouncing a lifetime of the messy drama he created or was tempted to pursue throughout his life. It is as if he has raised his hands in prayer and God then answers by lowering a melodic dialogue, in order for Liszt to express his earnest spirituality, according to Greene.
More information is available here, including tickets.