Young pianist puts her heart into romantic piece
You probably know Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano concerto, whether or not you think you do. So romantic is the music that its smoldering themes often show up in movies.
The rapturous slow movement floated through “Brief Encounter,” about a couple married to other people who fall in love and meet continually every year thereafter. The overwhelming finale crowned the climax of “September Affair,” a bittersweet romance starring Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten as a couple who meet on a trip and fall into an illicit affair.
In the comedy “The Seven Year Itch,” a man brings out a record of the Rachmaninoff Second hoping to seduce Marilyn Monroe. And a new generation discovered the concerto in 2004, when it turned up in “The Princess Diaries: Royal Engagement.”
This is music that never grows old. Rachmaninoff was in his late 20s when he wrote it, around 1900.
And Natasha Paremski, the pianist who will be performing it at Artpark today with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, is just 21.
“It’s one of my favorite pieces, but it’s also one of the hardest,” Paremski confesses on the phone from Boulder, Colo., where her concert tour has taken her. “It’s such a moving piece. There’s so much angst and longing. And being a Russian person I can’t help but connect to all those feelings. The trick is not to be affected by them. I have to channel those emotions, in a way be separate from them.”
Paremski has just been practicing, with such intent that she missed the agreed-upon interview time, an hour before.
“Oh, my God!” she bursts out, genuinely contrite. “I was practicing and I had my phone turned off.”
A pang of jealousy
Pulled from her practice, Paremski sounds exhausted and out of it. Rachmaninoff demands a lot from the performer, and so does the life of a young concert artist.
“I average four hours of practice a day,” Paremski says, when quizzed. “When I’m really cramming, it’s up to seven hours.”
She was 8 when she came to America. Already, it seems, music was in her blood—although she didn’t know it.
“I wasn’t one of these freakish prodigies who knew what I was going to be doing. My parents knew what I would be doing,” she cracks. “I took piano. I was good at it. But when we got to America, it wasn’t high on my priority list.”
Then things changed. “I remember going on a picnic, or something. And there was a pianist, just messing around on the piano. I just remember a pain in the pit of my stomach. I really wanted to go back to playing the piano. I don’t remember who it was, where it was. I remember being just jealous of this person who could play the piano.”
Seeing the Russian piano marvel Evgeny Kissin sealed the deal.
“I saw Kissin at Davies Symphony Hall, and I thought, ‘What if I never get to do this? But I really want to do it!’ ”
She did. “When I was 17, that was when I played at Davies,” Paremski says, laughing.
JoAnn Falletta, the BPO’s music director, is looking forward to her concert with Paremski.
“I’ve never worked with her, but everyone who has thinks she’s fantastic,” she says. “We wanted someone with a real sensibility for Russian music.” Falletta enjoys the adventure of performing with a relatively unknown quantity. “Sometimes I like to work with people I don’t know.”
Paremski’s credentials are especially impressive when it comes to Rachmaninoff. Not only does she have the Russian background, but she was 15 when she was taken under the wing of one of the last century’s most famous Rachmaninoff interpreters, Earl Wild.
“He’s a real fun guy,” Paremski says of Wild, who is now in his 90s. “He can tell you stories about Stravinsky — he met all these people. Earl talks a lot about sound production and variety, about being really imaginative as an interpreter.”
Wild, now 93, is known as being unconventional. He came to Buffalo to give a recital on the Ramsi P. Tick Memorial Concert Series, and liked our town so much he came back to make several recordings here. As a teacher, he gave Paremski not weekly lessons, but weeklong lessons.
What is it like, a weeklong lesson? “Well, he lived in Columbus, Ohio, and I lived in California. So I had to travel there,” she explains. “I had a lesson every day.” The lesson, she adds, was five hours long.
Paremski went on to study with a Russian teacher, Pavlina Dokovska, at the Mannes College of Music in New York.
Recently, she graduated. Now, she works with a piano coach, Jeffrey Kahane. But otherwise Paremski, who lives in New York, is on her own.
It sounds like a dramatic juncture, a situation right out of a movie that would feature the Rachmaninoff Second. “It’s great,” Paremski declares.
“I tour around and do what I want to do. I don’t have to worry about having to go back to school tomorrow, worry about do I have my homework done?
“It’s what I wanted to do.”
Concert Preview
NatashaParemskiwith theBuffaloPhilharmonic Orchestra
8 p. m. today at Artpark, Lewiston
Admission is $15 for lawn seats, $28 to $48 inside the amphitheater. For information, call 754-4375.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments