Schumann Revisited
Bobby Mitchell & Jeffrey LaDeur, piano
Kinderszenen Revisited – Kinderszenen, Op. 15 including improvisations, narration, and three newly composed piano etudes by Martin Scherzinger
Schumann, arr. Bizet Canonic Studies, Op. 56 (arrangement for piano four hands)
Schumann Four Fugues, Op. 72 & Fantasy in C major, Op. 17
Jeffrey LaDeur, founder and artistic director of New Piano Collective and the acclaimed San Francisco International Piano Festival [www.sfpiano.org], and international soloist and chamber musician Bobby Mitchell present Robert Schumann in a new light. Schumann’s piano works will be reexamined and fine-tuned to reflect the ways in which we listen to music today, a presentation that brings the original excitement and drama of the Biedermeier era of nineteenth-century classical music back to the spotlight.
Bobby Mitchell is an American pianist whose interests are embedded in the here and now of music as performance art, as well as the more standard classical repertory of centuries past. A frequent performer of new and rarely heard works, his interests lie mainly with the contemporary music canon and combining these works with the standard repertoire in an illuminating fashion. An instrumentalist who is not afraid to cross the traditional boundaries of programming and performance practice, he is active as a solo and collaborative concert pianist on modern and historical instruments and is also experienced in the fields of improvisation, composition, and conducting. He has performed extensively in the Americas, across Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East, and recent highlights include concerto performances with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. “Bobby Mitchell not only knows how to make exciting and unique music using ornamentation, sound, and tempo, but you can hear that he never just plays what is written” (NRC Netherlands – Nov. 17th, 2014).
Praised for his “delicate keyboard touch and rich expressivity” (San Francisco Chronicle) and playing that is “deeply moving, probing, entirely felt as in the moment” (Eduard Laurel) Jeffrey LaDeur performs worldwide from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to the San Francisco Jazz Center, from the Shanghai Conservatory to the Orlando Festival in the Netherlands. LaDeur is founder and artistic director of New Piano Collective and the San Francisco International Piano Festival.
In 2015, LaDeur began a survey of Debussy’s complete solo piano music in the context of his influences and inspirations, culminating in an acclaimed debut recital at Carnegie Hall on the centennial of Debussy’s death. His debut album, featuring works by Debussy and Rameau, was released on MSR Classics and has been hailed as “a masterpiece of understatement, simplicity, and ‘old school’ chord-playing where every note sings out with meaning” (Gramophone). As soloist with orchestra, Jeffrey maintains a repertoire of over forty concerti. Conductors with whom LaDeur has collaborated include George Cleve, Michael Morgan, Barbara Day Turner, Lawrence Golan, and Ming Luke.