Lowell Liebermann Third Piano Concerto in Review
World Premiere
Jeffrey Biegel, piano
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra/Andreas Delfs
May 12-14, 2006. Also on the program: Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
"Many works are heard for the first and last times at their premiere performances and I have long regretted that works considered worth programming once are not routinely given second hearings in subsequent seasons. (For instance I would love to hear again a concerto for orchestra commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony several years ago following, as I recall, the sonic improvement of the hall in which it plays; unfortunately even the composer's name now eludes me, but I do recall his saying that he had been asked to write for the orchestra's full forces, including a rather fine organ, and he did so very well.) It is certain that this new work will be heard again beginning next season, not in Milwaukee but at seventeen other venues from Anchorage to Schleswig-Holstein at least, including Louisiana, Colorado and San Diego, by virtue of the efforts of Biegel who, more than somewhat of an impresario, put together an international consortium to commission this work. (He has done similar things before.) I do not hesitate in predicting that this work will be recorded also. Why? Not just that it is a brilliant work; that might not be enough these days. However, its two piano-concerto precedents were recorded by Hyperion, with Stephen Hough at the piano and the composer at the podium. Liebermann has many other recordings. The New York Times reviews Liebermann's works: his new opera was just reviewed by Bernard Holland, who could have liked it more, though he did praise the Julliard orchestra ��� conducted by Andreas Delfs. (As it happens, the American premiere of Liebermann's previous opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was in Milwaukee.) And it does not hurt the work's commercial prospects that it is composed in a conservative style, frankly.
There was an interesting discussion of musical tonality at the (routinely scheduled) pre-concert colloquy in Milwaukee, with the Resident Conductor, Andrew Massey, and members of the prospective audience conversing with the composer. Liebermann earned a doctorate at Juilliard, studying with David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti. He mentioned that Diamond was rather shocked that Liebermann did not protect his academic flanks by utilizing more "wrong notes." Liebermann also confessed that he wrote his first concerto in just a few days. The new one was written mostly in the first two months of the present year. (A happy thing that he writes with such facility; a recent commission from a prominent composer had to be cancelled because, I understand, the composer was too busy to complete it.)
For those familiar with the work of Liebermann's distinguished teachers it will not be a surprise to learn that much of the sound of this work might well have been produced sixty years ago, as Scott Morrison suggests in connection with Liebermann's previous concertos, in a brief review on Amazon. Others have been reminded of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ravel, Bartok and even Rachmaninoff. I was in fact reminded of Bartok during an intense passage for massed strings toward the end of the wonderful Largo of the third concerto, and of Ravel at moments in the finale marked "Burlesque." If there is a touch of Rachmaninoff that would be in the opening "Risoluto." But such references are very misleading. The big brash opening does not sound like anybody else's music and the superb largo doesn't either, except for the moment I mentioned. This is a big, bold work (32 minutes; the conventional three movements; large orchestra including five percussionists including timpani, and harp.)
In his pre-concert conversation Liebermann also said that he usually writes in short-score, with orchestral color in mind all the time, and that he usually writes with attention simply on the notes and where he wants them to go ��� although sometimes they go places he certainly did not foresee. (This in response to a questioner who wanted a comparison with literary writing.) However he also reported, presumably in a conversation with Roger Ruggeri who writes the MSO's program notes, that "the emotional framework in which I composed the Concerto was perhaps more affected by...non-musical events than is usual...prompted by some of the things that have been going on in our country lately." Thus the first movement is "deeply pessimistic; the second, "ruefully nostalgic"; and the finale's title is meant "sarcastically..full of anger and irony..." I confess that I did not hear expression of such feelings. I am a strong believer in the power of music to express emotions but such subtleties may be difficult to catch on a single hearing of an unfamiliar work. Usually when I review a new (recorded) work I need many hearings to be sure of my grasp on what the composer is doing and how others might react to it even when the work is as easy to listen to as this one is. I did like what I heard and I would like to be able to enjoy multiple hearings of this work. I might have paid to hear it again today, but I doubted that I would be able to get a ticket.
As indicated above, the bulk of the concert this week was devoted to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. This made for an odd pairing, no doubt, but had the great advantage, given sold-out houses, which I am sorry to say have not been the rule lately, of getting thousands and thousands of people to hear the Liebermann!"
Copyright �� 2006 by R. James Tobin
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
May 13, 2006
Tom Strini
Journal Sentinel Music Critic:
"The big crowd came for the Beethoven [Ninth Symphony] and cheered it mightily, but it also cheered the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann's striking Piano Concerto No. 3.
Soloist Jeffrey Biegel, [Andreas] Delfs and the [Milwaukee Symphony] orchestra played this challenging new score with the command and conviction it deserves. Idiomatically, it breaks no ground; it could be criticized as oddly Russian in derivation. The lyrical bits recall Rachmaninoff, the bitter satire Shostakovich and the virtuoso exuberance and angular rhythms bring Prokofiev to mind. But put it all together, throw in some clever allusions to ragtime, and it comes out as a wholly assimilated Liebermann.
Arresting effects abound--the enchanting music-box combination of harp, glockenspiel, pizzicato viola and piano in the slow movement, for example--but exist for more than their own sake. They work within a large alternation of ferocity and tenderness that grows more and more affecting as the music unfolds."
Albuquerque Journal
Written by D.S. Crafts
Monday, 03 March 2008
This was an action-packed weekend for the New Mexico Symphony Classics series. Jeffrey Biegel has been touring with Lowell Liebermann's Piano Concerto No. 3 since its premiere in Milwaukee in 2006. With its ferocious pianism and orchestral color, the opening movement, Risoluto, takes the Prokofiev concertos as its clear antecedent. The slow passages as well as the Largo struck me as so much wandering, while the Burlesque, the last of three movements seemed most effective, returning to the extroverted playing, spiced with some exotic percussion, and splicing in a section of quasi-ragtime. Clearly the work serves its purpose as an excellent showpiece for a virtuoso, and Biegel is one of the most exciting young pianists. He makes as persuasive an argument for the work as one could ask.
Excellent pianism highlights premiere
ASO: Composer offers challenging but riveting passages.
By MIKE DUNHAM
(02/26/08)
Lowell Liebermann ranks among the few living composers whom I will go out of my way to hear. On Saturday night, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra presented his new Third Piano Concerto, Op. 95, billed as the Pacific Northwest Premiere. The ASO is among 18 orchestras that jointly commissioned Liebermann to write a follow-up to his successful Second Concerto; each has some claim on the "premiere" designation, though it was first heard almost two years ago, in May 2006, with the Milwaukee Symphony.
The piece opens with percussive thunder of the "Todentanz" variety. There's a series of flashy piano cadenzas before the most identifiable theme shows up, softly and slowly in the strings, an arching, aching B Minor melody that is thoroughly parceled and pummeled for the rest of the movement.
Liebermann's style is neo-romantic with furiously difficult -- but often riveting -- passages for the pianist. The battering of the keys reminds one of Prokofiev; the thick, often contrapuntal texture teeters between tonality and studied dissonance reminiscent of Max Reger.
I will recall the big, clean triad chords that are used at key climactic points in the first two movements with excellent effect. The slow movement, in which a poignant line in the strings is juxtaposed with a tick-tock accompaniment from the piano, is probably the most ingratiating and thoughtful section.
The finale, titled "Burlesque," has a recurring tarantella rhythm and frantic pace and even a obligatory fugato tossed in. At his second curtain call he sat down and hurled out a knuckle-popping encore, titled (I kid you not) "Rush Hour in Hong Kong" by American teacher and pianist Abram Chasins. Biegel is a generous musician, busily promoting new music and rarities. About his accuracy, energy and prowess with trills, scales, cascading chords and the rest of the munitions in the pianistic armory, there can be no doubt.
[San Diego] Symphony Gives West Coast Premiere of Liebermann Third Piano Concerto
"To my ears, Liebermann has attempted to write a serious contemporary piano concerto that does not send audiences running for the exits. And to a great extent, he has succeeded: certainly Friday evening’s audience responded with unalloyed bravos, although this fervor may have been equally stirred by Biegel’s extroverted keyboard virtuosity. At the concerto’s outset, the piano announces its primary motive in a bravura flourish that runs up the keyboard, a theme that returns in various permutations over the course of the work. This movement alternates between athletic, cleanly delineated counterpoint involving both piano and orchestra and a dreamy nocturne for solo piano. These Romantic interludes combine Brahmsian wide voicing (each hand at either extreme of the keyboard) and an ornamented Chopinesque melody.
The piano dominated the middle movement, weaving a sinuous cantabile line over complex chords, made less acerbic by their soft dynamic and diffuse orchestration. In the latter category, Liebermann is most inventive, especially in unusual instrumental combinations, for example, a mysterious trio for muted trumpet, piano and murmuring violas.
By naming the final movement Burlesque, Liebermann gave himself permission to indulge in whatever humorous mood swings tickled his fancy. Once we left the busy opening motor rhythms—a tip of the hat to Prokofiev—the movement bounced from one idea to the next like a pinball machine on a lucky streak: first a crazed march, then a road-house piano rag, then a perky two-step and another revisit to the first movement’s nocturne. I thought that I heard a line from a Latin Gregorian hymn, but that triadic theme could have come straight from Liebermann’s fertile imagination.
Biegel displayed immense confidence as he subdued the composer’s myriad technical challenges. His lustrous legato technique bathed the nocturne episodes in just the right amount of perfumed lyricism."
www.sandiego.com by Kenneth Herman
February 10, 2008
www.conchcolor.com
"'Piano Concerto no. 3' is a quintessentially American composition solidly anchored in Classical tradition. Jeffrey Biegel's keyboard work dazzled. Sprinkled throughout are quicksilver threads of jazz and ragtime and the genius of the man who synthesized the two--George Gershwin. And what a sound--sweeping, soaring passages that fade to atmospheric melancholy. Mr. Biegel's technique was formidable at fast tempos, and in slow legato passages his touch could yield real beauty. Sebrina Alfonso ket the two nicely together."
February 8, 2008
Key West Symphony
NEW SIGHTS AND SOUNDS AT THE SYMPHONY
F E B R U A R Y 8 , 2 0 0 8 Solares Hill P A G E 1 3
by Mark Howell
"Star of the evening was Jeffrey Biegel. The Lowell Liebermann [Concerto no. 3] now filled the clarified air, as interpreted by Jeffrey Biegel. Liebermann’s music can be tremulant, it can be meditative. It is quite otherworldly.The middle section extraordinarily so. There are liquid notes, literally the sound of drops falling. The third part began at a gallop, percussing the air and shaking the ground, and then a ragtime interlude,a palimpsest of Gershwin with sentimental strings. Throughout, conductor Sebrina Alfonso kept a solicitous eye on her soloist as she always does. The musicians were all in thrall to Biegel. A tremendous gift to the audience that ended with Biegel leaping to his feet on the final note."
CONCERT REVIEW--TRAVERSE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
TRAVERSE RECORD-EAGLE
OCTOBER, 2007
By Joe Rice
"Then the soloist for the concert, pianist Jeffrey Biegel, arranged himself comfortably at the keyboard, and without fanfare, launched into the Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra by contemporary composer Lowell Liebermann. This concerto was premiered in 2006 with Biegel at the piano with the Milwaukee Symphony, and Sunday was the Michigan premiere of the work. Clearly, it met with the universal approval of the audience. It opens with thunderous dissonance that reminded me a bit of something by Shostakovich, with a sense of satire, but beneath the dissonances were orchestral contrasts that softened the sometimes angry strength that came from the pianist’s hands. The first movement is full of flying notes – sometimes fierce and sometimes tender, and at one point, Biegel doubles his fists and hammers out rapid fire low note runs in octaves with effortless ease.
The second movement provided a dramatic contrast to the first. It was deliberate and pensively simple, with a haunting quality created by the strings – particularly the violins – and the orchestra bells that was purely magical. The final movement, called “Burlesque,” was a dizzying delight. It began with a militaristic march-like feel, but quickly dissolves into a delightfully heavy-footed and good-natured dance, which suddenly sidesteps into a delicious ragtime bit that took us all by surprise, and then finishes with a brief look backward to the quiet second movement and then a blazing and fiery finish that lifted the audience to its feet. The concerto is very entertaining and listenable. I can imagine it becoming a favorite for other piano soloists at every level. Hopefully a recording will be forthcoming soon, and I hope Jeffrey Biegel will be doing it.
Jeffrey Biegel clearly enjoys fierce and energetic playing the work demands and exhibits an authoritative presence at the keyboard – not flashy or showman-like, but always in control. In several of his solo sections, he displayed incredible speed and dexterity, and did so with effortless ease. He and Kevin Rhodes were certainly of the same mind and focus. The orchestra and conductor were clearly enjoying every moment."
Symphony concerto gets toes tapping
By Jay Kirschenmann
PUBLISHED: October 14, 2007
"I want the third movement of the Liebermann Piano Concerto No. 3 as part of my new workout soundtrack. Or maybe on the car sound system for my next fast drive.
The movement "Burlesque" ranges from heart-racing runs, kettle-drum crashes and surprise horn blasts, to a "Bullwinkle Show"-type theme music and even some frisky ragtime to boot. It was exciting to experience the new work during the Saturday night South Dakota Symphony Orchestra concert.
Local patrons were treated to the regional premiere of Lowell Liebermann's three-movement work, written for the orchestra and 17 others. It is performed by pianist Jeffrey Biegel - the musician who spearheaded the commissioning project. Hear it again during the concert this afternoon. The first two movements, "Risoluto" and "Largo," were captivating, but to a less open-minded orchestra fan, the frequent dissonant notes might seem a bit harsh. The work begins with an almost shocking blast, a tempestuous build-up leading to two-fisted rumbling on the piano's low notes, emphasized by the kettle drums. But the piece soon gives way to a softer, more brooding theme with more melodic piano work in a minor key. It's that range from quiet and introspective, back to tempestuous and racing, that kept me interested. Listeners might make up story lines in their minds - sections would serve as excellent suspense movie music. The crowd apparently loved it, standing at the end to extended applause, which brought Gier and Biegel back out on stage for a second round of bows."
MUSIC REVIEW--Hartford Symphony Orchestra
By JEFFREY JOHNSON | SPECIAL TO THE COURANT
October 7, 2007
"To close the first half of the program, Jeffrey Biegel joined the orchestra for the Lowell Liebermann Piano Concerto No. 3. Biegel is the hardest-working classical musician in show business. He has a long history of developing innovative performance venues and creative commissioning formats. This new Liebermann concerto was made possible largely through his efforts. Eighteen orchestras, including the Hartford Symphony, pooled together for the commission.
The Liebermann concerto itself is a lengthy work packed full of wonderful surprises. It has been described as "accessible." Perhaps. But it is not simple; and a good part of the apparent accessibility comes from construction with a divine pacing.
Several strongly written lyrical passages surface amid frantic passagework in the first movement. The fugue theme late in the movement is extracted from solo piano music heard earlier with figuration transformed in the strings.
The second movement is a passacaglia. Layered and widely spread pianistic textures created the challenge. Biegel played with delicacy and an ethereal flair. The second movement also has a saloon-music cadenza that anticipates a ragtime episode in the final movement.
The final movement is military music gone berserk. It is hard to describe without using the "S" word (Shostakovich), but it does provide a convincing close to a substantial concerto.
This is a work with a defined musical personality and the substance to have a shot at making a regular presence in this competitive repertory. At any rate, Biegel will show pianists of the future how this work is played."
Copyright © 2007, The Hartford Courant
Review: Pianist skillfully performs newest concerto by gifted composer
HAROLD DUCKETT
Friday, September 28, 2007
"Thursday night, at the opening of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s 72nd season, pianist Jeffrey Biegel assiduously laid out American composer Lowell Liebermann’s newest concerto. Commissioned for Biegel by the KSO, as part of an 18-orchestras consortium, Liebermann’s “Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra,” Op. 95, is the work of an emotionally intelligent craftsman who, at 46, is still somewhat of an experimenter.
Like an inventive spider, mulling things over as he puts out each tension line, he seems to say, “Hmmm, what would happen if I went this way,” then a few moments later, shifts a few degrees.
Spanning the chasm between romanticism and modernity, Liebermann’s music is anchored on both shear walls. Looking from the terrain of each, his music appears to be the other, until the point of view is reversed. Tied up in the web of all this are flashes of Debussy, Shostakovich, Barber and even a little Joplin and Glass, all of which pop up like images on a shooting range.
The democratization of classical music has been going on for a while now, so Liebermann’s assemblage of images into a collage isn’t new. His gift is in the smooth connective tissue with which he weaves everything together.
Having begun making the rounds of his sponsors in May 2006, Biegel, who first played here 21 years ago, has by now mastered the nuances of direction, the drifts in and out of melody fragments and the sudden mood shifts. It was a consummate performance by a gifted pianist/entrepreneur."
© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
"New concerto highlight of concert"
"It takes a special piece of music to make Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C minor the secondary piece on a concert's program, but the South Bend Symphony Orchestra presented one Saturday night at the Morris Performing Arts Center. "The symphony and guest pianist Jeffrey Biegel's vigorous and exciting performance of Lowell Liebermann's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 introduced concertgoers to an intense but also entertaining new work.
Consider the orchestra's contribution to Liebermann's fee money well spent. Throughout the concerto, Biegel presented fierce playing and a commanding presence at the keyboard. In several of his solo sections, he displayed incredible speed and dexterity. His playing in the second movement was delicate but not weak; instead, it defined the movement's sense of dread.
As an encore, Biegel gave a captivating solo performance of Abram Chasins' "Rush Hour in Hong Kong," which also displayed his speed and dexterity. For its freshness in both its newness and its writing, however, the Liebermann concerto continues to reverberate well after the end of the concert."
South Bend Tribune, April 25. 2007
EUROPEAN PREMIERE:
"Critics have already compared it (Lowell Liebermann´s Concerto no. 3) with Franz Liszt or Sergej Rachmaninow--the master creators of virtuoso piano concerti. It is simply really good music, which was indeed heard here. A grandiose virtuosic piano part, which Jeffrey Biegel played convincingly with nobility. Highly dramatic motives alternated calm passages with introverted ones, of dreamy and despairing moments. The orchestra expressed colorful instrumentation quite organically with the soloist. A composition of master achievement, realized by soloist and orchestra. The public in Flensburg´s Deutsches Haus was immensely inspired."
Flensburger Tagbladet
Schleswig-Holstein Symphony Orchestra
February 9,2007
SSO performs new concerto
Monday, January 22, 2007
By CLIFTON J. NOBLE Jr.
"New music was the centerpiece and high point of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra's "Maestro's Favorite" concert Saturday evening. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel joined the orchestra as soloist in the New England premiere of Lowell Liebermann's "Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 95," commissioned by a global consortium of 18 orchestras, including the SSO.
Liebermann's Concerto was first and foremost superb piano music written by a superb pianist in the tradition of Liszt, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev. Like Prokofiev, Liebermann made his dual mark as composer/pianist early on, writing his first piano sonata at age 15, and performing it at his Carnegie Recital Hall debut the following year.
30 years later, his Op. 95 crackled with Beethovenian economy of means. Each successive theme and gesture somehow related to a compact step-wise melodic cell that pervaded (along with a rocketing chain of fourths) the thinking and the unfolding of the piece. Liebermann linked a montage of moods and kaleidoscope of colors in a musical conversation of urgent clarity and unabashed, audience-friendly lucidity.
In pre-concert remarks concerning the piece, Biegel indicated that his former Juilliard colleague saw the piece as a reflection on the nation, born of mixed emotions and impulses from beauty and anger to angst and humor.
"It is a mixture of all the composers and inspirations that touched Lowell's soul," Biegel said. In lesser hands, such a busy plot might have degenerated into a mindless collage of Americana, but Liebermann's ingenious manipulation of his material and clear-eyed-and-eared sense of form, drama, and orchestration produced a unified masterpiece of American composition, a worthy descendant of the Barber Violin Concerto and the Copland Third Symphony.
Like an actor creating a role, Biegel played an immense part (in conjunction with composer, conductor, and orchestra) in enhancing our understanding of the piece. Technically flawless and intimately familiar with every twist and turn of character after four previous performances with other ensembles, Biegel obviously owned this Concerto. His eclectic musical interests, imagination, and the fact that he is himself a composer assured Biegel's ability to bring each scene and act in the drama to life.
The elegiac "Largo" with its scintillations of harp and bells was deeply moving, buoyed by a melancholy warmth in the strings and stroked with infinite tenderness by the pianist. The outer movements balanced cataclysmic explosions of passagework and percussion with introspective tips of the hat to Liebermann's compositional ancestors from Bach to Brahms to Jelly Roll Morton!
Audience and orchestra alike enjoyed Liebermann's foray into ragtime (reminiscent of the entire tradition from Joplin's early masterworks to Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost") in the "Burlesque" finale. Biegel inflected this excursion with just the right blend of waggishness and reverence, integrating it seamlessly into Liebermann's whirlwind American musical journey.
Maestro Rhodes and the SSO forged a brilliant partnership with Biegel in the presentation of Liebermann's Concerto. Whether exchanging snappy (at times roaring) repartee with the piano or creating a filmy harmonic universe in which the pianist might muse and meander, Rhodes and the orchestra gave a riveting account of Liebermann's masterful scoring.
Once heard, Liebermann's music begs to be heard again. Thanks to Biegel's dedication in creating the 18-orchestra consortium for the commissioning process, the Third Concerto should have a long life, and a chance at eternity. It is surely the best piece of new music the SSO has presented in the last 20 years. Biegel rewarded the audience's warm reception for his playing with a high-voltage romp through the late Abram Chasen's 'Rush Hour in Hong Kong.'"
[Colorado Symphony; Andrew Litton, guest conductor]
By Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News
January 6, 2007
"Maybe concert-goers are a little bit shell-shocked by our recent storms. Maybe Friday's relatively harmless snowfall scared Colorado Symphony patrons -into staying home instead of hearing a delightful night of music in Boettcher Hall.
There were more audience members than orchestra players on Friday - but not by much. Such a shame, because the ever- dependable Andrew Litton brought out some superb playing from the CSO in a wildly diverse program.
Centerpiece of the agenda was the Colorado premiere of the Third Piano Concerto by the American composer Lowell Liebermann. Commissioned by the evening's soloist, Jeffrey Biegel, and a consortium of 18 orchestras (including the CSO), this entertaining and not overly threatening work may very well stick around for a while.
With Biegel giving it his all - and clearly having great fun doing so - this three-movement work nimbly juggles modern aton-alities and clashing harmonies with unblushingly charming throw-back melodies. There's even a foot-tapping ragtime segment (though heaven knows where that came from).
Liebermann calls up memories of the 20th century's concerto masters: Ravel, Shostakovich, Bartok, Prokofiev. And there are traditional classical touches such as imitative utterances and contrasting passages of agitation and repose (there's even a nod to Brahms in Jurgen deLemos' unaccompanied cello solo in the slow movement).
But the Third is clearly a work of this century, an era of playful eclecticism. Nice accompaniment from the busy CSO. Friday's small crowd seemed to love it."
"A first-rate pianist, he poured himself into work ..."
"Jeffrey Biegel enterprisingly brought together 18 orchestras, including the CSO, to co-commission the piece [Lowell Liebermann's Third Concerto]. A first-rate pianist, he poured himself into work, deftly handling the concerto's challenging passagework and making the most of what the piece does have to offer."
Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post, Jan. 8, 2007
"Orchestra showcases great American music"
"The Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, with Robert Franz at the podium, played a program of music entirely by American composers. Composer Lowell Liebermann was commissioned by a consortium of 18 orchestras to write his "Piano Concerto No. 3." The first of three movements, marked "Risoluto," began with virtuosic flourishes for the piano, accompanied by orchestral punctuations. Subsequent melodies were vaguely reminiscent of the eastern European traditions, and the harmonic vocabulary was largely chordal (but not often traditional), with only mild dissonance. An ethereal effect with strings and bells began the second movement, marked Largo. The finale, "Burlesque," began somewhat like a jig, but became serious all too soon. Certainly there were moments of dance-like lightness, including ragtime and soft-shoe style quotations, but it was mostly, like the entire piece, a glorious showpiece for the soloist. Jeffrey Biegel, the piano soloist, was amazing -- confident, musical and easily collaborative. He knew this piece inside out, one in which the pianist almost never stops playing. But most impressive, his technique had no perceptible limitations. He was literally all over the keyboard. An artist of the highest caliber, Biegel's performance of this brand-new concerto elicited a standing ovation."
Rowland Blackley, Mansfield News-Journal, Nov. 14, 2006
The Daily Gazette
September 18, 2006:
COMPOSER LIEBERMANN’S TREAT GIVES PLEASURE TO AUDIENCE, TOO
By Geraldine Freedman
For the Daily Gazette
Schenectady, New York
"...the East Coast premiere of [Lowell Liebermann’s] Third Piano Concerto played by the gifted pianist Jeffrey Biegel..."
Although [Liebermann} said the work was very difficult and virtuosic with many notes, Biegel played them and the double-fisted octave runs effortlessly. He sang the haunting melodies that permeated the work with much feeling. The concerto has a lot of vigor, color and some dark harmonies with dissonance, but always Liebermann came back to the lyricism, which he created with a master’s hand.
He doesn’t develop his material in predictable ways. The first movement moved right along with tons of chords and scales and then suddenly under the fire was delicacy, rhythms and hints of Scriabin, Bartok and Poulenc.
The very slow second movement was haunting and magical and showed off Liebermann’s skills at pacing and keeping the interest.
The third was a blustering rhythmic giant’s dance in which he inserted a bit of melodic ragtime and an echo of the first movement before finishing with a splash.
The [Glens Falls] orchestra did well with the composer’s language and gave Biegel strong support and partnership. Biegel will perform the work about 17 times more over the next year as part of the national and European consortium that is sponsoring the concerto."
The Chronicle
September 21, 2006
Glens Falls, New York:
MELODY’S NOT DEAD, NEW GF SYMPHONY PIECE PROVED
By William Martin
Chronicle Freelance
"An appreciative audience was treated to the east coast premier of [Lowell Liebermann’s] Piano Concerto No. 3, Opus 95. This is a work that exudes melody from its very pores. It is filled with melodic riffs that lead the listener into dark chase scenes, followed by ascending harmonies that lift us ever upward, only to drop before reaching their goal, and then start again.
He spoke generously of influential composers he loves—especially Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten, and those influences can also be heard in his music.
This piece, with its piano/trumpet duets and percussion section introductions, pays tribute to the concertos of Shostakovich and Ravel, while other composers are given a tip-of-the-hat throughout.
Bartok, Bernstein and Gershwin show up; a great soft-shoe dance sneaks up into the third movement (“Burlesque”): there are laugh-out-loud moments that made me think of Francis Poulenc and Charles Ives; and one particular ascending section even made me think of Japanese music.
But, despite these various influences, the sound finally comes out sounding like Lowell Liebermann—all except for the wonderfully crazy ending which was pure Ives. (It could also have been played a little “wilder” by the orchestra, for greater effect.)
Guest pianist Jeffrey Biegel’s performance was solid, lyrical and swinging when it had to be. Much credit has to be given for Mr. Biegel’s efforts to gather 18 orchestras into the consortium that commissioned this work."
