Classical piano comes to Glenwood

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — When you speak with someone like classical pianist Frederic Chiu, what on earth do you say?

Here’s a man who has been behind the piano for 40 years, who’s performed with orchestras from Kansas City to Estonia. From everything you’ve read, he’s seems a bit a maverick when it comes to classical music, but is also a huge believer in it. Now, he’s about to embark on a tour around the country, starting tonight in Glenwood.

And it’s your job to capture him in a few hundred words.

So, over the phone, you ask him something like this:

What are you trying to do?

“I’m trying to bring a sense of curiosity and discovery to people,” he answers.

Be here in my shoes, he says, stand where I’m standing, “Feel the excitement I feel.”

And while you’ve never played piano, you’re right there with him. For a moment, you get it.

That’s about how it played out during a recent conversation with the artist. For an hour or so, he talked about his history with classical music and why it’s so important to share it. Somewhere in his 40s, Chiu was speaking from his home in Connecticut. He’d just returned that day from a vacation in France and was gearing up for a 5,000 mile, three-week trip of concerts across the country. When asked if he was tired, he sort of laughed and said no. As an adult, this is the only kind of life he’s really known.

“I feel very lucky,” he said.

He described a piano recital as “basically a conversation between the musician and the audience.” To him, that intimacy is unique to the instrument. In his childhood, he also learned the oboe and cello, but it was the piano that became his life. There’s such a range of music written for it, he said, and such an accessible element to it. Though he swore he was never any prodigy, he had always kept with it, through high school and college and, finally, The Julliard School of Music.

What happened next changed him forever. To use the quickest of summaries, instead of hurling himself into the competition circuit like his peers, he left it all for Paris. There, he learned the language, lived and played for 12 years. As he became an adult, he was introduced into a new, intimate world of music. Instead of having an agent or experiencing big venues, he was peforming at house parties, small auditoriums. His notoriety grew organically, he said, and his experience there forever gave him a different perspective on the country — and his own.

The French already understand and love the classical canon, he explained, but are slower to appreciate something original. Americans don’t really know classical music but can get excited about it because it’s new to them. Ideally, he would love an audience made of both.

From his Web site, it’s clear that he’s won awards and praise and has taught his Deeper Piano Studies class at several prestigious sites. He’s made more than 20 recordings, as well. But he only talked about any of that when he was asked.

His focus, he explained, is on opening people up to classical music, on sharing the beauty and tradition he sees in it. How he goes about that, it seems, is almost incidental.

“Classical can be alive and can be reflective of what’s going on,” he said. “One of the challenges that performers have is to make it interesting for someone today.”

That problem is also a richness, he feels. It's something he wants to explore. Locales such as Glenwood Springs, Pierre, S.D. and Brainerd, Minn. just don’t scream classical — and that’s exactly what he is going for. In his 12 stops, mostly at small venues, he said he looks forward to “bringing the piano recital to the American public.”

Tonight, like in the other shows, the audience will be treated to his exploration of the piano and its ability to create moods and different voices — colors, even. There will be the work of Chopin and several French composers, and the night will end with a piano version of a piece most already know: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

Even at the end of the talk, he was open and generous with his time, and spoke of all the other ways he brings the music of the past into today. Sometimes, he said, it means teaching a class, where he uses cooking, game playing and reflection to mentally prepare his students for their instrument. Sometimes it means playing in front on audience. It also might be as simple as sharing a recording he made with someone. When it comes to music, it seems, he’s ready to go the distance with people. Whatever it takes.

"I want to wow them," he said.

Contact Stina Sieg: 384-9111ssieg@postindependent.com







Post Independent Glenwood Springs CO Colorado

Chiu in Glenwood WHAT: Piano recital by Frederic Chiu, brought to town by the Glenwood Springs Community Concert Association WHEN: 7:30 tonight WHERE: Mt. View Church, 2195 County Road 154 TICKETS: Admission by membership ticket, with additional seats available for $20 MORE INFORMATION: www.fredericchiu.com for info about Chiu, 945-8722 or 945-5384 for info about the Glenwood show WHY? Because you might just love classical music — and not even know it.