Pianist Cecile Licad joined the distinguished list of world-acclaimed pianists given a full interview by award-winning arts broadcaster David Dubal in his New York-based radio program Piano Matters.
The interview was heard over www fm.org worldwide .
Followed by classical audiences worldwide, Piano Matters played selected pieces from Licad’s new CD released under Danacord label.
Piano Matters compares recordings of great piano works performed by various artists past and present, analyzing and explaining differing approaches to the music.
Among the piano icons earlier interviewed by Dubal include Vladimir Horowitz, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, and Alexis Weissenberg, among others.
An acknowledged authority on the piano literature, Dubal’s highly acclaimed books include The Art of the Piano, The Essential Canon of Classical Music, Evenings with Horowitz, Reflections from the Keyboard, and Conversations with Menuhinand among many others.
Dubalʼs video, The Golden Age of the Piano, has been seen worldwide in four languages, and won him an Emmy award.
Meanwhile, American CD critic John France gave Licad’s latest CD — Anthology of American Piano Music, Vol. 2 Music of the Night American Nocturnes –two thumbs up.
Wrote France: “The playing by Cecile Licad is impeccable. She is absolute master of these diverse styles. Her superb playing is complemented by the excellent recording by Danacord as well as the readable liner notes by Jeremy Nicholas and an introduction from Thomas Nickelsen.”
The latest Licad CD is now out and headed for critical acceptance even as an American CD blogger going by the name Fully Half-Baked (FHB) virtually labeled it as a landmark recording.
A follow up on her previous recording also focused on rarely heard American composers, Volume 2 guides the listeners to the rarely explored landscape of American classical music.
The latest recording under Danacord label features works by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, George Crumb, Amy Beach, Charles Griffes, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Daniel Gregory Mason, Ernest Bloch, and Leo Ornstein, among others.
After initial listening to selected pieces in Spotify, praises have started coming out on Facebook.
One Licad fan, Hadeza Cabaddu, singles out the rendition of Gottschalk’s “La chûte des feuilles” as truly amazing it left her teary eyed over and over again.
Posted Cabaddu on FB: “The rest of the pieces are exquisitely played like the works of George Crumb, which I found very profound and nakakakilabot (hair-raising). Thank you Cecile Licad for the exalting and mystical experience.”
FHB sized up the latest Licad CD thus: “Her latest recording exudes – once again – not only her maturity and integrity or her mastery of the piano, but also the divide between the ranks of skillful and talented pianists, with her belonging in the latter. Licad makes them all glittering, lush, and sexy. Her pristine sensitivity, tender touch, and virtuosic competence are all over in place drawing out nothing but exalting nuances and picturesque landscapes of sound. She particularly excels in executing those delicate keyboard runs naturally without the cheap and unnecessary sentimentality most of the famous pianists today heavily rely on.”
The blogger further noted that if Licad was a painter in the earlier recording, she became a sorceress in the George Crumb playlist. “These Crumb inclusions are in my reading the best treats of American Nocturnes because listeners (and musicians) are introduced to extended techniques of piano music and performance. Second, it’s a rare circumstance to have a first-rate pianist tackle such works and drift away from the mainstream programming that we are able to hear a truly class A and authoritative musical understanding of these avant-garde music fearless of any criticism. It takes a great musical maturity and integrity for an artist to pull off an album that consists of unknown piano works.”
Moreover, the blogger further notes that the latest CD on American composers departs from previous recording in terms of programming and affords listeners a wider repertoire. “Most are not even the composer’s entire opus, but sketches that conceive an evening atmosphere taken out from their birth context to recreate another– like a Beethoven collection of his piano sonata adagios pulled out from their parent sonatas, pooled together, and reordered to arouse a fully different context.”
Based on its aural outcome, the blogger declared the latest Licad CD as a huge success.
The latest CD was recorded at the auditorium of the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized in the classical music world as a hidden gem and the best place to record solo and chamber music.
Licad said on FB that spending a day with American composer George Crumb she found fantastic and so inspiring. “I sure am proud to have done this recording project,” said Licad who is scheduled to play two Chopin concertos in Manila in October.