Top-Caliber Technique on Display by William Furtwangler (Published: Thursday, June 9, 2011) AT THE EIGHTH Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music concert Monday afternoon, Geoff Nuttall, host and director for chamber music, addressed the Dock Street Theatre house as "the world's best audience," a fitting complement to the world's best musicians. The program included a Mozart piano concerto, a solo piano piece by Mendelssohn, and sandwiched between, the Benjamin Britten cello sonata-all expertly performed. Israeli-born pianist Inon Barnatan, who has concertized extensively to great acclaim in Europe and the United States, opened with a short, devilishly difficult Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 14 by the 15 year-old Felix Mendelssohn. After a slow introduction, the rondo took off with an energetic display of melodic music, typically associated with such piano giants as Franz Liszt. The gifted Barnatan easily maneuvered through Mendelssohn's maze of notes in a bravura performance of this lush Romantic composition. Internationally renowned cellist Alisa Weilerstein joined her frequent chamber music partner, Barnatan, for Bejamin Britten's Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 65. Composed in 1960 for the late Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the sonata is one of several compositions penned by the composer for this Olympian of cellists. Weilerstein and Barnatan found no problems with Britten's technically brilliant fireworks, with its austere, poetic vision. Using advanced techniques, Britten's emotionally draining work, with its frenetic tempos, taking wild and serious turns, came alive in the pair's firm and dynamic reading. This modern music was disturbing, if not outright abrasive, and not easy to listen to. It was composed so that Rostropovich could show off his technique. It also allowed Weilerstein to show off hers-in spades. A piano concerto with a chamber group? Nuttall explained that he had discovered an arrangement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 by Austrian pianist and composer Carl Czerny. Czerny clocked in over 800 opus numbers, not to mention arrangements and works without opus numbers. Nuttall explained that all was fine until the group started to rehearse Czerny's arrangement and then they decided he must have put it together for a party. Whatever its limitations and the group's improvements to it, the arranged piano concerto provided a perfect vehicle for the small chamber group consisting of pianist Pedja Muzijevic, flautist Tara Helen O'Connor, violinists Daniel Phillips and Nuttall, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, cellist Christopher Costanza, and bassist Anthony Manza. Muzijevic and the chamber group played with brisk tempos and such intensity and determination that the composition almost rose to symphonic proportions. Muzijevic revealed Mozart's drama and poetry in a performance without compare. The audience rose in a standing ovation. Earlier, they gave each of the two previous works a Charleston semi-standing ovation (about half stood, the rest remained seated). I can understand sitting for the Britten, but for the Mendelssohn? The acoustics in the newly renovated Dock Street Theatre remain at the top of the list of local venues for music. Clarity and volume, with little reverb or reflections, plus top-down frequency reproduction, are the theater's hallmarks.  No doubt that is because the chamber music performers are in front of the festival back drop with performers under or in front of the proscenium arch. Staged theatrical productions seem to be another matter, particularly with companies not used to having half their voices disappearing into the fly space above the stage. Some need amplification for dialogue and, unless done correctly, this miracle of modern science produces an unintelligible muddle. Thirty plus years ago local theater troupes had no problem with voice projection into the orchestra and balcony seating. And there has been little, if any, change in the basic acoustical signature of the theater since then. Go figure. Concert review: 'Birth of Avante-Garde' proves creative, enjoyable by Matt Steel (Special to the Kalamazoo Gazette | Published: Saturday, October 30, 2010) There was a full house Friday night for the 'Birth of the Avant-Garde,' a Fontana Chamber Arts concert at the Epic Center-s Wellspring Theatre. The concert featured Bosnian born-and-trained pianist Pedja Muzijevic, who now lives in New York. With wit and humor, Muzijevic addressed the audience before most pieces, offering fascinating commentary and personal anecdotes about the composers and their unusual music. Music history is rife with boldly innovative composers, but Muzijevic's program focused mainly on those who were precursors and founders of 20th-century modernism, with a strong American cohort, including Morton Feldman, Henry Cowell, Conlon Nancarrow and especially John Cage. Foregoing any introduction, Muzijevic launched into the 'surprise piece' of the evening: Cage's 'Four Minutes And Thirty-Three Seconds,' named because the performer is supposed to sit at the piano for that length of time without playing. Most of the audience seemed well-prepared for this surprise, though a murmuring few were heard questioning the validity of this piece. Actually, Muzijevic's silence exceeded the work's specified time, in what could only be called a rather sluggish rendition. Muzijevic proved to be a superb pianist despite the concert's lack of the usual heavyweight solo repertoire. He showed a certain genius for making music out of extremely sparse, atonal works such as Feldman's 'Intermission 4' and Arnold Schoenberg's 'Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19.' At the other end of the spectrum, he was brilliant in Nancarrow's fiendishly complex, multi-layered and multi-metered 'Tango?' To play sonatas IV, V, VIV and XV from Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano," Muzijevic moved to a second piano in which he had carefully inserted screws, bolts, rubber, and plastic between certain strings according to the composer's detailed instructions. The result was a marvelous mix of timbres including percussive sounds resembling an Indonesian gamelan. Muzijevic's approach to playing these sonatas revealed both his deep insight into Cage's compositional aesthetic and his mastery of the touch needed to produce the exotic timbres. The second half of the program had little to do with 20th-century avant-garde works. However, it did showcase the immense talent of Suran Bagratuni, cello professor at Michigan State University. He was joined by cellist Julia Sengupta in Jean-Baptiste Barriere's frilly, rococo Sonata No. 10 for two cellos. This work was obviously programmed as a measure of how far the 20th-century avant-garde had strayed from the common practice. Bagratuni plays with a pure, sweet tone, nimble facility and a wonderful lyricism. This was most evident in the Stravinsky "Suite Italien" for cello and piano, based on his ballet 'Pulcinella.' Also evident was Muzijevic's excellent skill as an accompanist, absolutely syncretized with Bagratuni's every nuance. Perhaps the least substantive work on the program, although very charming, was Darius Milhaud's "Quatre Visage" for viola and piano. Nonetheless, this work afforded the audience another opportunity to sample the considerable performing talent of Abhijit Sengupta, violist and Fontana's artistic director/CEO. This was a musically challenging concert for the audience that was made immensely enjoyable by creative programming, remarkable playing and Musijevic's endearing personality. Better than Ever Muzijevic at Maverick by Leslie Gerber (The Boston Musical Intelligencer) Pianist Pedja Muzijevic has performed several times at Maverick Concerts in previous seasons, both as soloist and ensemble player. But he has never made as strong or positive an impression on this listener as he did on Saturday, July 24. The first half of Muzijevic's program was a kaleidoscope of mixed repertory. Three Scarlatti Sonatas were separated by works of Feldman and Cowell. The Scarlatti playing was pianistic but stylish, with all repeats and even a few added trills. The K. 113 was taken a bit too fast for the sake of accuracy and sounded a bit rushed, but it was still impressive. The Feldman, a Webernian Intermission, was convincingly shaped; and Cowell's Floating was also excellently done. Muzijevic continued with Conlon Nancarrow's Tango, written for human pianist but scarcely less complex in its rhythms than his player piano music, a great challenge and an impressive performance. Godowsky's transcription of Strauss's Ständchen was followed by Cowell's Fabric, and I was sure I heard a similarity in the figuration of each piece. Maverick is offering tributes to Schumann, Chopin, and Barber this season, so Muzijevic concluded the first half of his program with the Novellette, Op. 21, No. 8, by Schumann, not very familiar music. He played it with good tonal quality and lots of romantic impulsiveness, a thorough success. Since John Cage's famous/notorious silent 4?33? was first 'performed' at Maverick (in 1952), it shows up on piano programs here occasionally. Muzijevic, sitting very still, didn't mark the 'movements' of the piece as he is supposed to (by lowering and raising the keyboard cover), and I can't swear that he took exactly the right amount time. It did provide me with a fine opportunity to concentrate on my tinnitus, though. Muzijevic then launched immediately into the Liszt transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. I hadn't remembered this pianist playing with such tonal resources and coloration in the past, perhaps the fragility of my memory, but he gave us a thoroughly satisfying performance. In taking on Schumann's Carnaval, Muzijevic was competing not only with the many glorious recordings by pianists of the past (beginning with Rachmaninov) but, in my memory, with a gorgeous performance by Nikolai Demidenko at SUNY New Paltz's PianoSummer only last week. Muzijevic may not be quite the master colorist Demidenko is (few pianists today can match him), but his performance was far from black and white. He characterized each section convincingly, playing with a gratifying combination of virtuosity and eloquence. The concluding March was appropriately heavy-footed, a fine depiction of the Philistines who are then routed by lovers of great music like Schumann's. This was an uncommonly varied, effective, and stimulating recital. I will look forward to future Muzijevic performances with great anticipation. "Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, the sublime D-minor masterpiece, is all about touch and balance, storm and pathos. It is performed frequently but can be interpreted so many ways that it remains fresh. Bosnian pianist Pedja Muzijevic, an interesting musician, was here making his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut, as was the conductor. Although his touch at the keyboard sounded acidic and tinny -- the fault of microphone placement or audio engineers twisting knobs, most likely -- he crafted an uncommonly compelling role for the piano, as a personality in direct communication with the orchestra. He ornamented his singsongy phrases neatly, and with Llewellyn's assistance, brought the middle movement, almost a garden serenade, to a gorgeous, peaceful ending. In this concerto, most pianists play Beethoven's cadenzas -- those extended solo passages that offer the soloist a flight of fancy -- since Mozart's own have been lost. Muzijevic instead played cadenzas composed by Paul Balascora (in the first movement) and J.N. Hummel (in the third). It was a small point but well taken: Muzijevic is a thinking musician, eager to go his own way." —Pierre Ruhe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Ives's young friend Elliott Carter, now entering his second century, is still a bright light of American music. In 'Oppens Plays Carter' (Cedille), the pianist Ursula Oppens gathers nearly all of Carter's solo piano music-from his Piano Sonata (1945-46) to 'Matribute' (2007)-onto one disk, delivering it with a mix of grit and grace. The pianist Pedja Muzijevic accomplishes an equally impressive feat in 'Sonatas & Other Interludes' (Albany), an odd but compelling album that alternates short works for prepared piano by John Cage with compositions by Liszt, Schumann, and W. F. Bach." —The New Yorker, In Chambers, Russell Platt "During the first week, it was fascinating to hear the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra play, back to back, two essential but utterly different Viennese works calling for (more or less) 13 wind instruments: Mozart's Gran Partita in B flat, K 361, and Alban Berg's Double Concerto, op. 8. Conductor Boyd, who has made a splash heading the Manchester Camerata, projected the sublime beauty of Mozart's slow movements and, with excellent contributions from Pedja Muzijevic (piano) and Steven Copes (violin), led an arresting account of the Berg, although the first movement, with its Viennese waltz, might have had more playfulness. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe offered a vibrant performance of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, a wonderful big-scale piece for strings too often eclipsed by his Serenade for Strings." —Financial Times "The evening opened with another work that helped the bicentennial celebration, Beethoven's quirky Fantasia for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra ('Choral Fantasy') with the brilliant pianist Pedja Muzijevic at the keyboard. The work's first performance was in 1808 (the very year Greensboro was founded) with the composer as pianist (who improvised the opening section). While this work is often viewed as a warm-up for the composer's Ninth Symphony, with its combination of orchestra, soloists and chorus, it also serves as a mini piano concerto, beginning with an improvisatory passage that was flawlessly and seemingly spontaneously played by Muzijevic. Like the Ninth, this piece uses a theme and variations layout that culminates in a boisterous choral climax. One can definitely hear that this tune (based on a song Beethoven had written much earlier) has much in common with the more famous 'Ode to Joy' theme. Orchestra, soloists and the Choral Society of Greensboro (under the direction of Bruce Kiesling) turned in a strong reading of the work." —Greensboro Symphony (Classical Voice of North Carolina) "In my current rotation of listening is a CD of piano music by John Cage as played by Bosnian-born pianist Pedja Muzijevic (on Albany Records). For no particular reason, he intersperses the short, fascinating sonatas and one interlude with music by such diverse composers as Scarlatti, Liszt and Schumann. The effect is seamless. It isn't new music or old, just music. It works because Muzijevic is simply playing music that he likes, applying the same enthusiasm and technical wherewithal in equal doses." —The Philadelphia City Paper "Spano opened with a recent work, Jennifer Higdon's "blue cathedral," and continued with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 - with the fine Pedja Muzijevic as soloist - and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra..... The Mozart concerto held attention for different reasons. Muzijevic acknowledged Classical tradition by playing blissfully along with the orchestra even when the piano part didn't require it. As soloist, he shaped lines with chipper energy and added all sorts of tasteful decorations, even in the extended phrases of the slow movement. Muzijevic offered a first-movement cadenza, by Mozart contemporary Philipp Karl Hoffmann, whose elaborations might have intrigued the composer. The pianist's liveliness sometimes spilled over into rambunctiousness in the finale, but his music-making was so vital that it kept all ears glued to the sublime discussions. Spano's collaboration was alert and balanced, with superb winds placed in fine relief to silken strings." —Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer, Clevelend "What we heard was artistry worthy of such a resume. Muzijevic is a virtuoso with a big, bronze tone, imagination and technique to spare, and a multifaceted expressiveness. With the first notes of Chopin's Polonaise-fantasie, it was evident that we were hearing an artist with personality.....Muzijevic's Schumann is more imaginative than neurotic, and this approach works better with Carnaval than with some of the composer's other works....To play this well, one must have steel in the hands, love and affection in the heart, and more than a little craziness. Muzijevic was more than equal to the demands, and his performance was among the best I've heard of this popular work." —Ken Keaton, The Daily News, Palm Beach "The pianist performed with real elegance and lyricism and a dose of formality that added just the right amount of spine to his flawless lines." —Richard Sheinin, The Mercury News, San Jose, CA "Listening to the almost peerless musicianship of pianist Pedja Muzijevic left the music lover in speechless wonder, grappling for apt superlatives." —William Thomas Walker, Classical Voice of North Carolina "Muzijevic accomplished something rare in the first half of the program; he held the audience spellbound, playing three Liszt pieces without the interruption of applause or even rattling paper. Moving from two late works written in the composer's experimental, almost atonal style, to Liszt's bravura transcription and reworking of Isoldes Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Muzijevic's sensitive and nuanced interpretation was arresting." —Charles Freeman, The Daily News, Palm Beach "Muzijevic shaped a well-founded interpretation from seriousness of the first movement, through the fine shading of the Largo, to a rhythmically taut Rondo with conviction and maximum concentration. He maintained a dialogue of equals with the orchestra in an extraordinary lively performance on the difficult playing field of a Beethoven Concerto 'everybody knows everything there is to know'." —Maja Stanetti, Vecernji List, Zagreb "Beethoven's First Piano Concerto in C Major, op. 15 was in the center of the attention. Pedja Muzijevic brilliantly interpreted this virtuosic and spirited work, with an interesting combination of composer's first movement cadenzas. He played an inspired rendition of the Rondo in a lively tempo that did not take away the ease and elegance from the performance. His free rubato phrasing had a solid base in a precise rhythm. Maestro Uros Lajovic expertly controlled and lead the Zagreb Philharmonic in a fine dialogue with the pianist." —Visnja Pozgaj, Vjesnik, Zagreb "Which brings us to Hans Werner Henze's 'Tristan', performed Friday night by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and pianist Pedja Muzijevic, led by Andreas Delfs......A measure of relief also lies in the extended piano solos. The melodic contours here, too, are as spiky as a deathbed EKG. But Muzijevic played them with such gorgeous legato and phrased them so compellingly as to round off the sharper points. He made the solos ruminative, in the way that jazz pianists sound ruminative as they explore chords and warm their way into a song. The piano's introspection made a nice contrast with the explosive, let-it-all-hang-out orchestral music." —Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "The unexpected discovery was Pedja Muzijevic, whom (I would suspect) no one in the audience had heard of before; I certainly hadn't. Few experiences are more exciting for a critic than suddenly being made aware of a heretofore unknown first-rate musician, and when the musician has the startling originality of this Bosnian-born pianist the experience is heady indeed. Fortunately Aleskie's programming allowed us to hear the pianist in solo pieces as well as in the several chamber combinations, so that we could get a very clear idea of his musical personality. Everyone plays these pieces from Ravel's Miroirs and Debussy's two sets of Images, and a whole series of great pianists have played them exquisitely. I would not have supposed they could sound as utterly new as Muzijevic made them. Ordinarily, pianists emphasize the sensual and pictorial qualities of this music: the rippling of the water in the goldfish pond, the misty atmosphere out of which the sounds of the distant church bells emerge, the fiery espagnolism of the jester's morning song. Muzijevic, in contrast, underlined their musical structure, the shapes of their motifs, the ways their phrases and sections are put together. To this end he pedalled with extraordinary delicacy, so that instead of merging in an impressionistic haze, all the sounds (above all, the harmonies) remained completely distinct. The resultwas to focus the listener's attention on how this music differs from Romanticism, to enable us to perceive the crispness and lucidity of the piano writing, and to make us aware - something most performances leave obscure - of the modernity of Debussy and Ravel (yes, Ravel too). I don't mean to imply that there was anything dry or pedantically analytical about Muzijevic's playing. On the contrary, the sound spectrum in La vallee des cloches was ravishing in its palette of nuanced colors, Alborada del gracioso was intense and explosive in its rhytmic drive, and Hommage a Rameau (which really has nothing to do with Rameau) was unusually grand and noble in its deliberate, expansive pacing. By treating these works less as 'impressions' and more as pure music, the pianist made them far more gripping that what one ordinarily hears in them." —Jonathan Saville, San Diego Reader "A luminous performance of the Fifth Piano Concerto, known as the 'Emperor' with the Bosnian-born pianist Pedja Muzijevic followed. Rather that treating the work as a virtuosic vehicle, Muzijevic offered an interpretation of sustained poetry that reached deep. Instead of thundering bass power or brilliant treble flights, he dazzled with the subtlety of his thoughts, the sureness of his control, the quickness of his response, and the acuteness of his listening to the orchestra and , above all, to Beethoven. He made the audience feel as if he and they were hearing the work for the first time. Again and again he surprised with a slight hesitation in a line, or a sudden pulling back at the top of a phrase, or the warm shaping of a virtuosic passage. His tonal palette defied logic as he matched colors with the woodwinds or molded dynamics with the flexibility of a string player. The rare quality of his collaboration and his golden musicianship brought both audience cheers and the ultimate orchestra tribute of tapping stands and stamping feet." —Joanne Sherry Hoover, Albuquerque Journal "Pedja Muzijevic, the Croatian pianist performing the concerto (Beethoven #2) Saturday with guest conductor Gabriel Chmura and the Richmond Symphony, played it more for its Mozartian brilliance and clarity than for hints of the Olympian Beethoven to come. Crisp and straightforward in the fast outer movements, Muzijevic conjured a small miracle of timing in the solo cadenza of the first movement. He saved most musicianship for the central adagio, emphasizing its spare lyricism and at the end playing extraordinarily softly yet projecting throughout the hall." —Clarke Bustard, Richmond Time-Dispatch "Pedja Muzijevic, a Bosnian-born pianist, was stunning in the monstrously difficult piano part (Henze Tristan Preludes), coming accross as an actor, speaking eloquently in a foreign tongue, the language being atonality. The musicians of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra played in extremely concentrated, peak form." —Rick Walters, Shepherd Express "His playing was like a refined hunger, taking sharp, exaggeratedly emphatic bites which sounded right in Janacek. There is a powerfully persuasive personality at large here; and with recent scores by Knussen and Corigliano he turned his recital into an almost encyclopaedic demonstration of stylistic sympathies. I was impressed." —Michael White, Independent on Sunday, London "The choice of Sunday-afternoon pianist proved the adventurousness of Aldeburgh's programme-planning. Pedja Muzijevic, a young Yugoslavian resident in America, is a virtuoso with formidable fingers and a musician with fiercely original ideas about the music he plays." —Max Loppert, Financial Times, London "For all its impetuosity and fire, the Mendelssohn concerto abounds in classical virtues of clarity and balance. Muzijevic dared to play it that way. He didn't try to sell the piece, to wow the audience. He gave his performance - thoughtful, clearheaded, lyrical - and drew in his listeners, which is no small achievement given the chattiness of his Pops audience. In the agitated first movement, his rippling scales and fluid passagework were uncommonly handsome. He played with roominess but didn't dawdle during the long-arched melodies of the Adagio. And with his supple wrist technique, he dashed through the buoyant, bouncy finale with delicacy, elegance and exuberance. Muzijevic played with varied and luminous tone colors; he voices chords and interviewing lines with attentiveness and clarity, and makes notey passagework sound thematic as well as coloristic. This was a striking debut." —Anthony Tommasini, Boston Globe "The greatest revelation, in fact, was the brilliance of pianist Pedja Muzijevic, who not only accompanied Baryshnikov, but played several musical interludes, as well. The Bosnian musician's playing was so clean and so finely articulated that it revealed all manner of musical lines that most performers would have left in a thicket of musical glop." —David Lyman, Detroit Free Press "Luckily concert pianist Pedja Muzijevic held everyone's interest by following it with 'Intermission No. 1' by Morton Feldman, executed with such expression that he could have trumped an entire orchestra. Muzijevic has been one of the musical collaborators for the evening, and his own four solos showed inventive and beautiful programming. His selection of the lyrical 'Serenade' from Richard Strauss and Leopold Godowsky sent us scrambling for programs to memorize the title." —Harriet Howard Heithaus, Naples Daily News "The series Great Pianists at the Teatro Municipal opened triumphantly with the virtuoso pianist Pedja Muzijevic....A separate paragraph is warranted for the interpretations of the pages of Franz Liszt; most notably those special, visionary ones, full of harmonic freedom, that were completed toward the end of the century. More popular works, such as Funereilles and the Valse oubliee No. 1, were played with strong dramatic contrasts and a fabulous touch of distinction and transparancy. In the piano version of Wagner's Isolde's Liebestod, Liszt reaches an ecstasy born of madness and Muzijevic knows how to communicate, with a magic empathy, the extreme degree of delirium." —Federico Heinlein, El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile