Bio Sketches

Rolfs Piano Series
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Biographical Sketches
2001-2002

FREDERIC CHIU
January 12, 2002

Born and raised in America by Chinese immigrant parents and a long-time resident of France, Frederic Chiu’s cosmopolitan background brings a unique, humanist approach to his music-making. “He has reinvented virtuosity…a phenomenon that must be heard” (LeMonde, Paris).

After studies at Indiana University, in piano with Karen Shaw and also in Computer Science, and at the Juilliard School, Frederic Chiu began his career in Paris, and has become one of the most well-known American pianists playing in France. He has performed in most of the major European cities: Rome, Milan, Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Frankfurt, the Hague, Warsaw, Prague, and London. He performs regularly in Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China) as well as in Africa.

In North America, Mr. Chiu has played in the Mostly Mozart Festival in new York, at the Ambassador Theatre in Pasadena, and Place des Arts in Montreal. He plays regularly at Lincoln Center in New York, and is a perennial guest of the acclaimed Newport Music Festival. He has traveled across the United States on extended recital tours with Community Concerts.

A recipient of many prestigious awards – the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Petscheck Award, and the American Pianists Association Fellowship – it was the lack of a certain award that first brought him international notoriety; in a rare foray into the competition circuit, his elimination before the final round of the 1993 Van Cliburn Competition roused enormous protest; prominent stories in the New York Times referred to him as the “Maverick American Pianist.”

His concert activities also include orchestral appearances and a large amount of chamber music. He participates regularly in the festival “Consonances” in Saint Nazaire, France, which he co-founded in 1991 with the violinist Philippe Graffin. He collaborates with invited artists, including Gary Hoffman, Charles Neidich, Jeremy Menuhin, the St. Lawrence Quartet and Christian Ivaldi.

His first CD, a recital of piano transcriptions, marked him as a champion of this under-explored repertoire, following the example of his former teacher, Abbey Simon. He recently opened the National Symphony Orchestra’s season with the Liszt transcription of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, to a standing ovation. His own arrangements, including pieces from Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite, have met with rousing success in concert and on record.

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ALEXANDER TSELYAKOV
February 9, 2002

Alexander Tselyakov was born in Baku in the former Soviet Union and began his concert career at age nine when he appeared with the Azerbaidjain State Philharmonic Orchestra. He studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Lev Naumov, custodian of the Heinrich Neuhaus methods that are credited with producing many extraordinary twentieth-century Russian keyboard masters such as Gilels and Richter.

After graduating he won one of the leading prizes at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition and subsequently became a major prizewinner in multiple international piano competitions in many countries from Japan to Israel. While still in Russia Alexander Tselyakov was appointed concert solo pianist with the Byelorussia State Philharmonic and assistant Professor of Music at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

He has performed frequently with leading orchestras of the former Soviet Union including the Leningrad Philharmonic and the Moscow Philharmonic. In solo recital he has appeared in all the major concert halls in Russia and around the world and performed for such dignitaries as Michael Gorbachev and the late Yitzhak Rabin.

He has served on juries for international competitions in Russia and Italy. After moving with his family to Israel in 1991, Alexander Tselyakov immigrated to Canada in 1994 and his Canadian debut was met with great acclaim. “Mr. Tselyakov is truly one of the world’s great artists of the piano.” Germany’s Kitzinger Zeitung recognizes him as a “Phenomenal pianist.”

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