Pianist-teacher employs unconventional methods
Daily Gazette
Schenectady, NY
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Unlike most concert pianists with international careers, Frederic Chiu is committed to teaching, but not in the usual sense. Rather than have a roster of talented students, Chiu gives workshops for pianists of all ages that involve philosophy, meditation, acoustic sciences, and human psychology vs. artificial intelligence.
“My goal is to show how to practice efficiently and what you need to do away from the piano — how to learn without actually playing,” he said from his home in Connecticut.
When Chiu comes to Skidmore College on Friday to give a recital as part of the Sterne Virtuoso Concert Series, he may, however, only touch on some of the emotional points from a free master class he is offering at 7:30 tonight, because there won’t be time, he said.
Intensive schedule
Usually, his workshops are all-day sessions and run for three days. On average, he gives about four workshops a year interspersed with a 40-concert schedule, which this year includes several recitals and chamber music concerts.
Those who attended this year’s Bard Summerscape at Bard College heard Chiu in several August concerts. In other seasons, he has toured with violin superstar Joshua Bell as his pianist, premiered new works such as bassist Edgar Meyer’s Concert Piece, worked with the St. Lawrence and Shanghai string quartets and composers Bright Sheng and George Crumb.
Chiu has not always been so committed to teaching. Born in 1964 in Ithaca, he accompanied his brother, a violinist, before attending Indiana University, where he majored in piano performance and computer science (and met Bell). He received his master’s degree from the Juilliard School. But Chiu was restless and wasn’t interested in trying to build a career based in New York City.
“I was enticed by Paris. So I went,” he said. “I was on my own and dealing with life situations. I saw how this affected my playing and, vice versa, how I dealt with life in general.”
All artists go through that, he said, once they get out of the practice room or spend any time away from the concert stage. But it’s how they make the leap to make the connection to communicate to people through their music, which had him stymied, he said.
“Paris was a revelation. I discovered that, wow, Debussy was a real person, not just a name on the top of a score. I walked in streets and neighborhoods that he had walked. My manager lived in a building where Chopin had lived. It brought everything to life,” Chiu said.
Of even more immediate concern, however, was that he had no piano. And that, in a way, is how he began to think about how he practiced. When he did find a piano to practice on, his time was usually limited. So he had to learn to be more efficient.
“My teacher had taught me the important things about piano playing — its traditions, history. But how much had I learned through muscle memory vs. intellect and emotions,” he said.
He found enough pianos to practice on and in 1993 entered the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where his elimination from the finals caused an uproar in the press.
“I eschewed the standard fare for the recital segment because I wanted to provoke a strong impression among the jurors,” Chiu said. “So I went for the transcriptions of Baroque, and Romantic and modern works like Prokofiev’s sixth sonata.”
The public loved his interpretations, he said, but the judges’ decision not to advance him made it even into The New York Times. He was called a maverick pianist, he said, but when he returned to Paris, he was greeted as a star.
“I played all over France, England and Europe, Taiwan and Japan,” Chiu said.
He also began to record on Harmonia Mundi the first of his 20 compact discs, which today include Prokofiev’s complete works, Chopin’s Op. 10 Etudes, Liszt selections and several transcriptions. In 1996, Chiu received the Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Chiu also began to work out his new approaches to teaching: analyzing scores, discussions on stage fright and collaboration, acoustics, memorization methods and cooking without a recipe. He called the workshops Deeper Piano Studies.
“I was given the opportunity to run a workshop at a sponsor’s home and in a flash I tried my new methods,” Chiu said.
Participants also had to learn a piece away from the piano and at the end of the workshop to play it on the piano from memory.
Seeking acceptance
Although his workshops met with some success, Chiu said, he found that people in France preferred conservative teaching methods and were reluctant to try different methods.
“I wanted to teach. So I returned to the United States in 2000 because people are more willing to try something new here,” he said.
Chiu also still favors less-typical repertoire. On Friday, that will be Mendelssohn’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and his little known Sonata in E Major, six of Chopin’s Etudes; Liszt’s more spiritual and meditative “Petrarch Sonnets 104 and 147” and “Apres une lecture du Dante,” and Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde.”
“My workshops have changed my playing,” Chiu said. “I’m more connected to the music and music making and what an audience feels. I also hope they won’t see me just as a museum piece — not to watch but to experience.”
2008-11-20
