Chopin Foundation of the United States
Presents
Chopin Salon Concert
Featuring pianist Juana Zayas
Juror of the 2010 National Chopin Piano Competition
Sunday, April 15, 2012, 4:00 PM
La Gorce Country Club, 5685 Alton Rd, Miami Beach
Chopin members free; guests $75.
Reservations necessary at 305.868.0624 or [email protected].
Program: From Chopin through Scarlatti and Debussy to Ravel
Ms. Zayas just returned from a triumphant tour of Poland, playing the Ravel Concerto in G with the Łodz Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra and two recitals in Wrocław. She is regularly invited by the prestigious Serate Musicali to give recitals at Verdi Hall in Milan and has performed with various orchestras in America and Europe. Her performances have been broadcast by National Public Radio and New York‘s WQXR.
In his 1999 review of all the 20th century recordings of the Chopin Etudes, Op. 10 and Op. 25, Donald Manildi declared Juana Zayas’s recording to be the best of all. This aptly confirmed what New York Times’ chief critic Harold Schonberg, having heard her perform these virtuoso pieces at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, wrote: “It was altogether an imposing feat, and it may be that we have with us a Chopinist to the manner born . . .” Of her recording of the Chopin Preludes, Schonberg further stated: “She filters Chopin’s notes through a fertile mind, with a very personal but never overdone kind of romanticism that looks back to the great pianists of a previous age.”
Juana Zayas’s prodigious talent emerged early. At age seven, she gave her first solo recital, and four years later, graduated from the Peyrellade Conservatory in her native Havana with a performance of the Schumann Concerto. She left Cuba to attend the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris where she studied piano with Joseph Benvenuti and chamber music with René Le Roy, taking First Prize in both. Ms. Zayas, who raised three sons and has five grand children, lives in West Caldwell, NJ.
Ms. Zayas’s critically acclaimed recordings have been released on compact disc by Music & Arts, Albany, and ZMI labels. In her latest Soirée Italienne CD, Ms. Zayas demonstrates “her superb control and well-executed embellishments in Bach’s Italian Concerto,” a “zestful spirit to the [Clementi] Sonata in C”, and an “amazing staccato technique” in Paganini-Liszt Etude Nr. 5.
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Jadwiga Viga Gewert
Executive Director
Chopin Foundation of the U.S.
1440 79th Street Cswy, Suite 117
Miami, FL 33141
ph. 305/868-0624 fax 305/865-5150