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"Incredible!"
"Not to be believed!"
"The surprise sensation of the year!" Press Responses to Ann Schein's First Recordings
"Ann Schein is beyond the everyday great..."
Die Welt, Berlin
"...controlled passion and an absolute technical command..."
New York Times
"Everything was so dazzlingly played, so musically right that all one could do was sit back in grasping admiration."
The Washington Post
"She imparted a powerful grandeur...her audience went wild."
The Sun, Baltimore
To hear pianist Ann Schein perform is a voyage of discovery.
The Washington Post
What modern pianist is usually associated with Chopin-Pollini, Perahia, Ashkenazy? Well, for several hundreds people who attended the Dumbarton Concert Series over the weekend, that pianist is Ann Schein. Her all Chopin program, performed last Friday and Saturday, was simply outstanding, both in its organization and in its performance. Ms. Schein's playing brought to mind both the poetic quality which Chopin was reputed to have had, as well as the power and passion that was the trademark of Franz Liszt's playing. At the same time, her beautiful tone and the rhythmic freedom of her playing reminded one of that great Chopin master, Arthur Rubinstein, with whom Ms. Schein studied.
WGMS, Dumbarton Concerts, Washington D.C.
If the perfect Chopin pianist did indeed exist, he or she would be both elegant and aristocratic and would combine spontaneity with effortless brilliance. Ann Schein comes close. Schein, a New Yorker with a long international career, performed Sunday with the Oregon Symphony at the Arlene Schnitzer Hall. She played Chopin's Piano Concerto, No. 2 in F Minor, a work that gives pianists plenty of opportunity to show their colors.
The three-movement concerto contains extended passages that alternate between glittering effect and soulful, expressiveness. Drama drives the piece, but graceful ornamentation makes it sing. Schein is a former student of the great Chopin player Arthur Rubinstein and it showed. A self-effacing performer, she seemed perfectly at home in the stylized 19 th-century language of poetic melancholy. Schein excelled in the slow movement. This alone was worth the concert. Her smooth cantabile phrasing spun as fine a filigree as anyone's. Portland , Oregon
"Schein has made the Romantic literature the centerpiece of her repertoire, hardly surprising considering her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess. She has lived with these major Schumann works long and intimately, and it shows in her performances as well as in her descriptive notes. With fluent keyboard technique at her disposal, Schein invests these works with poetic imagination and romantic flair. Her readings tend to be straightforward and without exaggeration, but sensitive and subtly nuanced. The recorded sound is close and vivid, adding to the enjoyment of this disc."
Fanfare Magazine
The piece d'occasion was the famous Sergei Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3, played by the winsome and world-acclaimed artist, Ann Schein. It is hoped that this commentator will be forgiven for a personal reference, but he is perhaps one of a very few in attendance at the concert to have heard a real live concert by Sergei Rachmaninoff as soloist in a production of his Concerto No. 3. It was a great, great experience, but not patently superior to that of Ann Schein. From the very beginning of her performance, she deftly drew her audience to an existential observation tower from which it witnessed a dazzling display of genius at work; a display of mastery over one of the most technically forbidding compositions in the library of piano concerti. The extended stomping, clapping and shouting at the end of the performance was a rousing tribute to the awesome artistry and talent of Ann Schein. Greenwich, Conn.
Ann Schein's performance of this almost impossible piece was sensational, but there was something more - a spiritual presence.
Aspen Daily News, Aspen, CO
Ann Schein provided a consistent underpinning to the other musicians during the “Trout” quintet, setting an even tempo which controlled the pace of the several movements. But her playing also defined the emotional content of the quintet, whose inexhaustible profundities were well plumbed. The third movement in particular was presented as music of unalloyed joy.
www.allartsreview4u.com, Washington D.C.
Jessye Norman graced the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Monday night with a distinctly seasonal program. Robed in billows of purple and black, she sang, via Strauss and Berg, of youth and spring; and, for these seasons of Lent and Passover, she essayed the Catholic ecstasies of Oliver Messiaen and the brooding devotions od Ravel's "Deux Melodies Herbraiques." Her mastery of her voice is complete. Her understanding of her music is total. Her imagination encompasses a thousand timbral colors. And her generosity is inexhaustible. The usual word for a singer of her individuality and attainment is "diva," Italian for "goddess." Norman's performance suggests, instead, a priestly analogy. Certainly she sang her German love poetry with the appearance of deep feeling. But her conception of love in these songs was a Wagnerian, Masonic one. It had all to do with appetite, or even gender. The burningly intense Messiaen and Ravel were the best scores on the program. But the music was in Norman – and in Ann Schein, strong of mind, ear and hand, a glittering partner and pianist.
April 12, 1995 Washington Post
Schein' s piano delivers Romanticism - Equipped with great warmth and technique, pianist Ann Schein blazed through 100 years of Romanticism last night.
This listner revealed in the cascading octaves, graceful arpeggios, and pristine passage work. Schein had at her command all the resources that a demanding program required.
The recital opened with a buoyant performance of Schubert 's early Sonata in A Major. Composed during the happy summer that also produced the Trout Quintet, the sonata abounds in melody, and Schein delighted in the work 's tender interplay of major and minor. There was always power enough, but did it distort Schubert 's exquisite line.
Schein then ruined her attention to another towering figure of the Romantic era, Rachmaninoff. She chose two preludes and two rarely heard transcriptions, the Minuet of Bizet and the Hopak of Mussorgsky. Now out of fashion, transcriptions were still very trendy at the turn of the century when Rachmaninoff wrote them for his own use. Schooled in a tradition very close to that of the composer, Schein was obviously in her element. In fact, the pianist 's technique helped one appreciate the formidable prowess of Rachmaninoff as both arranger and performer. The first half of the recital ended with Prokofiev 's Sonata No. 3, a brilliant work in one movement that bursts with kinetic energy. The sonata oscillates between its love and disdain for the Romantic ethos. Schein tackled the craggy score with an abandon that rested on careful analysis and superb control. The second half was devoted entirely to Chopin 's Sonata No. 3 in B Minor. Fraught with technical challenges, the work also manipulates traditional form to suit the composer 's expressive needs. The Chopin selections were an ideal conclusion to a recital that honored the Romantic spirit.
Nov. 16, 1991 Jennifer Weiniger
Telegram & Gazette Reviewer
Her broad musicianship reflects the legacy of her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess. With the influence of such teachers, it is no wonder that Schein is famous for her interpretations of Chopin. Throughout the 1980 season, in Lincoln Center 's Alice Tully Hall, she presented the major Chopin repertoire in the first Chopin cycle heard in New York in 35 years. Daringly, she opened with that heroic tour de force, Chopin 's Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat, Op. 61. She said that, in this, the composer portrays :the heroic – almost like the struggle between good and evil." Full ranges of color, dynamic expression, and melody were exposed. Where many recitals end, she began and then expanded. What a treat it was to hear all of the 24 Preludes of Op. 28! Each gem was presented with unaffected simplicity.
Ann Schein' s Radiant Piano Recital at Elon University
By William Thomas Walker
Ann Schein, appearing in the Portland Stat University Piano Recital Series on Saturday night, performed the music of the three "Sh 's: Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. These composers, who died prematurely at the age of 31, 46 and 39, respectively, transformed piano composition from Classical abstract sonata movements to Romantic miniature character pieces strung together like charms on a bracelet. Schein brought her Arthur Rubinstein-trained technique to Portland from the Peabody School of Music, where she teaches. Schein played the Impromptus fluidly; her left hand promoted subtle changes in harmony beneath the busy canopy of scales and arpeggios in the right hand. Schein saved her best playing for the second half of the concert. A cross between the precision of Maurizio Pollini and the creativity of Rubinstein, Schein performed Chopin 's enigmatic Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58, better than I have ever heard anyone play it. Her tone, touch and interpretation were exhilarating. The formless first movement, often criticized for its undeveloped themes, worked in Schein 's hands. The second movement Scherzo was played correctly fast, with a pensive, nocturnal slow middle section. The Largo prepared the way for one of the greatest final movements ever composed. Schein opened the Finale with a terrific crescendo of open octaves. This demonic rondo, which uses the middle range of the piano in an agonizing game of melodic tag, raged in Schein 's brilliant playing. The audience erupted in spirited applause.
Pianist shows how to ' play with heart'
By Nora Beck (Dec. 6, 1999) The Oregonian
In perusing the background of an artist, it's tempting to ascribe performance qualities to that person's teachers. So, since Ann Schein studied with Arthur Rubinstein, the vitality in her method of playing can be credited to him. And since she studied with Dame Myra Hess, Schein's patrician and elegant approach must come from her. And since she studied with the lesser known and yet distinguished Polish-American Mieczyslaw Munz, the Romantic sweep in her pianism originated with him. Well, most likely the training is a factor in this veteran's artistry; but she has long assimilated lessons and made of them just the contextual fabric for the totality of her amazing keyboard mastery. Schein is a wonder who brought Wednesday evening's cheering audience in Auer Hall to its collective feet, this following a recital of the most demanding sort. For the dozens of young hopefuls from the IU Piano Academy who were present, what she offered should have served as a model for them. She made of every item on her program a highlight, starting with two of Schubert's Impromptus, the Nos. 2 and 3 from Opus 90, in E-Flat and G-Flat Major. To these she gave that important yet elusive sense of spontaneity while also emphasizing the song-like nature of the music. About 40 minutes of Schein's recital were devoted to the "Davidsbundelertanze" ("Dances .of the Band of David") by Schumann a set of 18 pieces that, like Chopin's Etudes, test a pianist's technical abilities as well as the capacity to color performance with a wide range of moods. Schumann called them "character pieces" and each, indeed, evokes an atmospheric essence. In Schein's hands, they were magic, a woven web of suggestive sentiments one could dream awake to. After intermission, Schein turned first to a pair of fragrant samples from masters of Impressionism: Ravel's 1905 Sonatine and Debussy's 1904 "L'isle joyeuse." The sounds that rose from the piano here gained a luminous quality, and the crispness of touch that had marked the earlier Romantic fare switched to a more flowing nature, allowing for cascades of notes to escape from the pianist's fingers in rolling waves. Schein's mastery of music and instrument remained total. And that, certainly, held as she concluded with the Tarantella from the Italian portion of Liszt's "Annees de Pelerinage," a display piece designed to test the composer's own legendary technique at the piano with Olympian demands in the forms of chordal passages and race-away scales and finger tricks doable only by the most proficient. Schein handled them with aplomb, as if they had been no problem at all to prepare, all just in an evening's work.
MUSIC REVIEW: ‘ANN SCHEIN RECITAL'
Pianist a remarkable talent
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer, Bloomington, IN (June 22, 2007)
the pianist Ann Schein, whose “amazing keyboard mastery” transformed music of Schubert, Ravel, Debussy, Liszt, and – most of all – Schumann (his “Davidsbundelertanze”) into one of the most satisfying recitals I’ve ever experienced.
MUSIC BEAT
Past, present and future came together in 2007
Peter Jacobi H-T columnist (Dec.30,2007 )
It was the second time in less than a week that weather resulted in my losing out on musical pleasure. On the previous Sunday, delays in Chicago caused a late return to Indianapolis and, consequently, a missed opportunity to hear the Camerata Orchestra do the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto with pianist Ann Schein. I dearly wanted to hear this artist again, having fallen under her spell last summer when she gave an unforgettable recital in Auer Hall. A concerned music fan called the next day, expressing hope that I had been away and was not ill, since she did not see me in the Bloomington North Auditorium for that concert. I assured her I was OK. She assured me that it had been a very special occasion, a viewpoint several others have shared with me since.
Weather thwarts music, attendees more than once
Meanwhile, opera travels directly to the big screen
Peter Jacobi, H-T Reviewer (Dec. 17, 2007)
Fifty years ago, at age 16, Aspen Music Festival and School artist-faculty pianist Ann Schein first performed Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. The concert launched a career that has spun off from the piece Schein describes as having everything – “drama, tenderness, beauty, fire, volcanic temperament, and color.” Since then, she has explored it countless times. “I have played it in at least forty different countries,” recalls Schein, who will play it again for the first time in five years at the 6 pm Thursday, June 29 Aspen Concert Orchestra concert. “It’s been a great friend – I love it in a way I cannot express in words. Each time I play it I think, ‘Am I going to play it again?’ So this summer is just a gift for me.” When Schein was 14, her teacher Mieczyslaw Munz taught her the piece, “telling me it would develop my hand strength and my technique, but that I would never play it,” she says. Rachmaninoff had dedicated the piece to Munz’s friend, Joseph Hoffman. It took Schein more than a year to learn it. Then, she recalls, one day Munz asked her if she would like to play it with an orchestra. And that, she says, is “what began this journey.” Two years later she played it at Peabody, and the next year – when she was 17 – she performed it for her formal concert debut, in Mexico City. In the years since, it has traveled with her around the world. From the Mexico City concert, to her many performances in London (including at the BBC Proms in Royal Albert Hall), to tours of the former Soviet Union, to an appearance at Rio de Janeiro, Rachmaninoff’s concerto helped shape her memories and perceptions of the places and people she has encountered. “The actual performing of [Rachmaninoff’s Third] in so many different circumstances gives it experience,” she says. “And I can’t really describe that.” Her debut in Mexico City, for instance, followed on the hells of a massive earthquake. “The night before I was a total basket case,” she says. “I had done it the first time with no fear, and the second time I thought, ‘What am I doing?’” At 3 am on the day she was to play the earthquake hit, and so at 11 am she went with her parents to the concert hall to see if the performance was still happening. “There was the orchestra, and the conductor,” she says. “About 1,00 people came in a state of shock, wanting to hear the music. I totally forgot my nerves because of the emotional experience of seeing all the people needing the music.”
Schein revives a memory-laden Rachmaninoff
The legendary ‘Rach 3’ gets an airing this week at Thursday’s ACO concert
BY Sysannah Luthi, Festival Focus Writer (June 26, 2006)
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