One week before the Material Gal, Madonna and her estimated 1.5 million fans are about to invade the beaches of Copacabana, the theater of Rio de Janeiro´s iconic Hotel Copacabana Palace is hosting a series of young virtuoso pianists.
Friday evening (26 April) Turkish wiz, Can Sarac, 16, astonished local audiences with an impeccable technique which displayed the “Sonata in B” minor by Franz Liszt, “Six Pieces for Piano” plus “Two Intermezzi” by Johannes Brahms and Chopin´s Ballades 1 to 4.
Two encores including a striking contemporary work where Turkish prodigy plucked the strings inside the YAMAHA piano concluded an incredible recital for a pianist who started his studies at five-years of age and studied at the Istanbul Music Conservatory prior to continuing his studies at the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich.
Where this great talent and prize-winning pianist goes next is the question: a great international career or the confinements of the teaching profession or both somewhere in the world among innumerous “great “pianists.
Once called Pianolandia, Rio de Janeiro and Brazil have a great tradition of pianists from Nelson Freire, Arnaldo Cohen, Artur Moreira Lima, Jacques Klein, Joao Assis Brasil to Magda Klein, Joao Ortiz to Guiomar Novaes.
So, there is indeed an audience for piano recitals in this nation where Chopin and Rachmaninoff seem to be played more than Villa Lobos and Francisco Mignone!
The almost packed public on hand was not the kind one encounters at Sala Cecilia Mereiles and Rio´s Municipal Theater but more from Carioca socialite world, especially notable from the fashion- minded dresses and clicks of a photographer on hand rather than somber attire one encounters at most local “erudite” music concerts.
The notable series continues Thursday, 2 May ,20hs with piano recitals by Italy´s Massimiliano Grotto,27, playing Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven.
And one day before the Material Gal performs in Copa, or Friday ,3 May, Russia´s Dimitry Shishkin,32, performs Cesar Franck, Schubert, Mozart and Prokofiev.
Ticket prices range from 50 to 300 reais and considering that Rio´s city center at night can be dangerous,the Copacabana Palace theater is well worth visiting to hear “good” music.
The four piano recitals,which began Thursday,25 April with a concert (Rameau, Mozart, Debussy, Liszt, Scriabin, and Tchaikovsky) by Croatian pianist Jan Nikovichrec,23, are sponsored by the Russian GES-2 House of Culture in Moscow.
Hopefully the Copacabana Palace Theater—which re-opened in 2023 after being closed for 28 years—will continue to host concerts of “great” music in a neighborhood which once boasted a plethora of cultural activities but is now lacking theaters, cinemas and locales for “good” music other than the sounds of the Material Gal