Podcast appearances and mentions of charlie albright

Cecelia Sharpe talks with pianist and composer Charlie Albright who is performing March 23, 2025 at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial presented by ProMusica Detroit.

Mike Smith welcomes Julia Tai, Music Director of Missoula Symphony to The Lunchbox . The  new season for Missoula Symphony kicks off with "Struggle & Triumph" September 23rd & 24th at the Dennison Theatre in Missoula.  This will be an evening of power, emotion, and triumph, featuring Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha Overture, which draws inspiration from the 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by American Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Hiawatha Overture also draws inspiration from the soundtrack to Rachmaninoff's journey out of depression and darkness, and ascension into true joy, performed by rising star pianist, Charlie Albright. The evening concludes with Florence Price's Symphony No. 3 in C minor, which was commissioned and composed at the height of the Great Depression and expresses stylistic themes at times reminiscent of Wagner, and at other times, Shostakovich.Celebrate resilience, triumph, and true expressions of the human spirit through this collection of inspiring music!Tickets available at: missoulasymphony.org

I speak to Charlie Albright about his journey from being a pianist since three-and-a-half, to graduating Harvard and Juliard, to playing at some of the biggest venues in the world as a concert pianist.  Please visit his website https://www.charliealbright.com to connect, learn, and book. I saw Charlie perform live and it was a magical experience. Charlie also was kind enough to record an amazing improvision of a lullaby I wrote called, Cutie Baby. You can hear my version and his piano version. https://www.financialsamurai.com/cutie-baby-a-samurai-lullaby/ Finally, Charlie provided his thoughts on creativity and how to be more creative in my post, How To Be More Creative. https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-be-more-creative/ Subscribe To Financial Samurai Join 60,000+ others and sign up for my free weekly newsletter so you never miss a thing. You can also get every post I publish immediately in your inbox by signing up here.  If you enjoyed this podcast, I'd appreciate a great review and a share with your friends!

Pianist Charlie Albright joins us to discuss perhaps Beethoven’s most well known and most beloved solo piano pieces, Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, “Moonlight.” How does an artist find new things in a work that is, arguably, overplayed? Rei Hotoda and Charlie Albright explore the work in depth, and Charlie plays. We’ll also hear pianist Awadagin Pratt performing Piano Concerto No.3 in c minor with the Fresno Philharmonic.

This week we feature The Newport Music Festival's Charlie Albright Concert. We talk to Charlie and listen to some of the music that he'll play in the concert on October 12, 7:00 PM, at the Chandler in Newport. For more information you can go to www.newportmusic.org​

The world of classical music is changing. Some are predicting the demise of orchestral events. Others see opportunity in social media and a new sense of engagement between the audience and musicians.

On today's show, I'm so thrilled to talk to the amazing Pianist, Composer and Improviser, Charlie Albright! Hailed as “among the most gifted musicians of his generation” with a “dazzling natural keyboard affinity” who “made quite an impression” by the Washington Post, American pianist/composer/improviser Charlie Albright has been praised for his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality” by The New York Times, and his “extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap” with his “ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within” by the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and Gilmore Young Artist Award, Albright won the Ruhr Klavier Festival Young Artist Award presented by Marc-André Hamelin (Germany) and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In addition to performing, Albright is sought after as a speaker, masterclass instructor, teacher, and competition judge.  His debut commercial recording, Vivace, has sold thousands of copies worldwide and the first of a 3-part Schubert Series of live, all-Schubert recordings was released in 2017. Recently, he made his Main Stage Carnegie debut with the American Symphony in January, and just returned from the Bergen International Festival in Norway (he was asked to fill in for Lang Lang after an injury in 2017, and returned for a sold-out solo recital and to do the honors of performing the yearly Grieg Concerto at Grieg Concert Hall. ----- 1:45 - Did you go to piano on your own as a child? 3:17 - Do you have perfect pitch? Can you play anything you hear? 3:45 - Did you play piano for pleasure or did parents make him practice? 4:38 - Did your piano teacher help train your ear? 6:07 - You can play the organ? 6:18 - When did you start to compose and improvise? 6:58 - Did you know theory at the time or was it all by sound? 8:15 - What kind of music did you listen to growing up? 9:13 - Favorite records or albums or artists growing up? 10:27 - Was it a shock to learn to read after playing by ear? 11:53 - What pieces did your teacher assign to you? 12:55 - Did playing Chopin influence your creativity? 14:01 - Do you have knowledeg in figured bass? 14:58 - The drawbacks of music theory 16:20 - Does the sound come first instead of the analysis? 16:27 - Did you experiment with music, harmonically? 17:42 - Do you take ideas from pieces you play? 18:10 - Give an example of taking an idea from a piece of music 19:33 - Can you imitate composer's trademark sounds? 20:26 - How did the training in Harvard and New England Conservatory influence you? 22:11 - What did the teachers do to develop you? 23:04 - What's been the reaction of your peers to your improvisation? 24:22 - How much time do you devote to repertoire vs improvisation? 25:44 - How did you feel about the music theory study at university? 26:12 - How did the music theory influence your approach to composition? 27:16 - When did you start seriously composing? 27:58 - Meeting Yo-Yo Ma for the first time 29:33 - Were you an undergraduate at the time? 29:53 - What was the rehearsal like? 30:41 - Was Yo-Yo Ma aware of your improvisational ability at the time? 31:33 - Did you feel like changing notes in the score for the concert with Yo-Yo Ma? 32:03 - Any interesting Yo-Yo Ma anecdotes? 32:57 - What is your temperament like? Do you get nervous? 36:34 - Talking about Marc-André Hamelin 37:49 - Was was the phone call with Hamelin like? 38:13 - Substituting for Lang Lang in a concert 39:30 - What do you think of Grieg and his music? 40:24 - Talking about improvising cadenzas 41:38 - What is going through your mind when you improvise in a cadenza? 43:17 - Main Stage Carnegie Hall debut with the Vivian Fine Piano Concerto 44:29 - Performing Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" as an Encore at Carnegie Hall 46:41 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Jazz Musicians 47:36 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Classical Composers before 1900 47:59 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Etudes 48:12 - HOT SEAT: If you could improvise with anyone in history, who would it be? 48:30 - HOT SEAT: If you could meet Chopin, what would you ask him? 49:05 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Composers after 1900 49:16 - HOT SEAT: Proudest Music Moment 50:24 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Piano Concertos 50:49 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Small Piano Pieces 51:18 - Do you know many of your concert pianist peers in the world? 52:45 - Do you know Lang Lang? 52:53 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Concert Pianists 53:21 - Talking about Emanuel Ax with the Avery Fisher Career Grant 53:47 - Advice on Classical Improvisation 55:47 - How to get started with Classical Improvisation 57:45 - Upcoming projects in 2019 58:36 - Social Media Links

The world of classical music is changing. Some are predicting the demise of orchestral events. Others see opportunity in social media and a new sense of engagement between the audience and musicians.

Works by Mozart performed by Charlie Albright on February 14, 2016. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: 12 Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman” Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: 9 Variations on a Minuet by Duport, K. 575 Many of us think of “improvisation” as a modern concept, usually linked to jazz. But throughout the centuries, so-called “classical” keyboard players were often expected to improvise, whether they were vamping at the organ to fill time during a church service or creating a spontaneous piano version of an opera score for friends and patrons gathered around a salon. Indeed, there are many accounts that suggest that Mozart—now thought of for his notated scores—relied heavily on improvisation in creating and even performing his own works. All to say, Mozart was a master of the art of improvised variation. Today, we’ll hear two notated works that hint at the sort of thing we might have heard, had we been so lucky to be in the room when Mozart was improvising at the keyboard. First, we’ll hear his 12 Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.” Next, we’ll hear 9 Variations on a Minuet by Duport, based on a cello sonata theme.

Works for piano by Handel and Brahms performed by Charlie Albright, piano on October 2, 2016. Handel: Chaconne in G Major, HWV. 435 Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24 This podcast starts with the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel, in more ways than one. The first work on the podcast is, indeed, by Handel: his Chaconne in G Major, a set of about 20 very brief variations, each built on a recurring eight-bar bass line. Following that, we have another set of variations on a theme by Handel, this time written by another composer: Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Opus 24. This piano piece has a distinctly Romantic sensibility, but Brahms clearly delighted in uncovering and augmenting the many musical possibilities present in Handel’s fairly simple theme. When Brahms published the piece in in 1860s, it stood apart from the musical explorations of contemporaries like Wagner and Liszt; it seemed much more related to composers who came before—a homage, perhaps, to Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations or Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. We’ll hear both works—Handel’s Chaconne, and Brahms’ Variations on Handel—performed by pianist Charlie Albright.

Works for solo piano by Beethoven, performed by Charlie Albright, piano on March 27, 2016.Beethoven: Sonata in E Major, Op. 109Beethoven: 15 Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major on an original theme "Eroica Variations" Op 35You know when you just can’t get a tune out of your head? Well, starting around 1800, Beethoven seems to have had the tune from the finale of his ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, stuck in his head for quite some time. After first appearing in the ballet, the melody—which would come be known as his “eroica” or “heroic” theme—popped up repeatedly in his works in the early 1800s.As a sort of introduction to the variations, we’ll hear another Beethoven piano work: a late sonata, the Sonata in E Major, opus 109. Unlike many of Beethoven’s other late works, this one is quite compact. The piece has a slightly frenetic quality at times, hopping between different themes, different time signatures, different moods. The final movement is, again, a set of variations.Both performances we’ll hear are taken from a concert given by the young pianist Charlie Albright at the Gardner in March 2016.

Works for solo piano by Schubert performed by Charlie Albright, piano on March 24, 2013.Schubert: Impromptus, D. 899, Op. 90Schubert: Sonata in B-Flat Major, D. 960In the late 1820s, all of Franz Schubert’s hard work and struggle seemed finally to be paying off. His performances were increasingly well received, and he was at the height of his compositional powers. Yet, even as his career took off, his health began to deteriorate, and his music increasingly focused on darker emotions. In 1827, Schubert wrote the four Impromptus for piano, his opus 90—the first work we’ll hear on this podcast. The title belies the seriousness and heft of these pieces, which are hardly light or off-the-cuff.The following fall, Schubert’s health took a turn for the worse—but his compositional output was seemingly unaffected. Sometime that year, he began sketching out a series of piano sonatas, including the one we’ll hear: his very last instrumental work, the Sonata in B-Flat Major, published posthumously as D. 960. These sonatas weren’t really understood or appreciated during the 19th century, when they were published; musicians and critics found them structurally aimless, too long, difficult to make sense of. Today, the sonatas are widely recognized as among the composer’s most powerful works, imbued with a sense of the composer’s reckoning with life’s biggest questions, including his own mortality.We’ll hear both the Impromptus and the Sonata in B-flat played by pianist Charlie Albright, in a recording from the first of three concerts that he played at the Gardner highlighting Schubert’s music for piano.

Works by Schubert for voice and piano performed by Mark Padmore, with Jonathan Biss on October 12, 2014 and for solo piano performed by Charlie Albright on September 29, 2013.Schubert: Ständchen from SchwanengesangSchubert: Sonata in A Major, D. 959In 1828, as Schubert’s health was rapidly deteriorating, the composer entered a period of phenomenal compositional productivity. In the final months of his life, he would write many works that were published posthumously and recognized to be among his finest achievements. Two sets stand out as particularly notable: his final three piano sonatas, and Schwanengesang, a cycle of songs whose title translates as “Swan Song.”We’ll hear one of the piano sonatas on this podcast–number 959, the sonata in A Major, performed by Charlie Albright. Schubert set out to write this sonata, and the other two in the set, shortly after the death of Beethoven, who had long cast a formidable shadow over the genre. The finale pays tribute to Beethoven, with a nod to the final movement of his 16th piano sonata.Before the sonata, we’ll hear a song from the Schwanengesang cycle: “Staendchen,” or serenade. The singer implores his beloved to join him in the grove at nighttime, amidst the rustling leaves. There is an undertone of foreboding, though, as he alludes to the pain of love and the prying eyes of others.

The Washington Post calls him “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation.” Robert Schumann, trans. Franz Liszt:  Widmung Frederic Chopin: Etudes, Op. 25:  No. 1 in A-flat, No. 2 in F major, No. 7 in C-sharp minor, No. 9 in G-flat major, and No. 12 in C minor. Charlie Albright, piano Recorded at WCRB's Fraser Performance Studio on May 5, 2011.

Works for piano by Franz Schubert and Adolf Schulz-Evler performed by Charlie Albright on September 29, 2013 and October 31, 2010.Schubert: Moments musicaux, D. 780, Op. 94Adolf Schulz-Evler: Concert Arabesques on "The Beautiful Blue Danube"Schubert’s Moments musicaux, a set of six piano pieces, are among his most beloved piano works. And, as it would happen, they were also among his last. It is both incredible and saddening to imagine what he might have done, had he continued to compose for several decades more, but Moments musicaux stands as an admirable, if premature, final accomplishment, with its six contrasting movements, recalling everything from Eastern European dances to Bach-like passagework.Perhaps there is an emotional truth to the title Moments musicaux, if not a temporal one: within the little world Schubert creates in each movement, one can easily imagine losing track of time.The pianist we’ll hear on this podcast is Charlie Albright. And he’ll close out the program, after the Schubert, with a piece that really allows his incredible technical gifts to shine: Adolf Schulz-Evler’s Concert Arabesques on “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” Wait a few moments: you’ll easily pick out the tune once the dazzling introduction is through. The eleven-minute piece flies by in a cloud of technical wizardry. Expect fireworks.

Works for solo piano by Schubert and an improvisation by Albright, performed by Charlie Albright, piano on November 17, 2013.Schubert: Sonata in C Minor, D. 958Albright: ImprovisationOur program today has as its centerpiece Schubert’s final notes – his sonata in C minor, D. 958, one of the last three sonatas he wrote.Schubert had been suffering from health problems for some time, likely complications of syphilis, but in the fall of 1828 he took a turn for the worse. He moved to his brother’s house outside the city, hoping the fresh air might alleviate his illness. He never recovered, but he also never stopped writing music. He composed up until the very end.Whether Schubert knew quite how serious his condition was at the time he was writing these sonatas is debatable, but it is tempting to read these final three pieces as a musical reckoning with death. The sonata we’ll hear is the first of the group, and it is perhaps the most emotionally stormy of the bunch.The pianist in the recording we’ll hear is Charlie Albright, a young musician whose performances we’ve featured previously. After the sonata, we’ll hear some of Charlie’s own music: an improvisation in the style of Schubert recorded at the same recital, in November of 2013.

Work for solo piano by Schubert performed by Charlie Albright, piano.Schubert: Impromptus, D. 935, Op. 142No. 1 in F MinorNo. 2 in A-flat MajorNo. 3 in B-flat MajorNo. 4 in F MinorWith a title like “Impromptus,” one expects this set of four piano pieces by Schubert to be a bit spontaneous. But anyone expecting a Keith Jarret-like improvisation will be surprised to discover how structured and planned these “Impromptus” feel.Indeed, there was some disagreement, after the fact, about the justification for the title “Impromptus.” Robert Schumann – a friend of Schubert’s – apparently maintained that the piece was really a four-movement sonata in disguise, broken up and named by Schubert’s publisher in an effort to encourage more sales.The four Impromptus are varied in character and structure, but each does seem to create a particular mood or emotional landscape, and then explores that landscape, whether through the straightforward theme-and-variations structure of the third impromptu or the more structured, sonata-like form of the first impromptu. And in this way, at least, it’s perhaps not so far off from the idea of improvisation.We’ll hear these works performed by Charlie Albright, a talented young pianist who recently graduated from New England Conservatory and Harvard’s joint degree program and is now earning his Artist Diploma at Juilliard.

Works for cello and piano performed by Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello and Noreen Polera, piano and solo piano performed by Charlie Albright.Schumann: Fantasiestucke, Op. 73Schumann: Carnaval, Op. 9Robert Schumann was really the quintessential Romantic composer—with a capital ‘R’. Not content to write music that was focused on formal brilliance or technical sophistication, he wanted his work to capture and convey emotion, to unify music with other art forms—especially the written word. In many ways, he wanted his music to tell a story.But his stories were rarely simple. His favorite plots often involved fictional characters or archetypes, but most frequently two somewhat abstract characters of his own invention: Florestan and Eusebius. They were his alter egos, depictions of two different aspects of his own self: Florestan, the passionate, extroverted side, and Eusebius, the reflective, introverted side. We’ll hear from both today when we listed to Schumann’s opus 9, Carnaval for solo piano, in which he depicts not only Florestan and Eusebius but also a gaggle of literary and real-life personalities.Before we dive into that somewhat unruly work, we’ll listen to something a bit more straightforward, also by Schumann: his Fantasiestucke, opus 73. You’ll hear this performance by cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan and pianist Noreen Polera. The piece is lyrical and fairly brief, at about 10 minutes—a good foil for the carnival to follow.

Works for keyboard and string sextet performed by Charlie Albright, piano, and Musicians from Marlboro.Janáček: Sonata 1.X.1905Dvořák: Sextet in A Major; Op. 48, B. 80Today, we’ll hear from two important Czech composers: Dvořák, whose idiomatic Slavonic pieces were among the first to put Czech music on the Western classical “map,” and Janáček, whose inventive work brought it into the 20th century. We begin with Janáček’s Sonata 1.X.1905, an emotional epitaph written to commemorate František Pavlí, killed October 1st, 1905, in demonstrations in Brno. The demonstrators were calling on the government to open a university in the city; the peaceful protest turned violent when Pavlí, a carpenter, was bayoneted by soldiers. Janáček’s emotion about the incident, and also his reaction to it, is clear from the music. Next, we’ll hear Dvořák’s String Sextet in A Major. Written in 1878, around the same time as the wildly successful Slavonic Rhapsodies and Dances, the sextet, too, draws on traditional Czech forms and styles. The middle two movements are modeled on two such folk sources: the Dumka, a thoughtful and melancholy epic ballad, and the Furiant, a fiery Bohemian dance.

Works for solo piano and string quartet performed by Charlie Albright, piano, and Musicians from Marlboro.Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 62 in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52Haydn: String Quartet in C minor, Op. 17, No. 4, Hob. III:28For most of his life, Haydn enjoyed a level of stability and comfort most contemporary composers would envy. For about 30 years, he was resident composer to the Esterhazy court, where he wrote musical works by the dozens and was given his own orchestra to perform them. Although much of his output was dictated by his employer’s needs, some works in his catalogue seem to have been personal projects, or at least destined for players beyond the palace walls. Haydn’s dazzling, ambitious Piano Sonata No. 62 was written for a close friend who was a virtuoso pianist in London, and is designed to show off not only her skill, but also the capabilities of the new, powerful English pianos. There’s no evidence that the second piece on today’s program, Haydn’s String Quartet in C minor, was ever played at the Esterhazy court. Haydn’s quartets were, however, performed in Vienna, where they were apparently a hit with audiences, according to contemporary critical accounts.