Pianist Keys Up for Gigs All Over ; Bound for NMSO, Natasha Paremski Plays New York, U.K. And Russia
URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/venue/495587venue09-24-06.htm

By DAVID STEINBERG Journal Staff Writer

September 24, 2006

Good things are happening to teenage pianist Natasha Paremski, and they're not all in the music hall.   In March Paremski joined Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, in a benefit performance for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Classical Action, a performing arts organization that also raises money to fight AIDS.   The benefit, held at a restored Manhattan theater, involved readings from the romantic correspondence of 19th-century composers Robert and Clara Schumann with Paremski and other musicians playing the Schumanns' music.   She was in an encore performance of the same event, but this time the setting was more formal -- at Windsor Castle, an official home of the Queen of England -- and in front of an audience that included Prince Charles and supermodel Claudia Schiffer.   "It was a fancy benefit with 50 people," Paremski said in a phone interview from her New York City home.   She's performing in a similar event for a charity in November at England's 13thcentury Salisbury Cathedral but for a larger audience.   "That's one of the exciting things I've been doing," Paremski said of these special performances.   In July she recorded Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's piano music for the score of a BBC television documentary on the composer's life.   That involved recording excerpts of his music in a studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. Earlier this month she returned to that city to listen to the on-location playback of the soundtrack.   As for public performances, the Moscow native has been giving concerts at Wigmore Hall in London, The Louvre in Paris and on tour with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.   In three concerts next weekend in Albuquerque, she will perform W.A. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in E minor with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.   "It's really interesting because it is one of his most dramatic concertos and it's like the beginning of Romanticism (in the history of music). It's not early Mozart by any means," Paremski said.   "And it's an interesting work not because it's from a particular event in his life, but it's a psychological work, a spiritual work. It's so dark and mysterious and with contrasting moods."   Some of the textures that Mozart created in the piece, she added, are poignant and otherworldly.   "It inspires awe," said the 19-year-old Paremski. She last played it when she was 11. Paremski, who performed with the NMSO last year, has received the Gilmore Young Artist Award as well as the top prize of the 2002 Bronislaw Kaper Award sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Young Artists in Carnegie Hall -- 2000 International Piano Festival.   Also on the NMSO program is Hector Berlioz's Te Deum.   Presenting this work will be the symphony, the NMSO Chorus and the choruses of Albuquerque Academy, Sandia Prep and Manzano Day School.   Berlioz wrote the work for massed instrumental and vocal forces to take advantage of the acoustics of a large space. It debuted at Paris' church of St.-Eustache in 1855.   The composer included children's voices for the opening and closing choruses.   If you go   WHAT: New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Guillermo Figueroa with pianist Natasha Paremski   WHEN and WHERE: 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29, and 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, at Popejoy Hall, UNM Center for the Arts; and 2 p.m. Oct. 1 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth SW   HOW MUCH: Tickets are $11 to $57 for the Popejoy