pianist Alexandra Dariescu on 100 Nutcrackers, advocating for girls composers & a brand new path on the Leeds Worldwide Piano Competitors

Alexandra Dariescu (Picture: Nick Rutter)

Again in 2018, I met up with pianist Alexandra Dariescu [see my interview] to speak about The Nutcracker and I, her revolutionary stage efficiency mixing stay piano music and dance with digital animation, which she had debuted in 2017. Just lately, I met up with Alexandra once more to have a good time the truth that she reaches the a hundredth efficiency of The Nutcracker and I on 26 November 2024 on the Barbican‘s Milton Court docket and to speak about her persevering with advocacy for music by girls composers, together with growing a brand new string to her bow at this 12 months’s Leeds Worldwide Piano Competitors.

Alexandra developed the Nutcracker challenge partly because of her participation within the Guildhall College of Music and Drama‘s Inventive Entrepreneurs programme, and after we met up lately, it was in a niche throughout her teaching on the Guildhall College, the place she was working with college students who’re 24 to 27. She feels that that is the proper time for them to discover. She might help them open up their horizons to incorporate up to date music, music by girls and artists of color. She finds that the youthful technology is extra open to exploring, and he or she finds it slightly completely different to her time in school. She feels, in a wierd means, that the pandemic made individuals extra curious.

She continues to have a thirst and curiosity as an artist, eager to be taught and develop consistently, and as time passes her pursuits change. Additionally, she finds individuals at the moment are much more open-minded. She feels artists ought to reinvent themselves. She finds herself consistently studying from the orchestras that she performs with. Aside from the UK, excursions often contain enjoying the identical programme with an orchestra thrice, and each is completely different. She and the orchestral musicians get to know one another. Just lately in Australia, she was enjoying Mozart and after three performances she and the orchestra reached an actual chamber music really feel.

Alexandra Dariescu: The Nutcracker and I

Reaching the a hundredth Nutcracker is a big milestone. When the thought for the challenge first got here to her, she had no concept whether or not it could achieve success, whether or not it could come alive. It was the most important threat she had ever taken, and so they carried it off. She travelled with it internationally, discovering its message resonant, the thought of a younger woman having a dream, and naturally the music itself. It reaches audiences throughout, not simply these loving classical music, and it’s fairly one thing to have three or 4 generations of the identical household on the efficiency. How usually does that occur?

After the premiere, they modified a few of the animations to enhance issues. However at every efficiency, the magic by no means leaves. It begins along with her sitting in the dead of night, and the animation begins and the little woman depicted is her. As a baby, she had the dream of enjoying the piano however didn’t come from a musical household. She has now travelled the world with the work and its message to understand your dream.

Those that know Alexandra is not going to be stunned to be taught that she is at present cooking up one thing else, she is just not standing nonetheless. She is starting a brand new stage in her life, she loves creating and taking dangers. As an artist, you’ll want to showcase the stage you might be at at this second, one thing thrilling and scary.

Petroc Trelawney and Alexandra Dariescu presenting highlights from Leeds Worldwide Piano Competitors (Picture: Frances Marshall)

She has been working with the Leeds Worldwide Piano Competitors on an schooling challenge, Rely Me In trying on the hyperlink between music and maths. Created with conductor and presenter Timothy Redmond, the programme concerned performing the Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the youngsters offering the orchestral music by way of songs which Redmond had created. She liked it, the best way it was so interactive, informative, academic and enjoyable. The efficiency has been filmed for wider dissemination, and this helps convey music into colleges. For Alexandra this is identical imaginative and prescient as Nutcracker, music is just not elite. And in June 2025, she is becoming a member of Timothy Redmond and the London Symphony Orchestra for Rely Me In on the Barbican.

Arising out of this got here the invitation to affix Petroc Trelawney to current the semi-finals and finals of the Leeds competitors for the BBC. It wasn’t straightforward, however a beautiful problem, and he or she describes it as superb with an actual buzz, Petroc Trelawney was very beneficiant, and he or she hopes to be doing different such tasks.

Additionally on the Leeds competitors this 12 months they launched the Alexandra Dariescu Award recognising excellent performances of works by feminine composers. The primary time such a factor has been finished on the Leeds competitors. So most of the opponents selected to incorporate music by feminine composers, and this acts as an incentive to their adventurous spirit in selecting repertoire. The winner of the inaugural The Alexandra Dariescu Award on the Leeds Worldwide Piano Competitors was Junyan Chen.

Alexandra Dariescu and Junyan Chen winner of the inaugural Alexandra Dariescu Award

Alexandra believes in a collaborative method: becoming a member of forces with the Leeds competitors, introducing kids to the superb repertoire there may be, showcasing the repertoire on the competitors, and instructing at conservatoire. The award was an enormous coup and helped to encourage individuals to take new repertoire critically. She sees this as an entire course of, you can’t result in change in a single day. We have to work collectively to make change.

The music is there, we solely must open our eyes, it deserves to be heard, and he or she enjoys the analysis. She quotes a listing of potential concertos that should be included in programmes, works by Leokadiya Kashperova, Nadia Boulanger, Dora Pejačević, Amy Seashore, Germaine Tailleferre, Florence Value, and Doreen Carwithen. Alexandra will probably be enjoying Carwithen’s concerto, for piano and strings, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the Barbican in 2025.

She emphasizes that she is just not taking away from the superb music that we grew up with, however including to this, exhibiting the opposite facet of historical past. However it’s not at all times straightforward to programme these works, orchestras must promote tickets! It’s a must to persuade conductors and promoters, generally they go for it, which is superb, and generally not. One in every of her options is to incorporate two shorter concertos in a single night, female and male pairings, one well-known and one lesser-known. So Ravel and Tailleferre, as she studied with him. Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations and Nadia Boulanger, as Franck used to go to the Boulanger household and was Lili Boulanger’s first instructor. Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variations and Florence Value’s concerto, each had been written in 1934, a little-known truth. Florence Value performed her concerto as soon as, after which it disappeared. Amy Seashore wrote her concerto for herself, she did the primary efficiency, and the evaluations had been good however then the work was uncared for. Alexandra feels that it’s excessive time to revive it.

With such pairings, she will be able to collaborate with advertising, doing movies, telling tales, discovering hyperlinks and connections, utilizing social media, and inspiring audiences to return to listen to one thing new. It takes time for an unfamiliar work to be liked, you’ll want to repeat it, individuals must get to know the works, if there are radio performances and good recordings then this helps.

Between now and Christmas she has 28 Nutcrackers deliberate. She has simply come from Macau and will probably be performing in London, Paris (the place the 5 performances are offered out), Dijon, Dortmund, Potsdam, Ljubljana and Athens. As Alexandra sees it, inspiring so many extra younger individuals.

Alexandra Dariescu after Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 21 with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Fabien Gabel

She will probably be at St Martin within the Fields on 21 March 2025, performing Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Academy of St Martin within the Fields in a programme that additionally contains music by Anna Clyne, Nadia Boulanger and Mozart.

On 11 April 2025 , she will probably be with the the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo on the Barbican when she will probably be performing Doreen Carwithen’s Piano Concerto.

In August 2024, her recording of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto with conductor Tianyi Lu and the Philharmonia got here out on Signum Classics. The disc paired Clara Schumann’s concerto with that by Edvard Grieg, who got here to Leipzig to check and received to know Clara Schumann. One other pretty pairing. And the disc got here out in time to have a good time the third anniversary of Alexandra’s challenge to realize gender parity in music.

After I ask what she wish to report, in a perfect world, she mentions the Piano Concerto by Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), who was Stravinsky’s piano instructor. Her concerto was written in 1900, the identical 12 months as Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto 2. Alexandra recorded it for BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week programme, however few individuals aside from Alexandra play the work.

The Nutcracker and I

26 Nov – Milton Court docket Live performance Corridor, London – additional particulars
29 Nov – 1 December, La Seine Musicale, Paris
6 & 7 Dec – Opera Dijon, Dijon
15 & 16 Dec – Cankarjev Cultural and Congress Centre, Ljubljana
20 & 21 Dec – Konzerthaus Dortmund, Dortmund
23 Dec – Potsdam Nikolaisaal, Potsdam
29 Dec – The Glasshouse Worldwide Centre for Music, Newcastle
25 Jan – Megaron Live performance Corridor, Athens