 Daniela Mineva |
Renowned pianist Daniela Mineva will lead the audience on a journey
through different styles from different places when she gives a guest
recital at Drake University on Sunday, Feb. 13 .
Free
and open to the public, the recital will begin at 5 p.m. on the Jordan
Stage in Sheslow Auditorium in Old Main, 2507 University Ave.
Daniela
Mineva is chair of keyboard studies at Humboldt State University in
Arcata, Calif. She also has taught at the Eastman School of Music, where
she was awarded an excellence in teaching prize in 2007, and Concordia
University in Chicago.
Among her many national and
international accomplishments as a pianist are an award from the Jean
Francaix Piano Competition in Paris,the Prize for New Music piece
written for her at the Orléans International Piano Competition,
France,and a Highest Artistic Level of Performance Award for a solo
recital at a festival in Italy, both in 2007. Her first solo piano CD ”
Volume One” was released in 2009.
The first stop on Mineva’s
Drake recital program will be the Sonata in G Major by 18th century
Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn.
The next stop will be
France, featuring three pieces by 20th century composers Claude Debussy
and Olivier Messiaen. She will play her own reduction for solo piano of
one of Debussy’s most famous works, “Prelude to the Afternoon of the
Faune,” and three Preludes by Messiaen, each depicting a feature of the
landscape.
The second half of Mineva’s performance will feature a
piece about a Persian Princess and one of the world’s most famous
storytellers: Scheherazade. It’s a section from “Masques” by the 20th
century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, which is considered a
“skill-testing challenge to pianists,” according to a contemporary
Polish music scholar.
The journey will end back in France with
“Choral and Variations” by contemporary composer Henri Dutilleux, which
Mineva calls “a jazzy audience-pleaser.”
For more information about the guest recital, contact the Drake Music Department at 515-271-3975.