Cecile Licad

Probably one of the most outstanding concert performers in the globe is pianist Cecile Licad. Given birth to in the Philippines, Licad started her research on piano at age 3 with her mom and produced her general public debut in Manila in the sensitive age group of 7. At 14, Licad performed for pianist Rudolf Serkin, who upon hearing her exclaimed “once i was her age group, I could not really touch what she actually is performing.” Licad was quickly packed off towards the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she analyzed with Serkin, Seymour Lipkin, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. In 1980 Licad was granted the exclusive Leventritt Award, despite the fact that she hadn’t competed for this and your competition itself have been dormant for quite some time. Her recording profession began promisingly plenty of, with Licad’s early CBS recordings from the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 as well as the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 invading the Billboard traditional graphs. After her use CBS finished in 1989 with an outstanding recording of Schumann’s piano music, she documented some chamber music with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg for EMI, also showing up with the second option at Lincoln Middle. In the middle-’90s Licad documented two discs of Chopin and Ravel for the MusicMasters label that displayed a few of her greatest recordings. But even while Licad was earning unqualified raves on her behalf function in the concert hall, changing economics in the traditional music marketplace sank MusicMasters, acquiring her recordings along with it. In 2003 Licad produced a stunning return in the record marketplace with an impressive documenting of piano music by American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk for the Naxos label. All along Licad offers continuing to tour and present concerts even while competition among soloists for the shrinking variety of engagements keeps growing tighter by each period. One good exemplory case of Licad’s toughness, nevertheless, is certainly that in 2003 she was playing an outreach concert in Tuguegarao Town, in the north province of Philippines, and made a decision to take a aspect trip to watch the Banaue grain areas. Licad and her firm were captured by some mud slides; nevertheless, she were able to slog through several mls of knee-deep dirt to make it to a helicopter, simply with time to capture her 8 a.m. air travel from Manila to her following engagement in Madison, WI. In regards to a Licad concert, a Washington Post reviewer once composed “every audio she produced was gorgeous, every be aware and phrase the consequence of intellect warmed by feeling.” Certainly, Licad is indeed great that she enables you to your investment composer and luxuriate in the heat and deep sense elicited by her playing by itself — she could most likely bring someone to tears using a Czerny etude. Anyone who’s foolish more than enough to stipulate that the best concert performers belong to days gone by which “they simply don’t make sure they are like that any longer” hasn’t noticed Cecile Licad play.