What if You Came Across This Performer Playing on a Street Piano? // Welcome to the New "Arts & Cancel-Culture" Section
What if You Came Across This Performer Playing on a Street Piano? // Welcome to the New "Arts & Cancel-Culture" Section
PART 1:
VARIOUS VIDEOS below date from 9 years ago onward [erroneously entered ‘13 years’ earlier!] —
and document the impromptu playing by this pianist on street pianos in various countries. Certain European cities placed pianos in public places with high foot traffic and all were invited to come and play on them. (I suppose they’re gone now, since the “COVID” madness began.)
The pianist in these clips can barely conceal her joy playing these free, informal recitals.
While this particular instrument at London’s St Pancras Station is tinny and begs to be tuned, that doesn’t stop the pianist from extracting such amazing music from it!
👆 Description for video above: (by DECCA Records) 👆
Mar 26, 2013
While Valentina Lisitsa was busy in the UK with promotion for Rachmaninov, there were some problems with bad weather so her Eurostar train back to Paris had to be cancelled and she ended up stuck at St Pancras International for some time! However, the delay did not deter her from taking to one of the station's Street Pianos and performing for passers-by in the station!
A different day playing the street piano again at St Pancras Station, London
ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE
Lyon, France
Paris, France
AND MORE RECENTLY (2019):
Naples Airport, Italy
👆May 15, 2019👆
The pianist, if you haven’t guessed yet, is Valentina Lisitsa.
A woman of incredible talent, she has some hundreds of works stored in her photographic memory banks, which she can whip out for listeners at any time. Included in these are some 50 piano concertos.
I first got wind of Valentina Lisitsa in about 2014, stumbling upon her phenomenal pianistic work on her YouTube video pages.
Thanks to these videos, she soon became a favourite of thousands of classical music fans across the world.
(I would later realize we’d missed a chance to catch her in concert a few years before because of serious illness in the family.)
FROM HER OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
https://www.valentinalisitsa.com/
With more than 200 million YouTube views and some 500,000 subscribers to her channel, Valentina Lisitsa is one of the most watched classical musicians on the internet, using digital innovation to champion classical music and performance. Impressed by her YouTube success, the Royal Albert Hall, in an unprecedented step, opened its doors for Valentina’s London debut on 19 June 2012. That concert, recorded and filmed by Decca Classics, became her first release on the label; it was also Google’s first-ever live HD stream.
With her multi-faceted playing described as “dazzling”, Lisitsa is at ease in a vast repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bernstein; her orchestral repertoire alone includes more than 40 concertos. She has a special affinity for the music of Rachmaninov and Beethoven and continues to add to her vast repertoire each season.
Here’s a RARE feature on CBS Sunday Morning from 1998!
(I’d not seen this before now. Today, the network probably wouldn’t touch her with a 10-foot pole!)
HERE’S A WONDERFUL MISH-MASH played after a concert in Moscow in 2017:
Alas, most of what she says is lost to Google’s Auto-Translate; only a phrase or two gets the rare English translation!
That Bösendorfer she’s playing on sounds like it needs a tune-up already!
Take a gander at this special video from a rehearsal for a Paris concert, 2014.
(Beethoven Sonata #17, 2nd Movment, Largo)
Listen to that lilting lovely bit that at around 4:25!
Note her novel use of GoPro-camera-on-the-chest footage inserted here and there! Kinda dizzying to watch, but helpful for any piano students looking for some playing tips!
PART 2:
Welcome to the New “Arts & Cancel-Culture” Section
After her live London debut, Valentina seemed unstoppable.
Well, her very promising concert career all over the world was bushwhacked — twice — by the idiotic and disgraceful “cancel culture” born of the ‘90s’ “political correctness” that has now infected the European and Canadian classical music world.
She holds a US, as well as a Ukrainian, passport.
“As an American, this [lying] was what I experienced during 9-11. When you see one thing, you see black, they say white. You see that 2+2=4, they say, no, 2+2=5. When you understand that they’re lying to you, then you ask yourself, what else have they lied about?”
—quote from Valentina Lisitsa, in 2022
No truer words were spoken ….
While pianist Valentina has both US and Ukrainian passports, she has chosen to live in Moscow now. She used to shuttle between Rome and Moscow. But the West has severely punished her in recent years for expressing “politically unacceptable opinions” (i.e., supporting Russia) earlier on the Russia-Ukraine, and now, the Russia-Ukraine-US-NATO war. All her concert appearances have been trashed by organizers (thanks to pressure from Ukrainian government groups, apparently).
In 2015, while touring in North America, she first experienced literal cancellation in Canuckistan (aka the Democratic Republic of Canada) by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. This was done for her “unacceptable opinions” on the Donetsk and Donbas conflict. In that war, ethnic Russian Ukrainians like herself were being attacked by the Kiev government back home. She gave free concerts in Mariupol and has spoken about the urgent need for the sake of the people to rebuild those places destroyed by the wars.
The very recent (ca. 2022) video immediately below has been ‘helpfully’ labeled as “Russian Disinfo” by the YouTube poster, LOL. (Thanks for providing clear, readable English subtitles, Mr Russian Media Monitor. The flurry of comments below the video betrays the pitiful small-mindedness of their authors, who could very well be online bots in the payroll of Empire hired to leave such foul droppings all over social media.)
At least, YouTube hasn’t (yet?) taken the axe to all her videos for her “impermissible” political opinions.
More Informative Interview Videos Below: (they run between 2-7 mins only)
One US pianist’s quick summary of Valentina’s story and piano prowess here: (video was posted in 2018)
AN EXTRAORDINARY DOCUMENT: Valentina actually learning a completely new piece - in just a few hours’ time. She captured the entire process LIVE, on video:
(She got ready with a brand new piece — to be played at the BBC Proms — in about 3-1/2 hours’ time. Today, those same organizers would be furiously scratching her off their guest performer list.)
BELOW ARE SOME STORIES reporting on the various deeds of virtual annihilation directed at the person and career of this phenomenally gifted pianist.
Venice’s La Fenice Cancels Pro-Putin Pianist’s Concert. Performed in Mariupol
Valentina Lisitsa has been involved in similar controversies numerous times before
https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/news/2022/12/28/venices-la-fenice-cancels-pro-putin-pianists-concert-performed-in-mariupol/
Cultural Commentary: The Gergiev Case
MARCH 11, 2022 3
By Jonathan Blumhofer
https://artsfuse.org/251335/cultural-commentary-the-gergiev-case/
And this same censorship-cancellation happened years before, too, during the Donbas and Donetsk conflict:
2015:
TSO Dumps Upcoming Soloist Valentina Lisitsa Over Political Views
By Michael Vincent on April 6, 2015
https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2015/04/06/breaking-tso-bans-upcoming-soloist-valentina-lisitsa-over-political-views/
Power, Politics and Valentina Lisitsa
4/8/2015
https://www.colineatock.com/eatock-daily-blog/power-politics-and-valentina-lisitsa
The Politics and Passion of Ukrainian Classical Pianist Valentina Lisitsa
By Thomas Swan t.swan@classicalite.com on Jan 12, 2016 08:12 PM EST
Censoring Valentina Lisitsa shames the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Freedom of speech means Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa must be allowed to perform despite her politics, says Ivan Hewett
By Ivan Hewett 15 April 2015 • 7:00am
EXCERPT:
The Symphony’s President Jeff Melanson said: “This is not a free speech issue, but rather an issue of someone practising very intolerant and offensive expression through Twitter.” Work that one out if you can. Melanson has also declared that the orchestra’s priority “must remain on being a stage for the world’s great works of music, and not for opinions that some believe to be deeply offensive.”
This is a puzzling reason, given that when Ms Lisitsa is booked as a pianist she tends to play the piano, rather than regaling the audience with anti-Ukrainian rants. Mr Melanson has fallen into the trap of seeing a person’s offensive views on one topic as a noxious pollutant, which renders the whole person morally contagious. Because Lisitsa the political campaigner is insulting and offensive, Lisitsa the pianist must be shunned too.
Such is the “FREE WORLD” in the West that we live in today.
Despite these craven actions against her, Valentina has not stopped exercising her free speech right in a world rife with agents eager to muzzle her and beat her down for expressing these “unacceptable” political opinions. Today, she travels, performs and gives master classes in places outside the anti-Russia clique of nations.
There’s something to be said for someone who still possesses that kind of gumption today.
And to think she wasn’t even born in “the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave.”