Pianist David Korevaar, a member of the music faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a prolific recording artist, has released three new albums in recent months on the Koch and Ivory Classics labels.
Chief among them is a group of virtually unknown gems from about 800 piano scores in the CU-owned library of Ricardo Viñes, an early 20th-century Catalan pianist who inspired some of the most important piano works of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.
At 7:30 tonight, as part of the CU College of Music’s faculty series, Korevaar will perform selections off two other releases — Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111.
In advance of the concert, The Denver Post spoke to Korevaar about his career and his interest in Viñes:
Q. How long have you taught at CU?
A. 7 1/2 years.
Q. What brought you there?
A. They gave me a job.
Q. Nothing more than that?
A. Piano-performance jobs are not exactly a dime a dozen, and piano performers are. So getting a nice piano-performance job in a good school with a good program and a good reputation is not something to be sneezed at.
Q. At age 13, you became a student of famed pianist Earl Wild. What was that like?
A. You asked “was,” and, it’s interesting, because I’m still in touch with Earl, who’s now 92. I saw him out in Palm Springs over New Year’s when I was out in California. He’s remained somebody I can talk to about music, even when we don’t necessarily see eye to eye on everything.
He was a real mentor to me when I was very young, and I had nothing but admiration for everything he did, of course. One idolizes teachers at that age. He had a huge influence on the way I developed and the speed I developed, which was intelligently if not all that quickly. I was no child prodigy.
Q. How did you become interested in the music scores of Ricardo Viñes?
A. When I did my (doctor of musical arts) at a fairly advanced age at Juilliard, I ended up doing my dissertation on Ravel’s “Miroirs,” which was a piece that was written for Ricardo Viñes, and (I) found out quite a bit about the milieu and the friendship between Ravel and Viñes.
Q. How did you pick the selections from his collection for the recording?
A. When you’re going to record obscure music, I think it’s important to believe in it, because, after all, the trove of obscure music for piano in the world is probably close to infinity by now. And we don’t need to hear it all, really, so I did want to record things that I thought were worth hearing and worth learning.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
Classical music
Pianist David Korevaar performs tonight at CU-Boulder, Grusin Music Hall, Imig Music Building, 18th Street and Euclid Avenue. The faculty recital — featuring Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 — starts at 7:30. Free. Call 303-492-8008 or go to .
