Simone Dinnerstein: Hello, I'm Simone Dinnerstein. Tonight is the second part of our two week series devoted to piano students from the Mannes School of Music in New York City on this edition of the McGraw Family's Young Artists Showcase.

Tonight on this edition of The Young Artists Showcase, generously underwritten since 1978 by the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation, we are featuring piano students from the Mannes School of Music in New York City. I'm proud to be on the piano faculty of the Mannes School of Music, and I'm delighted to present a selection of these talented musicians tonight recorded in WQXR's studio.

We will begin with Nicolas Salloum, who's in his first year of his master's degree as a student of Eteri Andjaparidze. Welcome Nicolas.

Nicolas Salloum: Hi.

Simone Dinnerstein: So Nicolas, you're from Geneva, Switzerland, are you not? And this is your first year being in New York City?

Nicolas Salloum: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: So it's quite a different city than your city. So, how, what are your impressions?

Nicolas Salloum: Well, it's definitely a wonderful place to be. There's nowhere else in the world quite like it. I feel like it's a city where. Everyone has his or her place.

Simone Dinnerstein: Oh, really?

Nicolas Salloum: Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, Geneva seems like a very peaceful city to me.

Nicolas Salloum: Mm-hmm. Yes. There's definitely some positive aspects about Switzerland that we do not really get in New York City. Yeah. Both very interesting cities.

Simone Dinnerstein: Yes.

Nicolas Salloum: Very international.

Simone Dinnerstein: Wonderful. And, um, you're gonna be playing some Rachmaninoff for us today, are you not?

Nicolas Salloum: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: Tell us what you're gonna play.

Nicolas Salloum: I'm gonna be playing Rachmaninoff, Étude-Tableau, Opus 33, number three and eight.

Simone Dinnerstein: Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing you play some Rachmaninoff.

Nicolas Salloum: Thank you for having me.

MUSIC- Rachmaninoff: Étude-Tableau op.33 No.3 in C minor and No.8 in G minor

Simone Dinnerstein: That was a very dynamic performance of two of Rachmaninoff's Etude Tableau's Opus 33, performed by Nicolas Salloum from Geneva, Switzerland. Now we are going to move on to hearing the pianist Xiaomeng Zhang.

Hi. Nice to meet you.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Nice to meet you too.

Simone Dinnerstein: And you're a master's student of Vladimir Valjarivic at Mannes are you not?

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: Are you in your first year or second year?

Xiaomeng Zhang: First year.

Simone Dinnerstein: First year. And is this your first year in New York City as well? Yes. Tell us where you come from.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Um, China.

Simone Dinnerstein: And you're gonna be playing an interesting piece for us that is by Ernst Bloch, and its called Poems of the Sea, and it's all about the sea. And I'm curious, do you come from a part of China that's near the sea?

Xiaomeng Zhang: Uh, yes, of course. I live in Guandong, so it is in, on the south of China, so it's near sea. So I can see the sea maybe once a year. So I'm familiar.

Simone Dinnerstein: Once a year! Okay.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yeah. I'm familiar with it.

Simone Dinnerstein: Have you seen it more often since you've been in New York City?

Xiaomeng Zhang: Uh, yes. I, I have been to Long Island and Hudson River, and I, I, I went, took ferry. Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: Oh, you took the ferry to Staten Island?

Xiaomeng Zhang: For three times. Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: Okay. Lovely, lovely.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: So when you're playing this, this piece of music, you can imagine...

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: The waves.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: And all of the, the songs.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yeah. And the birds.

Simone Dinnerstein: And the birds.

Xiaomeng Zhang: Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: Wonderful. Well, um, Bloch wrote this piece in, in Cleveland in 1922, following a family seaside vacation in Canada. And it is in three movements: Waves, Shanty, and At Sea. I'm gonna read you a verse from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that Bloch included in the preface to the music:

 In cabin’d ships at sea,  

The boundless blue on every side expanding, 

With whistling winds and music of waves, the large imperious waves,  

Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine, 

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails, 

She cleaves either the mid the sparkle and the foam of the day, or under  

 many a star at night, 

By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read, 

In full rapport at last.

MUSIC- Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Simone Dinnerstein: That was a fantastic and very stormy and also poetic performance of Bloch's poems of the Sea by Xiaomeng Zhang. Thank you so much for that. Now we're going to hear one of my own master students Yichun Sheng play Haydn's Variations in F Minor.

MUSIC- Haydn: Variations in F minor, Hob. Seventeen: 6

Simone Dinnerstein: Wonderful. It's very nerve-wracking, I have to say, to listen to my own student performing. It's a little bit like watching your child doing something.

Yichun Sheng: Thank you. Thank you.

Simone Dinnerstein: That was Yichun Sheng playing Haydn's Variations in F minor Hob.XVII:6. Yichun, it's been interesting.

Yichun Sheng: Hi.

Simone Dinnerstein: Hi! Uh, working with you this year. This was our first year working together. And, uh, you had just arrived in Queens. And one of the things that I think that has been interesting in our, in our work together is talking about the physical part of playing the piano. Like what our bodies do when we play the piano. Right? And, and you have a, you have a real interest in it.

Not all of my students are interested in that, but you are quite interested in, you know, what part of your shoulders or your arms or you know, your, your back is involved in producing sound, right?

Yichun Sheng: Yeah. And I remember what is interesting, you told me that like Taiji and like Alexander Technique is useful for me. Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: Yes. Yeah, I think that all of those kinds of movements are studying outside of the piano can be very helpful. But then very recently, like maybe a week ago, you revealed to me that you are an expert ping pong player, and I thought that was really interesting because I imagine that playing ping pong, you must have to be very aware of very subtle movements, very small movements change how the ball works, right?

Yichun Sheng: Yeah. Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: I think that not everybody who listens to classical music realizes that there's a part of it that's quite, I would say, athletic or you know, physical. And certainly in a piece like the Haydn, which is so exposed, right. You can hear every note.

Yichun Sheng: Yeah.

Simone Dinnerstein: So you have to think about how you're gonna make the sound for each note.

Yichun Sheng: Yeah. Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: It's been fun working on this with you. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Yichun Sheng: Thank you.

Simone Dinnerstein: You're listening to the McGraw Family's Young Artists Showcase on WQXR. I'm Simone Dinnerstein, and today we are listening to piano students from the Mannes School of Music. It's time for a quick break now, then I'll be back with more performances by these young musicians here on the McGraw Family's Young Artists Showcase.

Welcome back. Tonight is the second of two episodes featuring piano students at the Mannes School of Music. We are going to continue with pianist Josh Binkhorst, who is a master's student of J. Y. Song and is also pursuing a minor in creative community development. Welcome, Josh.

Josh Binkhorst: Thanks for having me.

Simone Dinnerstein: First of all, what is creative community development?

Josh Binkhorst: Creative community development is basically finding tools or creating a toolbox to use our art and my music, in my case, for a social good in communities that I'm involved with.

Simone Dinnerstein: Wow. So do you actually, in the program, do you go out into New York City and work with a specific group of people?

Josh Binkhorst: We do. So I had one program last year where I worked in a public school trying to broaden notions of classical music, um, particularly among like elementary school-aged children.

Simone Dinnerstein: Oh.

Josh Binkhorst: So it was really gratifying.

Simone Dinnerstein: That's so great. I mean, I think that what you're doing is really necessary, especially here in the United States where there isn't as much music education about classical music in particular.

Josh Binkhorst: Mm-hmm.

Simone Dinnerstein: And then, and maybe it also speaks a little bit to the piece that you're about to perform for us. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that?

Josh Binkhorst: Yeah. So I will be playing Honest Labor by Timo Andres, who's on the Mannes Composition Faculty. I think that the title really represents itself in the piece through these vacillations of more contrapuntal or rhythmic textures and then quieter, more lyrically minimal sections.

Simone Dinnerstein: Mm-hmm.

Josh Binkhorst: And I think, to me, it seems like the essence of labor in its itself, kind of a satisfaction in the routine tasks. But then when we have time to reflect is sort of the questioning of its bigger purpose or worth.

Simone Dinnerstein: That's very interesting. Okay, so let's listen to it now.

Josh Binkhorst: Thank you.

MUSIC- Andres: Honest Labor

Simone Dinnerstein: That was a wonderful performance of Honest Labor by Timo Andres, performed by Joshua Binkhorst. Thank you.

The final pianist on tonight's program is Jiwon Yang, an undergraduate student of Pavlina Dokovska and Richard Goode. Hi Jiwon.

Jiwon Yang: Hello. It's great to... grateful to be here.

Simone Dinnerstein: Oh, it's so nice to have you here. I've admired your playing over the past year or two, and I've heard you at school.

Jiwon Yang: Thank you so much.

Simone Dinnerstein: Um, and, uh, I'm very curious about your process of studying with two teachers. This is something that, um, Mannes does. Um, and it's somewhat new to me. I never had that experience myself. And I'm curious, how does it work exactly? How do you, do you work on the same repertoire with both teachers?

Jiwon Yang: So basically I'm having, like, lesson, like, alternatively between two professors and they both know the whole repertoires that I have. And some of them I go with both professors and some of them I learn like differently. So we try to do a lot of process like in diverse ways.

Simone Dinnerstein: I see. And do, do they suggest repertoire that they want you to work on or that they want to work on with you?

Jiwon Yang: Yes. They overly like suggest some pieces that would fit me very well and like some pieces that I really need to try like working on, and of course I also suggest myself on my interest on whatever piece I wanna learn.

Simone Dinnerstein: How How wonderful to have that kind of exposure to, to many different ideas.

Jiwon Yang: Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: And I've heard you play a variety of different kinds of repertoire. Today you're gonna play some Scriabin for us. Was this one of the pieces that you chose or what, how did it come about?

Jiwon Yang: Yes, actually. Um, Scriabin Fantasy used to be one of my admiring piece from yeah, many years ago, and I really, I was really desired to play this in the future, and finally I was able to appeal to professors that I really wanna learn this piece.

Simone Dinnerstein: That's great. Something that I've always been fascinated by with Scriabin is the fact that he experienced synesthesia and so he would see colors when he heard certain harmonies.

Jiwon Yang: Yes, I heard that.

Simone Dinnerstein: Yeah. I'm not sure in. If he, if he identifies them in the music ever? Does he ever write the colors what they are?

Jiwon Yang: For now, I haven't seen like he like directly indicated on the score or the music, but I'm sure that after hearing those story that he sees the color through his composing.

Simone Dinnerstein: Mm-hmm.

Jiwon Yang: I could see like, how dramatic and wonderful composer he was.

Simone Dinnerstein: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, musicians, most musicians think in terms of color, the color of sound.

To actually see a color, like to really, in a way not differentiate between seeing and hearing is something almost impossible to imagine. It's like a sixth sense that we can't even know about. Um, but we try to get close when we're playing the music.

Jiwon Yang: Yes.

Simone Dinnerstein: So looking forward to hearing you play Scriabin's Fantasy in B minor Opus 28.

Jiwon Yang: Thank you.

MUSIC- Scriabin: Fantasy in B minor, op.28

Jiwon Yang: That was a stirring performance of Scriabin's Fantasy in B Minor, played here in WQXR Studio by Jiwon Yang. You have been listening to the second of two programs featuring piano students from the Mannes School of Music. That completes this week's edition of the McGraw Family's Young Artists Showcase, which is generously underwritten on WQXR by the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation. Here's Terry McGraw with more.

Terry McGraw: Good evening everyone. It's great to be with you and it's always great being with the Young Artists Showcase and to hear these really wonderful and inspiring musicians as they continue to share their incredible gifts with us every week.

I can't wait to hear the fabulous talent coming up on the showcase, and I am so pleased to be able to support the series all through its well over four decades on WQXR and there's so much more to come.

Simone Dinnerstein: Thank you, Terry. Many thanks to WQXR program producers Laura Boyman and Max Fine. Our session engineer is Irene Trudell and our generous program underwriter is the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation. I'm Simone Dinnerstein. Goodnight.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.  

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.