The Winter broadcast time of The Music Treasury on KZSU 90.1 FM remains Sunday, from 7 – 9 PM. You can also listen online at kzsulive.stanford.edu during the broadcast time.
This week’s episode of The Music Treasury will feature the American pianist, Joseph Villa, presented by Mark Ainley, an internationally recognized authority on the art of piano playing.
The show airs from 19:00 to 21:00 PDT at KZSU in the Bay Area, along with concurrent streaming on the ‘Net: kzsu.stanford.edu.
Joseph Villa, pianist
American pianist Joseph Villa (1948-1995) was born in Garfield, New Jersey. He was one of the major talents emerging from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Sasha Gorodnitzky. Later he studied with Claudio Arrau, who greatly supported him. He made his recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1972. Many of his public appearances were as an accompanist for artists like soprano Jessye Norman, violinist Eugene Fodor, and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Villa specialized in the Romantic repertory.His high reputation rests on a small number of recordings made before his life was tragically cut short. His Liszt recordings won him the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque Liszt of Budapest. His Scriabin recordings for the label Dante enjoy a near legendary status: the sizzling passion, tenderness and fury of this music in Villa’s performance are still memorable.
Villa died on April 13, 1995, aged 46, at Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in Greenwich Village. The cause was AIDS, said Steven Gray, his companion.
Our guest tonight on The Music Treasury is musical history scholar and record collector Mark Ainley.
Mark Ainley is an internationally recognized authority on the art of piano playing and the historical recordings of great pianists. His clear insights provide important details about the mastery achieved by the pianists of the past, and are presented via his magazine articles, blog and social media pages, CD productions and liner notes, and lecture-demonstrations.
Mark’s work in the field of historical recordings began in his late teens, when his pre-university writing and research won the admiration of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg. His first CD liner notes, for VAI’s release “Liszt: The 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies Played by 19 Great Pianists,” co-authored in his early 20s with International Piano Archives founding president Gregor Benko, coincided with Mark’s pioneering work in discovering previously unpublished recordings of the legendary pianist Dinu Lipatti. His internationally acclaimed efforts led to the world premiere, award-winning release of over two hours of unknown performances by Lipatti, among them the piano concertos of Liszt and Bartok.
Program:
Beethoven-Liszt Symphony No.5 – 30:00
Schumann-Liszt Widmung – 3:30
Liszt – Orage 4:14
Liszt – Harmonies du soir (9:45)
Rachmaninoff Sonata No.2 [excerpt] [1st (8:30) or 3rd mvt (6:15)]
Scriabin – Sonata No.4 – 7:15
Scriabin – various short works (to be determined, as time permits.
Mark Ainley knew Villa in the last years of his life, so he’ll be sharing some personal reminiscences. For much of his life, Villa was known by the cognoscenti but not the wider public. Hopefully, this broadcast will familiarize his name to an appreciative public.
