NANCY GARNIEZ: Haydn / Bartok

Nancy Garniez

Haydn / Bartok

© 2002 Nancy Garniez (783707642826)

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Intimate, lyrical, unedited live performance in the artist's home on the artist's instrument for the artist's friends - Classical music in an improvisatory vein.

notes

Nancy Garniez: Soloist; chamber musician; innovative teacher of students of all ages; author, in addition to numerous articles: What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, 1999. Ms. Garniez is the creator of TONAL Refraction® a method that enables individuals to visualize the difference between their innate perception of tone and the abstractions they have learned in order to master the theoretical and technical aspects of music. Created in 1993, it has proven to be a powerful restorative tool in a broad range of cases of musical need, from chronic pain to inability to read music—even to focal dystonia. For more information click on the tonalrefraction link.

Born and raised in Chicago (where she studied with the beloved Chauncey L. Griffith) Nancy Caballero Garniez has played the piano all her life, but spent her undergraduate years concentrating on the organ, which she studied with Fenner Douglass, and subsequently on a Fulbright grant with Helmut Walcha in Frankfurt am Main. She has many years of experience as a liturgical musician in addition to her other professional activities. For over 25 years she led an a cappella singing group as an experiment to enable people to sight-sing music of all styles in tune. Her teaching career began with an appointment at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She has lived in New York City since 1961 and taught at the Mannes College Preparatory and Extension Divisions since 1972. In 1983 she was inspired to form Alaria Chamber Ensemble as a not-for-profit Corporation in NY State. (As of 2008 she is no longer associated with Alaria.) From 1984 - 2008 she was Coordinator of Chamber Music in a highly successful program that she initiated in 1975 at the Extension Division of Mannes College The New School for Music in New York City.

In some circles she is best known as the mother of singer/ song-writer/versatile accordionist/claviolist/ pianist/player-of-the-plastic-bells Rachelle Garniez.

In other circles she is known as the mother of a mean French horn player, Jacob.

The Haydn / Bartok CD is the fulfillment of her lifelong dream of producing a live, intimate, unedited performance using state-of-the-art audio equipment and engineering.

What you hear on the CD is awfully close to what she hears when she plays the piano. Well-known as an innovative teacher and performer, she is the author of What Might It Mean? An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored, and Curious, published in 1999. (The book was described by fiction writer Leonard Michaels as: “a remarkably interesting book...[that] gives exquisite attention to the fundamental expressive powers of the human voice....I would be surprised if it didn't become indispensable for many people.”


Track 1 of this CD was one of the top 50 Classical picks on americanidolunderground, March, 2006.

reviews

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  • How does she do it?
    author: Edward Christie

    On first hearing Nancy Garniez perform on this CD, I was struck by two notable features: an organic, song-like playing and a corresponding lack of rhythmic drive; and a Schnabel-like trust that an unedited performance is more powerful than any blemish that might occur during it. I admire the courage she has to state in performance: I've played these for years and I'm still making up my mind. The former feature, while it contributed to the success of the Bartok parlando pieces, put me in a volatile state. I struggled (1), laughed (2), shook my fists (3), marveled (4) and was turned around (5) while listening to her performances. 1. Haydn: Sonata in A, XVI:12 first movement . I was so unprepared for her Haydn that when I first heard this movement from the web site, I chalked up what I heard to a bad internet connection. But listening to the CD on my weekly trip to Costco (which, as a family man, is the only time I have an hour uninterrupted listening time) I understood that this effect was deliberate. 2. Bartok: XXI (A Joke) . Her fine-tuned sense of humor was so much in evidence here that even if I never met her I would not be surprised to learn that she likes to laugh. What a cast of characters she draws to tell that joke! 3. Haydn: Sonata in A, XVI:12 last movement . If I had to characterize this piece, I'd say it was a fast run down a blue trail. As I listened, I wanted to check the bottom of the skis to see what the matter was. 4. Haydn: Sonata in D, XVI:51 first movement . The opening two measures had me looking out the window onto a landscape that I've lived with but never stopped to look at before. I took a deep breath and followed her playing as easily as a walk across that field. 5. Bartok: XVIII (Teasing) . The first time I heard this I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and my legs stopped moving. Had I ever heard this piece before? Her playing brought out the mercurial character of this work so clearly that I wondered how, after playing it countless times across the years, I could have missed it. Thank you Nancy for your honest and heartfelt performances.

  • very moving performance, conceptually interesting
    author: Jack

    Found the quality of the performance most moving, and the juxtaposition of Hayden and Bartok very interesting

  • Absolutely superb performances.
    author: Daniel Miller

    I loved the Haydn and ordered/am looking forward to the entire CD b/c: beautiful piano tone even on my computer CD;very careful phrasing and heartfelt playing w/ no passagework tossed off or taken for granted; it sounds as if all four of William Blake's eternal faculties (Zoas) are integrated in this playing, which means that Jerusalem is nigh. It sounds like whose Haydn that I know? Noone's really. But on CD it belongs in my top tier/Pantheon which includes Brendel, Rudolf Serkin, and Nadia Reisenberg (plus the alas uncd-d Malcolm Frager). Of these four your rubato and passagework remind me most of Serkin (who recorded only two Haydn sonatas), but I prefer your tone to his. I also prefer your playing to two very good Haydn pianists (Ax and Schiff) and one ok one (Buchbinder). But I would stress your uniqueness more than trying to "place" it.

  • Delightful Charming Captivating
    author: Karen

    The combination of these delightful Bartok and Haydn pieces is so very charming and delightful as performed by Nancy Garniez. As I listen my imagination travels between the eras of these composers, and I envision their joy at finding new levels in their exploration of their instrument. This CD is a real gem!

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