STREAMING LIVE from Piedmont Piano Company
Rachel Breen & Simon Karakulidi
”It’s Shorter Than It Looks”
Join prize-winning classical pianists Rachel Breen and Simon Karakulidi as they perform a diverse program featuring compositional voices tied together by humanity, craft, and storytelling.
Program:
Kurtag - Prelude and Waltz in C major
Scriabin - Prelude op. 11 no. 23 in F major
Prokofiev - Intermezzo in Bb Major from "Cinderella" op. 95
Beethoven - Bagatelle op. 126 no. 3 in Eb major
Chopin - Impromptu no. 1 in Ab major
Berio - Encores: no. 3 "Wasserklavier"
Scriabin - Prelude op. 11 no. 15 in Db major
Medtner - Fairy Tale op. 51 no. 5 in f# minorRachmaninov Etude Tableau op. 39 no. 4 in b minor
Desyatnikov - Prelude from Songs of Bukovina: no. 4 in e minor
Scarlatti - Sonata K.208 in A major
Rachel Breen, piano
Schubert - Drei Klavierstück D 946
Prokofiev - Etude op. 2 no. 3
Liszt - Mephisto Waltz no. 1
Simon Karakulidi, piano
John Adams - Short Ride in a Fast Machine Arr. by Preben Antonsen for 4 hands
Simon Karakulidi and Rachel Breen, piano
Watch the LIVE STREAM on youtube.com or facebook
Donations/tip accepted via paypal.me/rachelbreenpiano
(Donations will be divided between Simon and Rachel)
Twenty-three-year-old Rachel Breen of Oakland, California is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Julian Martin and coached chamber music with Joseph Kalichstein and Roger Tapping. Previously, she studied with Dr. Sharon Mann at the San Francisco Conservatory; until age 10, she was self-taught. Breen has won prizes in a number of national and international competitions, including first prizes in the Georges Cziffra International Competition (Senlis, France), the Nuova Coppa Pianisti International Competition (Osimo, Italy), and the Mondavi National Competition. She received the award for best solo performance from Professor Sergei Babayan at the Arthur Fraser International Competition, and has received top prizes in the Composers of Spain International Piano Competition (Madrid, Spain), the International Russian Music Piano Competition, the Premio Melini International Competition (Trento, Italy), the Gallinari International Piano Competition (Bologna, Italy) and the Livorno International Piano Competition (Tuscany, Italy). She was named a Finalist by the National YoungArts Association and performed at YoungArts week in Miami as a result, and has also been featured in the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, the Aspen Music Festival Overture Series, and Alice Tully Hall’s Wednesday at 1 series, where she gave the world premiere of Theo Chandler’s piano quartet, Variations Between the Creases. She has performed a number of times with orchestra (most recently, at Lincoln Center; in Madrid, Spain; and in Hannover, Germany). This past March, she was selected as a participant in the Beethoven Vienna International Piano Competition, at which she will perform Im April of 2021.
Breen specializes in the music of Bach, and is currently based in Europe, where she studies with Professor Lars Vogt.
Aside from piano, she graduated from Miramonte High School at 16, where she received the first prize on the National Latin Exam and third prize on the National French Exam.
Born in 1997 in Surgut, Siberia, Simon Karakulidi was educated in the Russian piano tradition. He began studies with Prof. Mira Marchenko at the Central Musical School in Moscow in 2013. In 2016, he made the decision to relocate to Parkville, Missouri to work with Van Cliburn competition gold medalist Stanislav Ioudenitch. An aspiring polymath with interests ranging from politics to philosophy, he will be pursuing his masters degree at the Yale School of Music, a tuition free program at Yale University.
Simon is strongly enthusiastic about North American contemporary music and has given a number of performances of works by David Lang and Nico Muhly. He is especially concerned with the format of classical music concerts (if “classical music” still means anything today) and hopes to ignite interest in art music by making performances more interactive and accessible.
Most recently, Simon took the gold medal at the 2019 Wideman International Piano Competition and the third prize of the 2019 Olga Kern International Piano Competition. He is also a prizewinner of the First Vladimir Krainev Piano Competition in Moscow (second prize and two special awards), and the “Astana Piano Passion” Piano Competition (first prize). In June 2018, Simon was awarded the Enlight Prize at the Art of Piano Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2019, he received First Prize at the Ann & Charles Eisemann International Young Artists Competition and the Grand Prize of the Naftzger Competition. In the summer of 2019, Simon was a finalist in the International Keyboard Institute & Festival Competition in New York City (sharing the top honor awarded in this competition with Breen).