CLASSICAL ENCOUNTERS presents Robert Thies, Pianist

Program: Sonata in A-Flat Major Opus 110 (1821) - Beethoven (1770 – 1827)  

Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) Opus 1v5 (1838) - Schumann (1810 – 1856)

Three Etudes - Chopin (1810 – 1849)

     I:   C Minor Opus 10 No 12

     II:  A-Flat Major Opus 25 No 1

     III: C Minor Opus 25 No 12

Images Book II (1907) - Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Sonata No 3 ‘From the Old Notebooks’ (1917) - Prokofiev (1891 – 1953)

Background    A pianist of “unerring, warm-toned refinement, revealing judicious glimmers of power,” LA Times - Robert Edward Thies (pronounced "Theece") is an artist renowned for his consummate musicianship and poetic temperament. He first captured worldwide attention in 1995 when he won the Gold Medal at the Second International Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia. With this victory, Thies became the only American pianist to win first prize in a Russian piano competition since Van Cliburn’s famed triumph in Moscow in 1958. 

This victory brought accolades from the White House, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Governor Pete Wilson, and Mayor Richard Riordan. The LA City Council declared February 16, 1996 "Robert Edward Thies Day." Robert was featured on the July 1996 cover of Piano and Keyboard magazine. His win was announced in the International Herald Tribune, and the LA Times wrote a feature article, "Another American Pianist Invades Russia, Successfully."

Conductor Jorge Mester hails Robert "a genius", and Maestra JoAnn Falletta touted after a recent performance, "Conducting the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Robert Thies was one of the most beautiful and deeply satisfying musical experiences of my life."

Praised for his “thoughtful and intensely moving interpretations”, Thies enjoys a diverse career as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He has already performed forty concerti with orchestras all over the world. In one season alone he performed thirteen different concerti, garnering consistent critical acclaim. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, Liepāja Symphony (Latvia), Mexico City Philharmonic, the National Symphony of Mexico, Auckland Philharmonia, New Zealand, Louisville Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Pasadena Symphony, and the Naples Philharmonic. His concerts have been broadcast throughout the United States, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Bolivia, Hungary, Mexico, and New Zealand.

Robert is a frequent recitalist in the US and abroad, and has developed a reputation for his “genuine” interpretations of intriguing and delicately balanced programs. He made his South American debut in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2002, and followed this with a European tour. Under the sponsorship of Community Concerts, he completed a forty-city tour of the US in 2001. In May 1999, he was honored with a special invitation to perform in the Hermitage Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, built for Empress Catherine the Great. 

A dedicated chamber musician, Thies is highly sought after as a collaborator, and he has shared the stage with many esteemed musicians, including those from the LA Philharmonic and the LA Chamber Orchestra. In March 2012 he was the official pianist for the International Piatigorsky Cello Festival at USC at which he performed over 25 works in one week, and played a recital with renowned cellist, Thomas Demenga.  An avid proponent of art song, Thies has also appeared with many outstanding singers in recital most recently at Lincoln Center in New York with tenor Shawn Thuris in a performance of Schubert’s great opus, Winterreise. Over the past decade he founded the Thies Piano Quartet, the Pantoum Trio, and most recently, The Thies Consort. The Consort performs a wide range of works of varying instrumentation and size, thus allowing for innovative and unique programming with musical continuity based on a style, composer, or other concept.

Thies’ “grace and unsurpassed lyricism” are in high demand at festivals and special celebrations. In 2002, in conjunction with the Hollywood premiere of Roman Polanski’s film The Pianist, he performed Wladislaw Szpilman’s Concertino for Piano and Orchestra with the LA Jewish Symphony. That same year Thies earned national recognition for his collaboration with noted cultural historian and author, Joseph Horowitz, in the Pacific Symphony’s Dvořák in America festival. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s death, he was invited to Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2001 to perform the composer’s seldom-heard Piano Concerto with the National Symphony of Mexico. During the fall of 1997, Robert worked alongside distinguished late Polish composer Henryk Górecki in the US premiere of his Sonata for Piano. In a commemorative gesture just after Gorecki's recent passing, his performance was broadcast on KUSC 91.5 FM Classical Radio. He has performed at the music festivals of Ravinia, Aspen, Sedona, Cape May, Music Academy of the West, Mostly Mozart as well as the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.

In LA, Robert has worked and recorded with many of the top studio musicians, and with such film composers as James Newton Howard, James Horner, Danny Elfman, Mychael and Jeff Danna, Christopher Young, and Lalo Schifrin. His playing can be heard most transparently on the Dannas’ joint score to the Anthony Hopkins film,Fracture, and he was a featured pianist on Danny Elfman’s concert piece: Serenada Schizophrana. In 2010, Grammy winning conductor Lucas Richman invited him to join a full symphony orchestra on a North American tour of John Williams’ Star Wars in Concert.

Thies’ recordings can be found on the Centaur, Albany, Golden Tone, and Denouement Records labels. He has also made numerous classical recordings for Yamaha Disklavier featuring the music of Prokofiev, Ravel, Brahms, and Beethoven. He has premiered and recorded works written for him such as Stu Phillip's Variations for Piano and Orchestra, and Kevin Kaska's Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, and premiered many works by Austrian composer Gernot Wolgang. In February 2006, Robert released his debut solo recording Live in Recital.  In June 2006, he recorded a crossover improvisational CD Difference with Croatian flutist Damjan Krajacic. In the Fall of 2012, he released a follow-up duet album with Krajacic, Blue Landscapes, of original compositions and improvisations.

Robert is sought after as a master class teacher, chamber music coach, lecturer, and adjudicator across the globe. In May 2012, he gave a “webinar” simultaneously to three universities in the US and Mexico, and spoke about developing one’s musicianship to open up various music career options. He is also a frequent guest lecturer to various branches of the Music Teachers Association of California. From 2003-07, he was a member of the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, to work beside his former teacher, Harold Heiberg, an authority on German art song. There Thies coached singers and pianists primarily on the works of the great Germanic composers of Lied: Brahms, Wolf, Strauss, Schubert, and Schumann.

Born in New Jersey, Robert lives in LA. His teachers have included Robert Turner and Daniel Pollack, both protégés of the legendary Russian pedagogue, Madame Rosina Lhevinne, and the great pianist Josef Lhevinne. Robert is a Steinway artist. For more information, visit Robert Edward Thies at: www.robertthies.org.