Dmitry Masleev, winner of the piano competition, and Sergei Redkin, who came third, both studied with William Naboré, an African-American expat at the International Piano Academy Lake Como.
Just so you know.
From my latest monthly essay in The Critic…
You really couldn’t make it up. Well, they…
We reported earlier that Franz Welser-Möst had withdrawn…
The Cleveland music director, who has received successful…
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So we’re safe… LOL
Is it really necessary in 2015 to qualify a person as “African-American” as a preface to indicating their name? What is the difference between writing that and referring to Mr. Petrenko being a Jew, as was dis tastefully done in the German press recently?
I think that society should by now have matured enough to not have to categorize people by their religion, ethnicity, race or sexual orientation. By writing this you only perpetuate human division, based on immutable characteristics, rather than define people by who they are as people and what they do and have achieved. The fact that Mr. Naboré may be of African-American descent is of no interest to me, and I hope to many others as well. If you are going to write these sorts of things, then please be consistent and refer to everybody in a similar way, i.e. Jewish-American, Irish-American, Asian-American, Bengali-British, Hindu-Italian, etc. Why only for African-Americans is this approach used? As a cultural blog, we should be above these sorts of dividing humans into simplistic categories.
No, this is a photo of Alessandro Deljavan,
Relevancy?
It basically is a correction of the previous article. He was “accusing” the jury to have voted for a Russian, now he writes that the winner actually is an Italo-American-Russian.
By the way, he is Asian too, he was born close to Mongolia.
A truly global player!
What is written above is just pure facts. How on earth can anyone compare this with the German article about Petrenko?? And where did anyone “accuse” the jury to have voted Russian??
Or indeed multiple therapies, as otherwise one might remember the German-Russian Svjatoslav Richter, or the Jewish-British Clifford Curzon etc. etc.
It bears mention because of the consistent underrepresentation of African-Americans in the realm of classical music. That is acutely observable in all areas of pursuit within the industry save vocal, and particularly resident in the area of orchestral conducting. Clearly Mr. Naboré knows his business, and thus such mention citing his ethnicity is superfluous. Still, it’s nice to know.
“Trained” is too strong a word. Young professional pianists attend that academy for the sanctuary of a lovely place to work, and for the free ride. The academy’s transient faculty of renowned pianists are rarely in residence, so Nabore fills in during their absence. That hardly means that he “trained” them – they just played for him when Argerich, Fleisher, etc weren’t around.
Agreed! Finally a sensible and on-topic comment!
I, too, find the characterization of Masleev’s teacher as an African-American to be off-putting. He’s an American. OK, he’s an expat, but he’s an American nevertheless. And that’s enough said.
I agree! To categorize people in such a way, in the globalized world in which we live, is old fashioned, narrow minded and attempts to draw stereotypes and provoke prejudice. I agree with the first comment, namely that if that is the approach for this blog, then be consistent and use such racial/ethnic and any other categorization throughout, for every entry, where possible. Mr. Lebrecht may want to start with himself as being a British-Jew, or perhaps Jewish-British, or perhaps English-Jew, or some other similarly offensive label. Nobody should be mentioned in this way, unless there is a specific link to their ethnicity or race and the subject being written about. Otherwise it smacks of racism and narrow mindedness.
Agreed, race is irrelevant.
Hear hear!
They are also regular students of Bashkirov, one of the jury members……….but no-one seems to give a hoot!