Israeli Pianist Einav Yarden Plays UWM

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Photo courtesy Sarah Dinin

Einav Yarden

Einav Yarden

Internationally acclaimed Israeli pianist Einav Yarden will give her premier Milwaukee performance 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18 at UW-Milwaukee’s Recital Hall (Music Building Room 175, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.). She will come here directly from a solo recital in Bennett Gordon Hall as part of the Ravinia Festival. Jonathan Winkle, a professor at UWM, wanted to bring Yarden to campus after hearing her phenomenal artistry while they were both working at Performance Santa Fe. 

The Washington Post praises Yarden for her musical “imagination and exceptionally vivid playing ... a sense of majesty, tempered by gentleness and quiet grace.” She has toured extensively, giving recitals throughout Europe, the United States, and Israel. She has appeared as a soloist with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, Minnesota Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bucharest Philharmonic as well as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony, amongst others.

Yarden is a passionate chamber musician and has appeared in major festivals throughout the world including the Ruhr Piano Festival, Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Flâneries Musicales de Reims Festival (France), Piano Biennale (Netherlands) and the International Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, and many others.

She was a longtime student of Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She has taught piano in different institutions in Germany and Switzerland and served as a Collaborative Pianist at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute in summers of 2012-2017. Her Milwaukee recital will include pieces by C.P.E Bach (Rondos and Fantasies), J.S. Bach (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor), Brahms (Fantasies op. 118), Beethoven (Sonata No. 30) and Peter Eötvös (Dances of the Brush-Footed Butterfly).

Yarden is currently based in Berlin. I was able to reach her via email and asked her a few questions.

How did you get her musical start, when did you decide that music and piano would be the driving force in your life?

I started playing the piano at age 6. It was certainly no more than a hobby till about age 14 or 15, only then did I actually start practicing properly. I would say there was never exactly a point in which I “decided” that music and piano would become my profession and life, but rather it evolved this way, from the late high school years, in which I started seeing the benefits of practice, and when I entered the wonderful arts high school I was part of and suddenly I was surrounded by all these amazing pianists, which gave another push.

During my Israeli army years, I passed auditions to receive a special status allowing army duty to be a little more relaxed, so that I can continue my music. Those, and quite a few other stops, turns and events in my life, sort of curved out a path of life in music, and the piano and music as an integral and inseparable part of my life and something I strongly identify myself with.

What brought you to Berlin? And how does it feel being Jewish in Berlin?

The main thing that brought me to Berlin is an urge to test the waters of living in Europe, in the land where so much of the music I love and cherish was composed and created, the culture within which it evolved and came into being. I didn’t think it would necessarily be a long stay or a life-long decision but had the urge to come to Europe at least for a period.

The other thing was that I had the opportunity to study and get to know some historic keyboard instruments (i.e. fortepianos in their different developments from mid/late 18th century till well into mid-19th century), a totally fascinating field, so I was delighted about that. And then there was also a part of me that wanted to be closer to my home and family in Israel, after a few years in the U.S. which is really quite far from Israel.

As to being Jewish in Berlin, to be honest it feels most days quite ordinary, I don’t feel I have to either particularly show my Jewish identity, or in any way particularly hide it. The Germans are if anything quite happy and curious when they learn I am Jewish. Of course when I arrived, the history of Germany would pop in my head quite often, this is unavoidable especially for a Jew arriving in Germany, and of course it still does sometimes, but it has become pretty quickly so clear, that the Germans—both as a society and as individuals—have done so much reckoning with their past and so much self-reflection and looking, talking, showing, discussion it, not running away from this past in any way, and that does make a huge difference to how it feels to live in Germany. I think most Jewish people living there now feel very strongly and warmly welcomed by the German state and the German society.

What’s your favorite composer or what attracts you to those on your standard repertoire?

To be honest, I really don’t have a favorite composer. I love quite a few, but I guess I am feeling somewhat strongly embedded in the German repertoire and quite a large part of it. I guess in a way particularly the classical style (also the earlier one) is very close to my heart, but then also Schumann is so deeply meaningful to me, as is Brahms, so the list is long. I also love French repertoire. I am not really a person of “favorites” since I love each composer or each piece for different reasons.

How do you decide on a program and what excites you about the pieces you are playing here?

Hm. Difficult to answer how I decide on a program because it’s a process that evolves from one thing to the next. Usually there is a core idea around which something evolves—either I discover something that is rarely played, for example the CPE Bach pieces that I will perform on this U.S. tour. I particularly like to have contrasts; things that are different but also create a link, often through their difference, or something similar within those differences.

Then there is a matter of fine balance. I wouldn’t want to have four huge pieces on my program because I find that utterly unbalanced. A program also has to evolve in time, have some arch shape that propels forward and keeps the listeners engaged from the beginning to the end of the concert. And of course, all the pieces on it have to be ones that stir my mind and my soul and touch both. So it’s a combination of many elements, but certainly building a program is by itself an artform, one could say.

For more information, visit uwm.edu/arts/event/einav-yarden-piano-recital.