The Marlowsphere Blog (#138)

On May 7, 2017 award-winning classical pianist Nada will release “Vienna: Brahms & Nada” the second in a series of solo piano works by the prolific Romantic-era composer Johannes Brahms on the MEII Enterprises label.

May 7 is Brahms’ 184^th birthday.

Nada recently talked about her affinity with Brahms and how her relationship to his solo piano works evolved.

Q: What was your first encounter with Brahms’ music and when did you start playing it?

Nada: “I was still growing up in Beirut, and probably not even yet taking piano lessons when I first heard his music. The two first pieces I heard were his piano concerto No. 1 and the Double Concerto. About the piano concerto, this memory is linked closely to my godfather—who also introduced me through his collection of records to a great number of classical repertoire—who would talk forever while listening to the piece about the long genesis of this work. The Double Concerto Op. 102 was a recording belonging to my dad’s collection of LPs.  There was something very deep about Brahms, I could feel, but it seemed unreachable at the time. This music got stuck in my head. I could tell when I returned to it only a few years ago. It seemed like it had never left me.

“My first attempt to play his music was much later. I had already graduated with a First Prize from the Paris Conservatory, with music by French composer Henri Dutilleux, some Liszt, Bach and Haydn. I had been labeled as a new Clara Haskil and played Mozart, Schubert. Haydn so well it earned me First Prize.

“I formed a piano trio shortly after.  The first two works we planned to perform were: the trio by French composer Ernest Chausson and, of course, the first piano trio by Johannes Brahms, an extremely popular piece for this formation.  I felt pianistically and emotionally at ease in Brahms’ music though my understanding was very limited, I know. This happened to be, incidentally, a very grueling experience for me. I performed this program only two weeks after the tragic death of my mom in a bomb explosion in our home in Beirut.

“Again, sporadically and with great intervals in between, I touched up on two solo pieces. I was already living in the U.S. by then and married. My husband himself was a trained musician and pianist. He instigated an old interest I had in Brahms’ second piano concerto. This piece, for which I had already acquired the music, always seemed to be the whole world, despite the fact that I did not know it well at all. But what I gathered was that everything was in those notes, everything you can ever imagine and say in music. This was my impression. So I set to learn it in a few weeks. I still don’t know how I did it, but I was able to play through it for a very small audience with my husband then at the second piano playing the orchestral reduction. Then it disappeared from my repertoire as quickly as I had learned it.

The same fate befell the Fantasies Op. 116 which I learned only for the purpose for a recording as a good complementary piece to the seldom recorded Paul Dukas piano sonata. Absolutely unintentional was the fact that this CD, my first, was to be released on Brahms centennial death anniversary in 1997. This album is now reissued on the MEII Enterprises label.

Q: You seem to point to the fact that you do not know the composer well, yet you released a CD in May 2016 (“Nada in Hamburg with Johannes Brahms”) of his lesser known pieces described by most reviewers as “with a special affinity with the composer’s music.” You’re about to release a second album of Brahms works for solo piano (“Vienna: Brahms and Nada” MEII Enterprises May 7, 2017) and more may be on the way. What has prompted you to go on with this journey now?

Nada: “You see things have radically changed. It seems like I know him intimately and my understanding of his music and his personality goes without question.”

Q: How did this happen? Why this sudden knowledge? It sounds like you walked side-by-side with Brahms for a long time, yet he was not really part of your life. Am I correct?

Nada: “Absolutely!!! It is like my entire life I respected a musical figure, unquestionably one of our greatest composers, not daring or even being capable of entering his world. And, on one memorable night, while listening to his ‘Ein Deutsches Requiem,’ this very unique prayer to eternal life and life after death, as no other piece or requiem has ever come close; did I even know it then? But that night, the light came through.

“I lived the experience as magic. The sounds of ‘Ein Deutsches Requiem’ suddenly, and yes, suddenly became the most magnificent music, the most beautiful and moving music I had ever heard until now.
I was riveted to the sounds and tears fell down my cheeks. I felt absolutely blessed and lucky to be able to see him and feel the deep joy and beauty of it all.

“And since then, my world evolved into including Johannes Brahms into my everyday life. I learned and listened to virtually all of his music in the space of two to three years. I devoured everything I could learn, his chamber music, and his lieders. I set to exploring the German language so I could understand and appreciate the beautiful poetry and words of his lieders. And it is an ongoing quest for more. I have the orchestral scores of his symphonies which I can’t wait to study in detail, while I am still short of having learned, but a few pieces left of his solo piano repertoire.”

Q: Do you now feel differently about your understanding of his music/personality?

Nada: “Completely. Now, it is like he is walking next to me in my life, he is sitting by me while learning the music. His music seems limpidly clear in its musical thoughts. The conception, structures, usage of themes, musical ideas, harmonies are all so incredible throughout, it’s like treasure after treasure being discovered, all of this in one of the most beautifully expressive and emotionally direct music ever composed. I could sit down and go through the pieces I know best know, and show you all those little miracles at every corner of each work, all the genius creativity, and of course, the result is this immensely deep and beautiful music, a universe of infinity. Now, my journey will have no end and can go forever!”

About Nada

Pianist Nada, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese/Hungarian descent, with an award-winning Paris Conservatory education, enjoys a career as a soloist, radio broadcaster, and educator. She was a first prize winner at the Paris Conservatory who then came to North America for advanced studies at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada and at Indiana University in the U.S. with the late pianist Gyorgy Sebok.

Her last recital tour took her to Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan. In Paris and New York City, she has premiered works by great Lebanese composers Bechara El Khoury and Elias Rahbani and recorded pieces by classical/jazz composer Eugene Marlow. Nada has notably performed piano concertos of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel with orchestras in the U.S. and served as Artist-in-Residence in colleges and universities.

Nada organizes, hosts, and performs in her own concert series “The Classical Hour” in Louisville, KY, where she has nurtured a large following of listeners over many years. “The Classical Hour” is a once-a-month live broadcast and a weekly pre-recorded program every Sunday at 4 p.m. local time which can be heard worldwide over the Internet. It is available as a free download at

Nada has recorded four solo piano albums all of which are now on the MEII Enterprises label. They can be found at www.cdbaby.com/artist/nada4.

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New York, NY:  MEII Enterprises is proud to announce the forthcoming release of “Nada in Hamburg with Johannes Brahms” featuring Nada Loutfi, piano soloist, radio broadcaster, and educator. The 10-track album consists of prolific German composer Johannes Brahms’ (1833-1897) earliest works.

May 7, 2016 is Brahms’ 183^rd Birthday celebration.

Of the five works on the album, three
are chorales for piano.  These pieces, transcribed by Nada for this album, represent the first recording of these chorales for piano.

Other works on the album include:

• Variations on a Hungarian Theme (Op. 21 No. 2)
• Chaconne for the violin arranged for the left hand alone after J.S. Bach (Étude No. 5)
• Sonata Op. 1 No. 1 in C Major
• Étude for piano for the left hand after Franz Schubert (Éude No. 6)

“Nada in Hamburg” is the pianist’s third album, the second with this artist for the MEII Enterprises label. Her first CD, the self-titled “Nada Loutfi Pianist” (1997), features the rarely performed sonata by Paul Dukas and the Fantasy pieces Op. 116 by Johannes Brahms.

Her last CD—“Les Sentiments d’Amour” (MEII Enterprises 2006)—consists of 20 short character pieces for solo piano in the French chanson tradition composed by Eugene Marlow. Of this album, Paul Moravec, 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, said: “Pianist Nada Loutfi is the work’s ideal advocate in her wonderfully sensitive and finely balanced interpretations.”

Executive producer for “Nada in Hamburg” is Joelle Shefts, Producer is Eugene Marlow. The 64-minute album was recorded on a 9’ Yamaha at TNT Studios (Louisville, KY), edited at Valhalla Studio (New York City), and mastered at Onomatopoeia (New York City).

Nada Bio

Pianist Nada Loutfi, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese/Hungarian descent, with a Paris Conservatory education, enjoys a career as a soloist, radio broadcaster and educator. She was a first prize winner at the Paris Conservatory who then came to North America for advanced studies at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada and Indiana University in the U.S. with the late pianist Gyorgy Sebok.

Her last recital tour took her to Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan. In New York City, she has performed Lebanese composer Elias Rahbani’s works and recorded pieces by classical/jazz composer Eugene Marlow. Nada has notably performed piano concertos of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel.

Nada organizes, hosts, and performs in her own concert series “The Classical Hour” in Louisville, KY, where she has nurtured a large following of listeners over many years. “The Classical Hour” is a once-a-mouth live broadcast and a weekly pre-recorded program every Sunday at 4 p.m. local time which can be heard worldwide over the Internet. It is available as a free download at http://www.crescenthillradio.com/the-classical-hour-nada.html.

MEII Enterprises
MEII Enterprises is a music and media company specializing in jazz, Latin jazz,
Brazilian, and classical music. Its catalogue of 18 albums can be found at www.cdbaby.com/artist/eugenemarlow.

The company also produces and distributes documentary DVDs, including “Shakerism: The First Two Hundred Years” (re-released in 2010) and “Zikkaron/Kristallnacht: A Family Story” (2015). Currently, the company is editing “From Decadent Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression: Jazz in China” for release in 2017.

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The Marlowsphere Blog (#113)

The last blog described my relationship with Maestro Maurice Peress with whom I studied “performance practice” for a semester in a doctoral level course at the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2001. In the blog I also referred to several other musicians who have over a course of several decades influenced my composing, arranging, and playing.

There are many others, but one of those who remains to be mentioned is Ralph Hunter. Hunter was an outstanding musician: as a pianist, arranger, and especially a choir director. He died on June 3, 2002 at age 81 in Grinnell, Iowa, where he lived in retirement. I knew him as the director of the Hunter College Choir between 1963-1965.

The New York Times obituary reads as follows:

Known for his passionate conducting of polychoral and spatially stereophonic music, Mr. Hunter also worked in radio and television and recorded five albums with the Ralph Hunter Choir.

In 1954 Mr. Hunter became head of the Collegiate Chorale, an amateur choir in New York. From an ensemble of eight women and 10 men the group swelled to a 100-member chorus known for performing polychoral works by composers like Thomas Tallis and Henry Brant.

Mr. Hunter led a choir giving a series of NBC television performances with the conductor Arturo Toscanini and later conducted a campaign choir called the Voices for Nixon. In 1970 he was named professor of music at Hunter College after serving as an associate professor for one year.

In addition to teaching choral literature, conducting and arranging, he led biannual choral concerts. He retired in 1987.

A native of East Orange, N.J., Mr. Hunter began his music career with a position as a church organist at the First Reform Church in Newark. After serving in World War II, he attended the Juilliard School.

He had lived in Grinnell for four years after moving there with his wife, Louise, from Cresskill, N.J. Besides his wife of 54 years, he is survived by two sons, Richard Hunter of St. Croix, V.I., and Christopher Hunter of Grinnell; four grandchildren; and a sister, Doris Dugan of Philadelphia.

My association with Professor Hunter was as a member of the Hunter College Choir. I auditioned for the bass section, but what they needed was tenors. I became a tenor. The experience actually stretched my voice.

The college choir course was only ½ a credit per semester, but it was one of the most enjoyable ½ credits in those two years. While I might have lumbered to some of my other courses, I raced to choir practice.

Here I must pause just for a moment to explain that at the time I was attending Hunter College (uptown). There was, of course, a downtown campus at 65^th Street and Park Avenue. Hunter College (uptown) ultimately became Herbert Lehman College. Hunter College (downtown) ultimately became Hunter College.

Ralph Hunter must have possessed the patience of a saint. The reason: most of us in the uptown campus could read music on a scale ranging from “just barely” to “very well.” The “very well” singers were in the vast minority. In effect, Hunter taught each section of the choir—soprano, alto, tenor, bass—our specific musical lines note-by-note, or more accurately, phrase by phrase. At home I would attempt to read the lines in the score and sing it in preparation for the weekly practice sessions.

He was short of stature with a constant gleam in his eye. He could sit at the piano and sight-read each line of the score with great ease. I was envious of his skill. My own sight-reading skills at the time were almost non-existent. But my tenure as a tenor in the choir was, in part, the beginning of a more formal musical education. By the second year I had gained sufficient confidence in my singing, that I had become the de facto leader of the tenor section. There was also, on occasion, opportunities for me to take the lead of the entire 200+-voice choir. We were meeting in the large auditorium in the Hunter downtown campus. Hunter was late to the rehearsal. I stood in front of the somewhat disorganized choir members, called them to attention, and conducted the opening of one of the pieces we were to perform at our annual Christmas concert. I loved it. I had never led a musical group before.

Another aspect of Hunter’s influence was the repertoire we performed. It ranged from the very classical to the popular—from Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, to Gabrieli, Vivaldi, traditional Christmas songs and selections from the Harry Belafonte opus and other recordings. This is an aspect missing from Hunter’s obituary.

Among his recordings as composer and arranger were “The Wild, Wild West” (RCA 1959), “Living Voices Sing Moonglow and Other Great Standards” (RCA 1964), “Going Down Jordan” RCA 1975), and “All the Things You Are” (Pro Arte 1984).

He also served as a conductor and arranger for the likes of Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba in the early to mid-1960s: “Jump Up Calypso,” “Jump in The Line/Angelina,” and “The Many Voices of Miriam Makeba.”

Whenever we performed something from the Belafonte repertoire I brought a pair of bongos from home. How they came into my possession I have no recollection. It gave me great delight to perform on the bongos during these pieces. Whether I was playing the correct rhythmic pattern of not, I also have no recollection, but it must have sounded somewhat authentic. Hunter made no objections.

One last story about him. It was Tuesday, November 9, 1965. The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity affecting parts of Ontario in Canada; and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles were left without electricity for up to 13 hours.

The uptown campus section of the choir—about 80 of us—was rehearsing on a stage in a below ground level auditorium. It was around 5:35 p.m. We saw lights flicker for a moment but didn’t think much of it. Then, a few minutes later the entire room went completely dark. There could have been panic but Hunter kept us calm. Good thing too because it was at least a six foot drop to the floor of the auditorium from the stage. Anyone falling off the stage would have been hurt.

Hunter did the right thing. He led us in a rousing rendition of the “Halleluyah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.” It brought everyone together. Instead of panic, there was a high level of morale. After we got done singing, a few of us whose eyes had adapted to the darkness (including myself), led everyone, line by line, down the steps on each side of the stage, through the auditorium and onto the outside campus. Even though it was November and shorter days, there was also a full moon which helped light our way.

In retrospect, it was an extraordinary evening. People on the street volunteered to direct traffic. The level of cooperation was very high. The feeling all around contradicted the usual perception that New Yorkers are nasty, self-centered folk.

Ralph Hunter provided that musical spark of leadership that helped us deal with the unprecedented situation.

He was a person you wanted to spend time with and sing your heart out for.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
December 8, 2014

© Eugene Marlow 2014

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