Patria Productions presents Pianist Marjan Kiepura
Born in Paris, Marjan Kiepura was accepted to the Juilliard School Preparatory Division by Mme Rosina Lhévinne at the age of eight, where he became a long-time student of Jeaneane Dowis. He also studied with Menahem Pressler, Lily Dumont, Vladimir Padwa and Dorothy Walters.
Being of Polish heritage, his development as an artist has led him to focus on the music of Frédéric Chopin and as a result, he has given concerts in the U.S. and Europe of this composer's works.
Appropriately, Marjan Kiepura made his London debut in May 1989 at the Polish Cultural Center (POSK). This was followed by performances including the International May Festival in Wiesbaden, the "Mozart Odyssey" held in conjunction with the Vermont Mozart Festival, among many others. He was proud to perform in a special concert honoring his late father, the Polish tenor, Jan Kiepura, at the Warsaw Opera in May 1990. Mr. Kiepura also occasionally accompanies his mother, the Hungarian soprano, Marta Eggerth, in recital.
In the past decade, examples of concerts include London's Royal Festival Hall Foyer Music Series, The Pen-and-Brush Concert Series and the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, American Institute of Polish Culture in Miami, the Polish Clubs Association in Chicago, Bibliothéque Polonaise in Paris, Dartmouth College and M.I.T., and the Fourth Sandomierz Music Festival in Poland where he performed his own thematic program of Bartok and Chopin. He is a frequent guest on Vermont Public Radio.
Mr. Kiepura has also conceived special lecture-recital programs that present biographical information linked to the music being performed. This concept, the subject of numerous appearances, has been presented at the Liederkranz Foundation, the "Sundays at JASA" series and the Temple Emanu-El in New York, the Littleton Opera House in Littleton, New Hampshire, as well as concerts elsewhere in New York City, New Jersey, New Hampshire and throughout the State of Vermont.
In December 2000, Mr. Kiepura was a featured artist on London's BBC Radio 3 performing live to an audience of several million listeners throughout the UK and Western Europe. With Chopin being a dominant figure in his own artistic development, Mr. Kiepura is an avid researcher and collector of books and articles on the composer. His article on the interpretation of Chopin's mazurkas entitled "Dancing in the Dark", was published in the Sept/Oct 2002 issue of England's Piano Magazine.
Marjan Kiepura's debut Chopin CD recording entitled "Images of a Homeland" has to date received fourteen superb reviews including BBC Music Magazine, American Record Guide, Amazon and other music journals in the USA, England, Holland, Austria and Poland.
Mr. Kiepura lives with his wife Jane in New Hampshire.
"Images of a Homeland" - Music of Chopin
The American pianist Marjan Kiepura has issued his debut recording. Comprising both rare and familiar repertoire by Frédéric Chopin, the disc - entitled "Images of a Homeland" - presents the composer in a different perspective than is usual, focusing on the specific Polish characteristics of his music.
Marjan Kiepura has founded his own record label - Patria Productions - to issue the recording, an increasingly popular trend among artists with the prevailing uncertainty in the record industry. As well as presenting familiar repertoire such as the A major Polonaise and the D flat major 'Raindrop' Prelude, the recording includes several rarities.
In particular, it is Chopin's Mazurkas, from early to late, which are the prime focus of the disc. Marjan Kiepura believes they provide the key to Chopin's personality and in particular, his idiomatic Polish traits, more than any other genre in which he worked. The artist comments:
"It has been my intent to observe Chopin as a person deeply affected by influences, chiefly what one might call the essence of his heritage - the Polish earth - which never left him and which informed so much of his music. In my playing, I have tried to convey the particular Polish characteristics of this music which I feel intuitively - namely, the rhythms, inflections and emphases"
To complement the recording, Marjan Kiepura has written extensive liner notes providing a historic reference to the concept of homeland and what it meant to Chopin. Two rare paintings of Polish scenes by the renowned painter Zofia Stryienska are reproduced in the booklet. These paintings were owned by Mr Kiepura's late father, the Polish tenor Jan Kiepura and have never been exhibited.
The award-winning producer David Frost and the recording engineers Tom Lazarus and Marc Stedman of Classic Sound Inc. New York, were the technical team involved in the project. The performances were recorded at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York.