Liza Stepanova is particularly interested in COLLABORATIONS WITH OTHER ARTS, championing NEW MUSIC, and combining performance and scholarly research in CREATIVE CONCERT PROGRAMMING.
Her 2018 debut solo CD Tones & Colors (CAG Records) featured art-inspired music from Bach to Ligeti. The album received excellent reviews in the BBC Music Magazine, The Whole Note, The NY Music Daily, and others, and was featured extensively in national radio programs including on WFMT Chicago, WCRB Boston, and multiple times on NPR’s Performance Today.
Deeply committed to new music, Stepanova has premiered works by Jennifer Higdon and Libby Larsen and worked with composers William Bolcom, Gabriela Lena Frank, and John Harbison. She has performed in leading contemporary music venues including National Sawdust and Roulette in New York City and the San Francisco Center for New Music. Her latest CD E Pluribus Unum (Navona Records, 2020) showcases piano music by eight renowned American composers with immigrant backgrounds, including Lera Auerbach, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kamran Ince, Reinaldo Moya, Pablo Ortiz, and world premiere recordings of works by Chaya Czernowin, Badie Khaleghian, and Eun Young Lee.
Stepanova has performed Fanny Mendelssohn’s monumental hour-long piano cycle The Year in lecture recitals at the Mendelssohn Society in Berlin and at The Juilliard School, where the lecture was given by world-renowned Mendelssohn expert, Dr. Larry Todd. The performance was accompanied by projections from the illustrated manuscript with paintings by Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny’s husband.
Liza Stepanova has curated NUMEROUS CREATIVE AND METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED CONCERT PROGRAMS for her own performances, recitals by her various ensembles, and for summer festivals. Examples of Stepanova’s work include:
The Breaking of Nations, a commemorative recital for the Songfest festival featuring music of the First and Second World Wars, including the American premiere of Pavel Haas’s Fata Morgana
Recovered Voices (in collaboration with the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at The Colburn School and the OREL Foundation) featuring composers whose lives, work and reputations suffered as a consequence of the cataclysms brought on by the Nazi regime in mid-20th century Europe.
Franz Liszt: The Man and The Artist, a journey through the composer’s life through song, interspersed with readings from letters and tributes
Hommage a Debussy, an exploration of the wealth of influences and motifs in his work with projections of over 100 works of visual art
The Song of Love Triumphant centered around a mystical short story by Turgenev and Chausson’s Poeme for violin inspired by it
Painting in Tones – Composing in Colors with multimedia, including selections from multiple art-inspired art song cycles by Jake Heggie
Uncommon Prayer (co-curated with pianist Kathleen Tagg), an exploration of spirituality around the globe
Among Ms. Stepanova’s special projects has been the performance of all FOUR MOZART PIANO CONCERTI that originally exist in versions with string quartet (K. 413-415 and 449). Ms. Stepanova performed the concerti K. 413-415 in a single evening from memory. She has also premiered arrangements of CHOPIN’S COMPLETE WORKS FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA: two concerti and four concert pieces in arrangements with string quartet accompaniment. Both projects were performed in over fifteen cities in Germany and Austria and were highly acclaimed in the press. READ REVIEWS here…