From age 3 to 33, pianist to wow audiences
Written by Sue Wade for Florida Weekly
When he was three years old, 30 years ago in Minneapolis, young Reed Tetzloff started picking out tunes from favorite Disney videos on his family’s upright piano.
Recognizing perfect pitch when they heard it, his parents arranged for music lessons.
He would study in his hometown with Dr. Paul Wirth before advancing to New York’s Mannes College of Music. There, he won the school’s two biggest awards: the Concerto Competition and the Nadia Reisenberg Award Competition.
Mannes’ piano department chair, the flamboyant Pavlina Dokovska, became a mentor to him beyond the practice room. She taught him that, though much of music focuses on technique, the truest approach to art makes such tools the means to an emotional end.
His studies, especially with Dokovska, also emphasized the purity of sound and phrasing that surely prompted the Cincinnati Enquirer to write: “He enchants the audience with his magical tone.”
“Every second of our lessons focused on that,” he remembered. “If I played a phrase where one note was 5% out of place, Mme. Dokovska would claim an allergic reaction to it!”
Ever since his Lincoln Center debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2012, he has thrilled audiences from the United States to Europe and Asia. He drew worldwide attention at the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, where the Russian media anointed him as “the lyric hero of the competition.”
Now he’s left competition behind in favor of recitals and chamber music which allow him, as he described it, “not to become removed. Music is about connection and communication with an audience, being a presence that involves and invites the audience in.”
Every season, he custom-tailors his solo repertoire to specific audiences, blending what he likes to play with what he believes each audience will enjoy.
“I like to both challenge and reward the audience,” he said.
As radio host Pamela Kuhn once put it, “He knows how to hold the audience in a sense of joy and rapture.”
He promises that his Naples program will be “particularly fun”: a delightful mix of contemporary and classical that begins with light, French-inspired pieces and syncopates its way into the second half with Gershwin tunes that make a nice dessert for any audience.
But all that is just a warmup for a devilishly challenging Strauss/Godowsky Die Fledermaus – a concluding flourish that demonstrates the virtuosity for which Tetzloff is so well known.
Pianist Reed Tetzloff
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 5
Where: Daniels Pavilion, Artis—Naples, 5833 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Naples.
Purchase tickets: ($65) at grandpianoseries.org or artisnaples.org.
Call Artis—Naples at 239-597-1900 for assistance.