Natasha Paremski Channels Composers’ Visions

Globe-trotting pianist Natasha Paremski doesn’t take vacations.

“If you love what you do,” she said, “you’re powered by it. It’s the engine that keeps you going.

“I also don’t have the luxury of going somewhere and taking a violin with me. So it’s not my idea of a good time to be away from home, and have various and sundry concertos begging me to take some time for them.”

Her idea of a break is to decompress by being creative in a different way — “Cooking or riding horses, both dangerous hobbies for a pianist! And I watch 20/20, Dateline, true crime. You have music running through your head 30 hours a day, and you need a break to regroup and come back fresher.”

When Natasha was a teenager, her mother had to make her stop practicing to come to the dinner table.

Her virtuoso American teacher, the legendary Earl Wild, remarked on his student’s unrelenting work ethic.

Whenever she won an award or was labeled a prodigy, she’d say, “That just tells me I have to get better, to keep doing it.”

And she very nearly didn’t get the chance.

She remembered, “I was born into a 250-square-foot studio in Moscow, shared with my brother and my parents. We all slept in teeny-tiny beds, and there was a very old upright ‘piano-shaped object’ in the living room. I fell in love with that piano-shaped object and couldn’t stop playing it. I heard a Tchaikovsky piano concerto on the radio and decided to play it by ear at 2½.  I thought the vibration of the keys was so exciting.

“My mom tried to use the limited musical education that everyone had in the Soviet Union, to help me along. Finally I was so voracious that she decided to take me to a professional. My first lesson was supposed to be half an hour, but two and a half hours later, the teacher had to say, ‘You really have to go now.’”

When she was eight, the family started over in California, where private lessons were far from free and her parents hadn’t the money to pay for them.

She went a year without lessons, but when she went to hear pianist Evgeny Kissin play with the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall, Paremski realized, “This is what I want to do with my life. I begged my parents for lessons.”

They agreed that, if she worked really hard and made progress, she would have them.

The self-confessed “enfant terrible” went through a series of teachers, never hesitating to tell her parents when she thought they were wasting their money on a tutor who wasn’t giving their all.

“I did work really hard to prove it to them and to myself,” she said. “And seven years later I played with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. In a span of seven years, I made that first dream happen.”

Elaine Schmidt has described her playing as “Crashing chords, velvety sounds, bits of musical whimsy and exquisitely shaped phrases … moving from driving urgency to introspective depth, with dazzling-fast passages and the heartbeat of time she took at the top of some of the …  biggest phrases.”

Paremski reflected, “Lest one think virtuosity is loud and fast octaves, quick runs and passagework, agility and precision, the mark of a true virtuoso is to be able to play beautifully with many colors and many textures, pianissimo, in the softest sounds, which are much harder to control than loud playing.”

In her November recital, the audience will experience it all.

Quinn Mason’s New Era Bagatelles start the program on a slow, shimmering roll that builds to explosive fire in Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

“I’ll play Mason’s first Bagatelle straight through, without applause, into the Chopin Berceuse, so that it creates an aura from which the Berceuse flows.”

Then the tempo and intensity build with Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor.

“Though this is an incredibly informed audience, they still might be surprised to hear this masterpiece sonata in its entirety for the first time, including the middle section (the Funeral March that we’ve all heard).”

After intermission, Paremski presents two Russian composers in piano transcriptions from their own ballet scores: Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, and Stravinsky’s three movements from Petrushka.

“I know how the composers’ visions translate into music, so I’m speaking in the language of music to channel those visions,” said Paremski. “I personally study the transcriptions by listening to the original symphonic versions and watching the ballets. I’d urge the audience to do so, too, before they come to the concert.”

Petrushka, she says, is an exercise in athleticism and every bit as difficult as it sounds.

“Something AI will never replace,” she concluded, “is the mysticism of live performance, where the performer adjusts to the audience’s aura and gives that back to the audience. The people who support Grand Piano Series are so lucky to be able to not only hear great piano music but also experience those vibrations live.”

Natasha Paremski, an Artis-Naples alum who’s new to Grand Piano Series, has appeared with many major orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

She received several prestigious prizes at a very young age, including the Gilmore Young Artist Award in 2006 at the age of 18. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the Royal Philharmonic.

She’s based in New York, where she is Artistic Director of the nonprofit New York Piano Society, which supports pianists whose professions lie outside of music.

Natasha Paremski: Mason, Chopin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky

7 p.m. Nov. 6, Daniels Pavilion, Artis—Naples, 5833 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Naples.

Purchase tickets ($59) at grandpianoseries.org or artisnaples.org.

Call Grand Piano Series at 469-333-3231 or Artis—Naples at 239-597-1900 for assistance.