July 12: Pianist David Kaplan Releases Debut Solo Album - New Dances of the League of David - on New Focus Recordings
Pianist David Kaplan Announces New Album
New Dances of the League of David
15 New Piano Miniatures Interwoven with Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanze Op. 6
“striking imagination and creativity” – The New York Times
Release Date: July 12, 2024
New Focus Recordings
CDs or press downloads available upon request.
www.davidkaplanpiano.com | www.newfocusrecordings.com
Pianist David Kaplan will release his debut solo album, New Dances of the League of David, on July 12, 2024 on New Focus Recordings. New Dances of the League of David features fifteen new piano miniatures commissioned by Kaplan between 2013 and 2015 from some of today’s leading American composers, interwoven with Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanze, Op. 6. The commissioned composers are Augusta Read Thomas, Martin Bresnick, Michael Stephen Brown, Marcos Balter, Gabriel Kahane, Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Han Lash, Michael Gandolfi, Ted Hearne, Samuel Carl Adams, Mark Carlson, Ryan Francis, Caroline Shaw, and Caleb Burhans.
Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanze is a collection of 18 short works from the 1830s, which the composer described as dances of the “League of David,” a musical society he created consisting of both real and imagined members – including the fictional characters Florestan and Eusebius, representing the two extremes of his own personality. The collection was dedicated to Robert Schumann’s wife, the composer and pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, and a mazurka she composed serves as its point of departure. Kaplan writes in the album’s liner notes, “Literary meanings, multiple personalities, and the border between reality and imagination aside, the Davidsbündlertänze is in purely musical terms a masterwork of startling originality; its genre simply has no precedent. . . The Davidsbündlertänze innovate in the contradiction between their apparent disjointedness and their stealthy, mysterious unity: pieces in different keys, with different affects, characters, tempi, lengths, and forms play on the same essential motives, and coexist with unlikely apposition. In a way, the young Schumann had invented the mixtape.”
Each 21st century commissioned composer contributed a work that is their own but remains in dialogue with Schumann. Kaplan requested that they write short pieces meant as interruptions or interludes to the Davidsbündlertänze, with each focusing on a different movement. “Each of the fifteen contemporary composers’ pieces . . . offers a unique statement of style, beauty, and wit; yet they are unified by their engagement with the spirit of Schumann,” Kaplan writes. “The composers all revel in rapid character shifts, multilayered rhythmic textures, and poignant eloquence.”
For David Kaplan, the new album is the culmination of a fascination with Schumann that began while he was still a child – at ten years old, he performed some of Schumann’s music for children at the Bard Festival. Since then, he has continued to explore the mercurial composer’s work in all its configurations – songs, chamber music, concertos, and solo pieces. He also became fascinated with creating concerts that juxtaposed short movements and pieces of larger works in a “tasting menu” approach, and became a close collaborator with living composers, counting them as colleagues and friends.
Kaplan’s premiere of New Dances of the League of David in New York in 2015 was named as one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times, with Anthony Tommasini reporting, “the excellent and adventurous young pianist David Kaplan paid tribute to that Schumann work by fashioning a contemporary equivalent with the help of [his] composer colleagues. Mr. Kaplan played New Dances of the League of David, a 60-minute suite that incorporates new miniatures by this 21st-century band of composers into Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, a project commissioned by Lyrica Chamber Music and Metropolis Ensemble. . . New Dances is no gimmick. Rather, reaching back to a time when borrowing a master’s music was a compliment . . . the composers honor Schumann by reacting to and even rewriting his music. And it was fascinating to hear Schumann through the ears of these perceptive, stylistically varied contemporary composers.”
Kaplan sums up his approach: “The result, fifteen new American piano works of diverse style and authorship, sometimes graffitiing the walls and sometimes painting inside the lines, is simply a bigger party; Schumann, the host, is always hovering with more champagne and hors d’oeuvres.”
For more information on each of the commissioned composers and their works, read the album’s liner notes here.
About David Kaplan: Pianist David Kaplan has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by The Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. As orchestra soloist, he has appeared with the Britten Sinfonia at London’s Barbican and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin at the Philharmonie, and next year makes debuts with the Symphony Orchestras of Hawaii and San Antonio. As recitalist, he has performed at the Ravinia Festival, Sarasota Opera House, Music on Main in Vancouver, Strathmore, Washington’s National Gallery, and New York’s Carnegie and Merkin Halls.
Kaplan has consistently drawn critical acclaim for creative programs that interweave classical and contemporary repertoire, often featuring newly commissioned works. As a guest artist of Piano Spheres at Los Angeles’ Zipper Hall, he recently premiered “Quasi una Fantasia,” a program exploring the grey area between composition and improvisation through works by Anthony Cheung, Christopher Cerrone, and Andrea Casarrubios, together with Couperin, Beethoven, Schumann, Saariaho, Ligeti, and his own improvisations.
Balancing solo performances with meaningful collaborations, Kaplan has played with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets. As a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, he performs frequently in New York’s most exciting venues, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to National Sawdust, as well as creating innovative residencies as far away as Abu Dhabi, Mexico, and Scotland. He is a veteran of numerous distinguished chamber music festivals and series, such as the Seattle Chamber Music, Bard, and Mostly Mozart Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Barge Music. He is an alumnus of Tanglewood and the Ravinia-Steans Institute, and performs regularly as an alumnus of the Perlman Music Program, including with Itzhak Perlman at Miami’s Arsht Center. He serves as Co-Artistic Director of Lyrica Chamber Music, a community series in Morris County, NJ currently in its 36th season.
Kaplan has recorded for Naxos and Marquis Records, as well as for Nonesuch as part of his longstanding duo with pianist/composer Timo Andres. In September 2023, Bright Shiny Things released Vent, Kaplan’s debut album with his wife, flutist Catherine Gregory, including music by Gabriela Lena Frank, David Lang, Timo Andres, Schubert, and Prokofiev.
Kaplan was a student of the late Claude Frank, and previously studied with Walter Ponce and Miyoko Lotto. His mentors over the years have included Anton Kuerti, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. He studied conducting at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Lutz Köhler, under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship from 2008-2010. The recipient of a DMA from Yale University in 2014, Kaplan earned his Bachelor from UCLA, where he has also served on the faculty since 2016, and now is the Assistant Professor and Inaugural Shapiro Family Chair in Piano Performance. He is proud to be a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist, and when at home in Los Angeles, he enjoys practicing on his childhood piano, a 1908 Hamburg Steinway model A.
Photos of David Kaplan by Titalayo Ayangade and Dario Acosta available in high resolution - download here.
Track List:
New Dances of the League of David
David Kaplan, Piano
New Focus Recordings | Release Date: July 12, 2024
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6
1 I. Lebhaft [1:39]
2 II. Innig [1:32]
Augusta Read Thomas (b.1964)
3 Morse Code Fantasy – Hommage to Robert Schumann [4:01]
4 III. Mit Humor (Schumann) [1:25]
Martin Bresnick (b. 1946)
5 Bundists (Robert, György and me) Etwas ungeduldig [1:43]
Michael Stephen Brown (b.1987)
6 IV. Ungeduldig [2:01]
Marcos Balter (b.1974)
7 ★★★ [2:06]
Gabriel Kahane (b. 1981)
8 No. 6 Sehr rasch und in sich hinein [3:03]
Timo Andres (b. 1985)
9 VII. Saccades [4:12]
10 VIII. Frisch (Schumann) [1:02]
Andrew Norman (b. 1979)
11 Vorspiel [4:01]
Han Lash (b. 1981)
12 Liebesbrief an Schumann [2:51]
Michael James Gandolfi (b. 1956)
13 Mirrors and Sidesteps [0:59]
Ted Hearne (b. 1982)
14 Tänze (with a sense of urgency) [3:14]
Samuel Carl Adams (b.1985)
15 II. Quietly [2:31]
Mark Carlson (b. 1952)
16 X. Sehr rasch [3:21]
17 XI. Balladenmässig. Sehr rasch (Schumann) [1:36]
18 XII. Mit Humor (Schumann) [0:36]
19 XIII. Wild und lustig (Schumann) [3:00]
Ryan Francis (b. 1981)
20 Reminiscence (Delicate, wandering) [1:35]
21 XIV. Zart und singend (Schumann) [2:34]
22 XV. Frisch (Schumann) [1:42]
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
23 XVI. (mit gutem Humor, un poco lol ma con serioso vibes) [1:45]
24 XVI. Mit gutem Humor (Schumann) [0:58]
Adams
25 XVII. (Quietly, from Afar) [4:57]
26 XVIII. Nicht schnell (Schumann) [1:33]
Encore Couplet
Caleb Burhans (b. 1980)
27 Leid mit Mut (Molto Rubato) [1:56]
28 V. Einfach (Schumann) [1:54]
Total time: 64:02
Recorded at the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Recording Studio at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Los Angeles, CA, June 26-30, 2017.
Session co-producers: Benjamin Maas and Timo Andres
Sound engineer: Benjamin Maas
Producers: Benjamin Maas and David Kaplan
Editing, mix, and mastering: Benjamin Maas.
Yamaha DCFX piano preparation: Sean McLaughlin
℗ & © 2024 David Kaplan
Liner note author: David Kaplan
Liner note editor: Laura Hartenberger
Cover Images: Synthesized images of Robert Schumann, using a 3d modeled/ computer rendered portrait of Robert Schumann by Hadi Karimi, and subsequently processed by Marc Wolf in Adobe Photoshop. hadikarimi.com/portfolio/robert-schumann-1850
Design, layout & typography: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Photos by Dario Acosta and Titilayo Ayangade
New Dances of the League of David graphic by Liana Finck, 2014