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Sara
Buechner
July
26, 2008
Sara Davis Buechner
has been celebrated as a pianist of noteworthy accomplishment,
virtuosic mastery, artistic sensitivity and extraordinary versatility.
A major prizewinner of many of the world's most prestigious international
piano competitions - Reine Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg,
Sydney and Vienna - she established her early career by winning
the Gold Medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano
Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a Bronze Medalist
of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.
With an active
repertoire of nearly 100 piano concertos ranging from Bach to
Wuorinen, she has appeared as soloist with America's most prominent
orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Cleveland,
Saint Louis and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; and abroad
with the Japan Philharmonic, City of Birmingham (U.K.) Symphony
Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Kuopio (Finland) Philharmonic, Slovak
Philharmonic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y
León (Spain). She was a featured artist at the "Piano
2000" Gala Concerts in the Kennedy Center with the National
Symphony, and made her debut at Lincoln Center's "Mostly
Mozart" Festival. In addition to her frequent North American
concert appearances and radio broadcasts, she tours widely throughout
the Far East on a yearly basis.
Growing in popularity
in Canada, Sara has recently performed with the CBC Radio Orchestra,
Orchestra London, Victoria Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Vancouver
Symphony, the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic,
McGill Chamber Orchestra and Calgary Philharmonic and has toured
widely as a soloist throughout Canada. She was recently the
subject of a feature article in MacLeans Magazine.
Ms. Buechner's
recording of piano music by George Gershwin was selected as a
"Record of the Month" by Stereophile magazine; her
1997 world première recording of the Busoni version of
Bach's "Goldberg" Variations was profiled in the Arts
& Leisure section of the New York Times; and her recording
of Hollywood piano concertos by Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman
won Germany's Deutsches Schauplatten Preis for best soundtrack.
Pro Piano has released her CD of the complete piano music of
Stephen Foster, and her fourth recording for Koch International
was recently released featuring piano music by Rudolf Friml.
Ms. Buechner's extensive discography also includes more than
ten disks for the Yamaha Disklavier and Piano Soft systems.
Ms. Buechner
has given premières of important new music and film scores
by Larry Bell, Pierre Charvet, Richard Danielpour, Dick Hyman
and Henry Martin. She appears regularly with the Film Society
of Lincoln Center, as one of the few pianists to actively perform
piano scores to silent movies, notably the 150-minute long restored
version of Ben-Hur (1925), and the Danish classic Master of the
House (1925). Ms. Buechner has also collaborated on dance projects
with choreographer Neta Pulvermacher and toured extensively with
the Mark Morris Dance Group.
Profiles of
Ms. Buechner have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Paris
Match, Noticias del Argentina, Out, Blade and Frontiers magazines;
and she has been featured on the television programs Entertainment
Tonight, Extra, In the Life, and Bynon. Her appearances on radio
include profiles on NPR's The Fishko Files and Performance Today,
WFMT's Dame Myra Hess Recital Series and WNYC's New Sounds with
John Schaefer.
In 2003 Ms.
Buechner was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the University
of British Columbia - Vancouver. She is a former faculty member
of New York University, and has presented lectures and masterclasses
worldwide, from the Royal Academy in London to the Juilliard
School to the Kobe-Yamate Gakuen in Osaka, Japan. Sara Davis
Buechner plays the Yamaha Piano exclusively. |
