Piano Was A Sound Choice For Cohen
Musicians do have to make choices. Will it be piano or violin, cello or clarinet? These choices rarely include options such as mathematics, physics or engineering. But Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen had these as possible alternatives.
He also tried writing television scripts and even acting.
Eventually, Cohen chose a career as a concert pianist. He will appear Friday with the Spokane Symphony as soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2.
The concert, conducted by the orchestra’s music director, Fabio Mechetti, also will include Haydn’s Symphony No. 80 and Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements.
Cohen, 49, started studying music in his native Brazil when he was 5. His parents were Jewish - his father was Persian, his mother Russian. First the young Cohen studied violin. In playing the piano, he copied his sister as she worked on her piano lessons. Cohen also played soccer like most Brazilian boys. He ruined, he claims, “hundreds of pairs of spectacles” before his father called a halt to his soccer playing.
He studied engineering at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro and taught physics in a high school. Still unsettled on a career choice, Cohen supported himself by accompanying pop singers, playing the violin for weddings and funerals, and playing violin in the orchestra of the Opera House in Rio.
A friend persuaded Cohen to play for a piano master class led by Jacques Klein, a Brazilian protege of the American piano virtuoso William Kapell. After working with Klein, Cohen finally dedicated himself to a keyboard career and went to Vienna, where he continued his piano studies with Bruno Seidlhofer and Dieter Weber.
After winning the first prize in Italy’s Busoni Competition in 1972, Cohen declined a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon and returned to Brazil to teach math and physics at an engineering school.
But he still practiced the piano and performed. Cohen’s career got fully under way when he was hired to substitute for Martha Argerich as soloist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Cohen’s success there led to engagements with major orchestras under such conductors as Yehudi Menuhin, Klaus Tennstedt and Kurt Masur, to recital appearances in Europe and North and South America, and to a series of chamber music performances with the Chilingarian String Quartet. His recording of solo works by Liszt was recently released on the IMP label.
Currently, Cohen lives in London and commutes to Manchester, where he teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Mechetti will present a pre-concert lecture discussing the evening’s music in the Opera House auditorium beginning at 7.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: The Spokane Symphony will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at the Spokane Opera House. Tickets are $13 to $28, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200), G&B Selecta-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.