ABOUT ERIC CLARK
Pianist Eric Clark has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia to critical acclaim, with Charleston Today praising his “brilliant execution” of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka and Lucid Culture commending his thoughtful Liszt at Trinity Wall Street. He has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras in works by Saint-Saëns, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky, and performed as orchestral pianist at Carnegie Hall, Heinz Hall, and Severance Hall under conductors including Sergei Babayan and Keith Lockhart. A frequent performer at major venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School, Eric was invited to the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, was the only American selected for the 2018 International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw, and has earned top prizes at major competitions. He is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with William Wolfram.
Pianist Eric Clark has performed to great acclaim throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Praising his debut performance of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka at the International Piano Series in Charleston, South Carolina, Charleston Today wrote: “Clark managed brilliant execution throughout, perfectly capturing Stravinsky’s ingeniously quirky structures and headlong rhythmic drive.” Of his appearance at the prestigious Concerts at One series at Trinity Wall Street Concerts, Lucid Culture wrote that “it’s not often that audiences get to hear the thoughtful side of Liszt: Kudos to Clark for delivering it with grace and, if anything, understatement.”
Eric has appeared as soloist with several orchestras, performing Saint-Saens’s Concerto No. 2 under the baton of Maestro Sergei Babayan in Perugia, Italy at Music Fest Perugia; the Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Queensboro Symphony Orchestra; Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 with the Rockland Symphony Orchestra; Mozart’s Concerto No. 24 and Bach’s Concerto No. 1 in D Minor with the Palisades Sinfonietta; the Haydn’s D Major Concerto with Sinfonia Perugina under Enrico Marconi; Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Space Coast Symphony on two consecutive evenings; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic. As orchestral pianist, he performed in Gabriela Lena Frank’s Three Latin American Dances for Orchestra in Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium under the baton of maestro Keith Lockhart. Other orchestral piano performances include Michael Tippett’s Concerto for Orchestra in Heinz Hall under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis, and Hindemith’s Der Dämon in Severance Hall under maestro Juan Pablo Izquierdo.
Eric regularly performs at prestigious venues throughout New York City and Europe, including Carnegie Hall, the Klavierhaus Concert Series, Piano Evenings with David Dubal, the Musicians Club of New York, Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House, the Roerich Museum, Trinity Wall Street, the Juilliard School, and Manhattan School of Music. He was invited to compete in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2013, and was the only American contestant selected to attend the First International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw,Poland in 2018. His awards and accolades include second prize in the 2023 International Chopin Competition of Hartford and the 2019 Paderewski International Competition in Farmington, Connecticut. A passionate advocate of new music, Eric recorded Le Mat-XXII Arcana, a solo piano work by Christian Kriegeskotte, available for download on Spotify. The work is an ambitious cycle of twenty-two pieces, each based on one of the “major arcana” of the tarot. A keen performer of chamber music, Eric has also performed throughout the East Coast with violinist Artur Kaganovskiy; together, they recorded the three Brahms Violin Sonatas for Centaur Records. He also has diverse interests in Cuban music, jazz, improvisation, and historicalfortepiano performance.
Hailing from Bergen County, NJ, Eric received early musical instruction from Kai Pangune Kim, winning many competitions in the tri-state area. He has formed a close musical association studying with Andrei Gavrilov in Zürich, Switzerland and Mikhail Voskresensky in New York.
Other teachers and mentors include Earl Wild, Ilana Vered, Byron Janis, Juana Zayas, Ann Schein, Michael Blum, Simon Mulligan, and Nina Lelchuk.
Eric earned a bachelor’s degree with university honors (equivalent of summa cum laude) and a full scholarship for his master’s degree in music from Carnegie Mellon University, where his primary teachers were Enrique Graf and Sergey Schepkin. He is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Music Arts Degree at Manhattan School of Music, where he studies with pianist William Wolfram.
He is also an accomplished visual artist, and his award-winning works have been displayed at art festivals throughout New Jersey.
Eric Clark (DMA ’26), Artistic Curator and piano Emily Frederick (BM ’21, PS ’25), Conductor Christian Kriegeskotte, Composer and Conductor
Alexa Letourneau (DMA Candidate), flute Lorien Britt (BM ’26), flute Ariana Varvaro (MM ’26), oboe Kamil Tarnawczyk (MM ’27), English Horn Ian Fleck (BM ’27), E-flat clarinet Sakira Fujimoto (MM ’25), A clarinet Mariana Clavijo Ledesma (MM ’26), B-flat clarinet Nadia Ingalls (MM ’26), bassoon Adam Underwood (BM ’28), bassoon Hannah Eide (MM ’27), horn Noelle Carlson (BM ’28), horn Themba Pieterse (BM ’24), trumpet Ryan Parichuk (BM ’27), trombone Audrey Hare (BM ’28), trombone Ariel Metzger (BM ’29), percussion Joe DeAngelo (MM ’26), violin Katya Eibozhenko (MM ’26), viola Sonna Kim, cello
WEBERN Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24 KRIEGESKOTTE Threnody: For Fritz Chamber Concerto for Piano, Percussion, and 13 Instruments (World Premiere) BERG Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments
Free, Tickets Required
Ades Performance Space Manhattan School of Music 130 Claremont Avenue New York, New York 10027
Eric: This program explores the special format of the chamber concerto with the presentation of two important 20th century works from the Second Viennese School by Anton Webern and Alban Berg. In juxtaposition with these pieces, I have commissioned the creation of a new work by composer Christian Kriegeskotte, which will receive its world premiere. Kriegeskotte’s new piece, “Threnody: for Fritz” represents both a reaction to the instrumentation, language, and aesthetics established by Webern and Berg in their time, and offers a continuation of this format for the 21st century. Much of the inspiration for the work is drawn anecdotally from the incredible life story of its eponymous dedicatee, Mr. Fritz Löw. Born in Vienna in 1897, Löw was a combat veteran of both World Wars who became conductor of the Monte-Carlo Radio Symphony, music editor of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, taught music journalism at Hunter College, and was the composer’s maternal great-grandfather.
Eric: Last year, I was performing quite a bit of twentieth-century and contemporary music–solo works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, the Barber Piano Sonata, chamber music by Valerie Coleman, and the John Corigliano Piano Concerto. While catching up with fellow CMU graduate Christian Kriegeskotte, we started a conversation about a possible chamber work that I could perform at the school for a required performance project as part of my DMA degree. I told him about a solo recital I had coming up last May with the three principal second Viennese school composers, and this proved to be a springboard of inspiration, as we both are inspired by the music of this period.
“I hope that the audience will enjoy the rare treat of hearing the Berg and the Webern concertos on the same program, as well hearing these works contrasted with the world premiere of a new work written a century later for a similar ensemble.” Eric Clark (DMA ’26)
“I hope that the audience will enjoy the rare treat of hearing the Berg and the Webern concertos on the same program, as well hearing these works contrasted with the world premiere of a new work written a century later for a similar ensemble.”
Eric Clark (DMA ’26)
Eric: Webern’s music is incredibly terse, concentrated, spare, abstract, and yet extremely expressive and evocative. I love the sound-world he creates in his miniature forms. The work is only seven minutes long, but the concentration it takes to perform this music makes it quite a daunting challenge– the “melody” is constantly being handed off from one instrument to another, with the winds sometimes playing no more than 1-3 notes at a time. The first movement has the most variety in tempo and mood– first dance-like, and then more mysterious. The second movement feels elegiac in character with its constant use of sighing two-note slurs. The third movement is a quick scherzo-like piece in duple time, with dance-like rhythms. The end is quite humorous, with instruments playing on off-beats.
Kriegeskotte’s music is constantly evolving, which I find fascinating. I recorded a cycle of solo piano pieces by him almost ten years ago–an ambitious work inspired by characters of the tarot, yet also sharing something in common with Messiaen’s Vingt regards. There is a mystical element to his music which I find compelling. In this particular chamber concerto, I believe you can hear the pointillistic influence of Webern, the cantabile aspect of Berg in the second movement, and then there’s also a Bach-like spirit to the toccata passages in the finale. The orchestration is one of my favorite aspects of this work—the use of the percussion in particular is excellent.
The Berg Kammerkonzert is a piece that I originally came to know through my having studied the recordings and career of the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who recorded it relatively late in his career. During my first-year doctoral theory class, we covered works by Berg (Lyric Suite), Webern (chamber music and the piano variations), and Schoenberg (Op. 11). Inspired by these lectures and assignments, I decided to turn my attention again to this monumental work by Berg. Though Berg is such a fantastic composer, he really only left us with the piano sonata as far as his solo output (plus a few small pieces, if I am not mistaken). This particular work comes 15 years after the sonata and represents Berg at the absolute zenith of his instrumental output, in my opinion. Though not as accessible as the more famous Violin Concerto, I think it rewards multiple listenings. It is a very difficult piece to put together, and the rehearsal process has been an extremely valuable experience for me!
Dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg (a 50th birthday gift), it uses tone rows that contain all three of the main Second Viennese School composers’ names:
ArnolD SCHönBErG → A D Eb C B Bb E G Anton wEBErn → A E Bb E AlBAn BErG → A Bb A Bb E G
Furthermore, the piece is a veritable study in the technique Schönberg termed “developing variation,” where a few ideas are constantly developed and shape the entire piece. While the first movement is truly a variation form, the entire 35-minute work is constantly varying the material we hear in the first few pages. It is also fascinating how Berg manages to include a large amount of triadic harmony in a twelve-tone work.
Eric: I hope that the audience will enjoy the rare treat of hearing the Berg and the Webern concertos on the same program, as well hearing these works contrasted with the world premiere of a new work written a century later for a similar ensemble. I also hope that this concert will perhaps generate interest in new and modern music amongst people who typically avoid these composers–I did invite several friends who fall into this latter category, and am excited to hear their reactions!
L to R: Anton Webern and Alban Berg
Eric: This is kind of a joke, but, as of late, this has really been bothering me (especially with the Berg Concerto)– Why are metronome markings always so insanely fast, to the point of being nonsensical?
On a more serious note, this is not really a question, but if I could have a musical wish granted– I think it would be to hear Chopin or Liszt playing their works on the piano–I would want to ask them if they insist that performers follow their score exactly, or if they believe in the validity of interpretations that sometimes veer away from the markings. I would love to hear their reaction to the playing of pianists such as Horowitz and Friedman, as compared to the playing of some of the finalists in recent piano competitions. Who would they prefer?
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