ALICIA ZIZZO

• Chopin / Alicia Zizzo

As one of America’s great classical musicians, Alicia Zizzo’s pianistic artistry has brought her international acclaim on four continents, from London (Barbican Center), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), Vienna (Musikverein), Budapest (Vigado with the Budapest Symphony), Warsaw (Ostrovsky Palace for the Chopin Society) to New York (Avery Fisher and Carnegie Halls) as well as many other venues throughout Europe and the United States. She is a Steinway Artist and her portrait hangs in their Hall of Fame in New York City.

Alicia Zizzo’s work has been hailed in magazines and newspapers throughout the world, ranging from The New York Times‚ The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and Boston Globe to the Toronto Star‚Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun, the China Post, Gramophone magazine, Classic FM Magazine, Netherlands’ NRC Handelsblad and El Espectador in Bogota.Her groundbreaking musicological analysis of the original manuscripts of the Rhapsody in Blue was published internationally in Clavier magazine. She has also written about Gershwin’s “lost” Preludes for this magazine and others, including Piano & Keyboard, Piano Today and The New York Concert Review.

Dr. Zizzo has appeared on The Today Show, ABC Evening News, BBC World Service, WLIW TV (PBS New York), BBC Radio Four, CNN, Voice of America, National Public Radio, KKGO-San Francisco, WGBH-Boston, CBC in Canada and Radio France. She also performed in a major National Public Radio documentary celebrating Gershwin’s 100th Birthday, and has participated in film documentaries about Gershwin for the noted French filmmaker Alain Resnais, as well as for the BBC Wales, the latter of which was filmed at the Library of Congress.

Along with President George H.W. Bush and Billy Joel, Alicia Zizzo was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree by Hofstra University in 1998 in recognition of her significant contributions to American music. In 2004, she was honored with an International Prize for her work by the President of the Greek Parliament through the Euro-American Women’s Council. Zizzo is now also Dame Alicia Zizzo, having been knighted by the Russian Royal Ancestry dating from the 18th Century. In 2005, her biography and a special citation for her contributions to American music history were read into the Congressional Record of the 109th United States Congress.

One of Dr. Zizzo’s goals has been to enhance the remarkably small classical solo piano repertoire of George Gershwin. Working with the Library of Congress, Warner Brothers Publications, the Gershwin estate and late Gershwin scholar Edward Jablonski, she has researched, transcribed and reconstructed the composer’s lost or forgotten classical solo piano manuscripts notated in his own hand. Dr. Zizzo approaches Gershwin’s manuscripts for the purpose of reconstructing from fragments, sketches and partially completed scores Gershwin’s own long-neglected material. Warner Brothers Publications, which administers the copyrights of Gershwin’s material, has made Dr. Zizzo’s reconstructions of Lullaby, Blue Monday, Seven Preludes, Rhapsody in Blue, I Got Rhythm Variations, Gershwin Miniatures and other unpublished manuscripts for solo piano the first new authentic editions of Gershwin’s classical material to be published in more than half a century. In a four-day Library of Congress celebration of the Gershwin Centennial in 1998, Zizzo was honored to be the only concert pianist invited to present a full recital and lecture at this historic event, where she performed her editions and received the highest laudatory praise. FREDERIC CHOPIN
Scherzo No.2 in B-flat minor, Op.31
Fantasie-Impromptu
Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op.9 No.1
Nocturne in F minor, Op.55, No.1 No.2

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Clair de lune
Valse romantique
Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum
Reverie

FRANZ LISZT
Mephisto Waltz No.2

ROBERT SCHUMANN
Aufschwung
Des Abends



MSR Classics