ATSS Professional Club

Meeting Information

Seminar in coming Friday, October 20, 2006 at 7:30 PM took place at Glenn Gould Studio (CNN Tower place, CBC Broadcasting Centre), at address: 250 Front Street West on concert of high level musician, teacher and innovator Vladimir DOUNIN

The famous Russian school of piano playing is based on the idea that the piano is not for hammering but for singing. Originally, though, this idea was not Russian: the great Irish pianist-composer John Field, one of the founders of Romanticism in music, impressed the Russians so much with his “singing on the piano” that they, in turn, offered him a tremendously generous contract. Unable to resist, John Field immigrated to Russia. Judging from the reputation of Russian pianists around the world today, he had done his job perfectly.

Vladimir Dounin was taught in the same tradition. After graduating with distinction from Moscow and then St. Petersburg Conservatory (Ph.D.), he worked as a touring and recording artist with many of the best singers in Russia and abroad.

Vladimir had always enjoyed playing vocal music for his friends, but hesitated to do it in concerts. “Why don’t you play all your songs publicly if you know how to do it?” asked him many times his teacher, Vladimir Nielsen. “All the great pianists in the past did it in their concerts!” Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and many others played “vocal” works in their programs. However, we are not used to hearing songs from modern pianists, just because this tradition is “out of fashion”.

Music is food for our ears and for our mind. Can we imagine people buying any unlabelled boxes of food? We can see how “picky” we are, even in choosing our bread for dinner. Why, then, do musical audiences have to rely entirely on the taste of the performers?

This is the reason why Vladimir always takes into consideration all the requests. This has enriched his repertoire immensely with many works he had never even heard of before. Now many of these requests have become his favorites as well.

At the moment, Vladimir Dounin is living in Toronto, Canada. Other than performing, he loves teaching piano and vocal students. He has introduced a method unknown in North America – the “Fine Indication of Note Intensity”. This method allows his students of all levels to play beautifully, even when playing a piece for the first time.

For your requests (CDs, any enjoyable music, simple or difficult) and for lessons: the secrets of playing/ singing beautifully, please call:

416 – 321 56 27, E-mail: vladimirdounin@yahoo.ca

Our comments:

He transforms the words of the familiar old songs into the spirit of piano.

At the moment a fine pianism of Dounin became to be not the prime virtue, but the sense and spirit of the music itself it what carries you away…

Listen, don’t loose the chance, attend the next Vladimir Dounin recital and after the concert’s completion you’ll said to yourself – yes, I do like the songs played by piano.

M. Kazarnovskaya