Elizabeth Mucha
Pianist
Welcome to my website. Here you will find the usual biography, reviews, upcoming events, publicity photos, and recordings of myself as you would expect of a website bearing my name. However, as I have spent most of my professional career in various collaborations, I feel that any story about myself would be incomplete without some anecdotes and photos of some of the people whose paths have crossed my own musical travels.
‘Musical travels?’ I hear you say. ‘Of course musicians travel, what makes these special?’
What makes them special is that I’ve had the great privilege of living in six countries over the last 20 years: UK, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Singapore, Brazil and Poland. As well as experiencing the world in ways that I could never have imagined, I’ve been extremely fortunate to meet and work with some fabulously talented people who have drawn on their cultures in order to create new and exciting works of art: “Taqtaq” for flutes, piano and pre-recorded ‘suling’ track by Philippine-Chinese composer Jeffrey Ching immediately springs to mind.
As well as being fortunate to explore and perform standard vocal and chamber music repertoire, I’ve also been given opportunities to work on some very interesting projects through the years. My involvement in the 90s with the British experimental group, Opera Circus, offered me an insight into the inner workings of theatre; collaboration with Dutch-Japanese composer Sumire Nukina on her multi-media project ‘Mondriaan’ in Amsterdam opened up the idea of combining art and music; ballet dancers enacting the inner feelings of the characters in Samuel Barber’s mini-opera “A Hand of Bridge” performed by a quartet of singers and myself for Singapore Lyric Opera led me further down the route of breaking down barriers between various art forms. These are but a few of the projects which have inspired my efforts to develop multi-media recitals (Art Sung) which push the boundaries of what is considered to be a ‘concert’ by engaging with the audience through music, art and literature simultaneously.
I hope I have whetted your appetite to explore my website and to meet some of my collaborators on my musical travels.
New Developments
ART SUNG WEBSITE
Exciting news!
My Art Sung website is now up and running. For many years I have had a passion for creating themed programmes which then extended to linking music, and especially Lieder, to Art. It started very simply: a song and an image with a few words of explanation. Gradually the need to tell stories grew and it became apparent that some form of narrative was needed to give the recital a structure. We then discovered that we could get creative with the artwork and we are exploring ever more exciting ways to present the fusion of Music, Art and Narrative which is Art Sung.
To find out more, I welcome you to visit the Art Sung website to read about our upcoming performances and projects and the many talented people who make up the Art Sung team.
“Clara goes to Paris” video
Like so many people in 2020, I decided to tackle something new. During the first two Art Sung projects, I watched the video people create magic with their complicated video programmes and so, during lockdown, I decided that it was time for me to crack the mysteries of Final Cut Pro X. After a few exciting and often frustrating months of learning to work with transitions, timelines, overlays, plugin etc, I created a short film of a scene which, sadly, had to be cut from the final performance of my second production, Art Sung – Clara Schumann.
In any narrative about Robert and Clara Schumann, the infamous court case between them and Clara’s father is usually only mentioned briefly, giving us very little understanding what the 19-year-old Clara went through in those years. Against this background, “Clara goes to Paris” tells the story of her journey and stay in Paris in 1839, the city considered to be the cultural capital of Europe’.
We share her anxieties and excitement of being independent for the first time: the responsibility of organising her own concerts whilst travelling across Europe without the protection of a man; her reactions to the frivolity of Parisian society as well as the excitement of performing in Paris.
2021 also marks the bicentenary of another extraordinary woman, singer Pauline Viardot. She was a great friend of Clara Schumann’s and in this little video she makes a cameo appearance played by the wonderful soprano Lorena Paz Nieto with whom I’ve had the enormous honour to work with on both my Art Sung projects – Alma Mahler and Clara Schumann. Enjoy her singing here as the sensational Pauline Viardot.
The young and talented Gabriela Freeman plays Clara Wieck and look out for a guest appearance by my hands!
My Collaborations
2018 marks my 10-year partnership with Bulgarian violinist Krassimira Jeliazkova: a duo that has survived several country moves between us and has involved much travel for rehearsals and concerts.
It began rather inauspiciously when I was living in Poland. Krassimira arrived from Turkey, raring to pick up her playing work. We were introduced through a mutual friend, planned some repertoire, and I then put off one rehearsal after another. I was in the early stages of pregnancy, sick as a dog and I couldn’t tell her. A great partnership was nearly lost!
We went on to perform at some interesting venues, including the Bulgarian institute, the American Embassy, and Beit Warszawa, the progressive centre of Jewish culture and heritage in Warsaw. And then there was the never-to-be-forgotten Mendelsohn extravaganza in minus 20 degrees. Despite the prestigious nature of the venue and the high status financial backing, the heating failed spectacularly – I don’t quite remember how many layers of clothes I wore under my concert dress!
Moving forward, Krassimira moved to Germany and I came to the UK. Nevertheless, concerts continued in both countries as well as a studio recording – to listen to the 3rd movement of the Mendelssohn violin sonata recorded in Berlin, please click here.
Our repertoire grew, as we added traditional compositions by composers such as Beethoven and Brahms and also virtuoso transcriptions by Wieniawski and Szymanowski. 20th century works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Messiaen, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Elgar and Walton figure prominently in our programmes as well as more mainstream Romantic repertoire such as Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov and more light-hearted works such as the West Side Story Suite.
In 2015 we found ourselves living in the same country again, with only two county borders to cross for rehearsals! We will celebrate our partnership with several concerts this year. At the beginning of March we performed a programme entitled “Transformations” at The Abbey Church in Waltham Abbey which explores how composers have transformed their original material to create something unique – very fitting for a duo that has literally transformed itself several times. We will repeat this at a lunchtime concert at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields on Tuesday, May 22nd. In June and July, we will perform a programme celebrating our Eastern European connections.
It seems fitting also that Mendelsohn should figure large again this year, as we will perform his exuberant and youthful double concerto with the East Anglia Chamber Orchestra in the 2018/19 season.