Juilliard-trained Vancouver-born pianist Ian Parker plays finger-twisters with Vetta
Growing up, the musician was literally surrounded by pianos
Ian Parker was three years old when he officially started taking lessons from his dad.
Vetta Chamber Music presents Ian Parker and Friends on January 28 at 2 pm at West Point Grey United Church; January 29 at 7:30 pm and January 30 at 2 pm at Pyatt Hall; and January 31 at 7:30 pm at ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island.
IN IAN PARKER’S childhood Vancouver home, there was a piano in every single room except the bathroom—no joke. Both of his parents were piano teachers, and their house acted as an academy after school, with several other instructors coming in to teach. Night after night, music played well past bedtime. Having been born into a world of keys, he seemed destined to become the in-demand artist he is today.
“The house was always full of company and it was never a boring place,” Parker tells Stir by phone. “And then I kind of subconsciously started learning music just by hearing that. Very often, popular sonatas would be played three or four times during the week. You just get to know the repertoire.
“It was just normal to me; I didn’t think of it as being a unique thing,” adds the musician-conductor. “You just kind of grow up and you become a pianist: that’s what I thought you do.”
Parker was three years old when his father, Edward, started teaching him lessons. At 15, his parents opted to step back and let him choose his own path and decide if he truly wanted to pursue piano professionally. He signed up for a summer at boarding school, where he took master classes and was introduced to chamber music, the experience only deepening his desire to play.
“And then when I was 18, I did this very brave thing of just saying, ‘Okay, well, in order to make this career move, you have to just go to Juilliard. So that’s the only place I applied to,” he says. “When I think of it now, I mean, you’ve got to have a backup plan. I didn't have any backup plan. I think that if I didn't get in, well, I would have been working at a fast-food joint, maybe,” Parker says with a laugh.
“I had a cousin who was already finishing up at Juilliard when I was born and making a big name on the international music scene,” he adds. “My goal was to be another one of those.”
Mission accomplished. Having earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the esteemed New York institution, Parker has gone on to perform with leading orchestras across Canada, the U.S., Europe, and Israel, with recital highlights including the Lincoln Center, UCLA, and UBC, along with collaborative appearances at the Hawaii International Music Festival and New York City’s Morgan Library. He has recorded with London Symphony and CBC Records, while he also acts as music director and principal conductor of the VAM Symphony Orchestra at the Vancouver Academy of Music and as artistic director of the Resonate chamber music series at the Kay Meek Arts Centre.
While travelling the globe is every artist’s dream, being able to play at home is undeniably special, and Parker’s next appearance is with Vetta Chamber Music in Vancouver and on Salt Spring Island. He’ll join Joan Blackman, violin, and Zoltan Rozsnyai, cello—both dear friends—on a mixed program of Haydn, Schumann, and Mendelssohn.
It was that first summer as a teenager learning chamber music, in fact, that truly stoked his passion for the piano.
“That was such an amazing experience because as a pianist, as you can imagine, we’re always alone,” Parker explains. “So here you are making music with other people, which was wonderful but also very foreign to me. I didn’t know what rehearsal language was. How do you communicate to other musicians? How do you share ideas and get them to work together? When you’re playing someone else or multiple people, that causes pianists to do something we never do, and that’s listen. It [chamber music] teaches you how to listen. It teaches you how to be really in the present moment.
“Then I had the learning experience at festivals, and working with other musicians, and I realized the whole performance anxiety was very different,” he says. “You’re not just there in this limelight by yourself. You’re sharing it with others, so the pressure is a bit less. It's a bit more exciting and fun right from the get-go. In many ways, it's my favourite way of playing because you're not alone, you're not lonely. You’re with people. You’re going to be supported and support. I really fell in love with chamber music from the summer festivals.”
Ian Parker.
The upcoming Vetta concert kicks off with Haydn’s Variations in F minor for piano, Hob. XVII:6, a solo that Parker says shows a different side of the famous Austrian composer who many might associate with music that’s light and lovely.
“I have to admit I was a lesser fan of Haydn,” Parker says. “I totally worship his charm and genius way of writing, but it’s always very happy to be happy. It’s like cookies and tea all the time. My dad kept telling me to check out these F minor variations. I picked up the music and started reading through it and I thought, ‘Oh my goodness; what deep melancholy’, and then ‘what hot and cold’.
“What he does is the most simple thing, but it’s so epic,” he adds. “He plays around with F major and F minor. The major side of things is the sunshine, if you will. The minor is the dark, the gloomy, the more kind of lonely.”
Haydn had been hired by Prince Paul Anton, head of the wealthy Esterházy family, to head its musical establishment, and lived in a grand palace built in rural Hungary. “Having his own wing of this palace, I’m sure he was very lonely alone all time,” Parker says. “This piece has a little mini title underneath…which is ‘a little fun’. I think what was happening was Haydn didn’t have this piece assigned; he wasn’t requested to write yet another entertaining piece for guests of royal family, I think he wrote this because he had something he really wanted to get down on paper. It wasn’t for any commissions, and it really shows the full spectrum of what Haydn’s emotional musical qualities are. It begins with this beautifully haunting melody then he flips into F-major and giggles a bit and then he goes back…. The piece is a very interesting journey through his heart and mind and soul.”
Also on the program is Schumann’s Violin Sonata no. 1 in A minor, Op. 105, which ranges from mellow and dark to delicate and light-hearted to riveting and rhythmic. “Schumann was such a master at rocking the soul,” Parker says. “The last movement…is almost like hail—a stormy feeling with constant tapping of notes, no sense of smoothness; it’s very, very arresting. It’s very, very passionate. It’s quite a heavy, emotional work.”
The Vetta concert finishes with Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49, which, in Parker’s words, is “one of the most glorious and virtuosic and exciting, thrilling pieces of music”.
The first of the work’s four movements is extraordinarily challenging. “As far as how virtuosic, how fast, it goes and how many notes there are, I’ve memorized most of the piece because you can’t read it, you don’t have a chance to look—your hands are flying,” he says. “It is so exciting to hear.
“The second movement is very, very bittersweet but it has deep sense of melancholy; I actually played it at my dad’s celebration of life, “Parker says. It’s beautiful but there’s this definite deep sense of sadness. It explores that melodic side. The third movement is a typical scherzo: super-fast, very airborne, jumping off its feet. It’s so charming, it’s so playful; you hear notes flying across all the instruments. It has to be done in an effortless way, but it’s a real finger twister.”
The piano’s trio last movement is fitting for a finale. “Talk about a whirlwind… It’s like you’re on a rollercoaster flying around, again with the most difficult rhythms, but it ends with this incredible sense of triumph. You hear the violin soar up high, and the ending just explodes with fireworks. It’s an amazingly written piece and it’s the ultimate journey of Mendelssohn and I hope we can light up audiences with it.”
That’s something people could use these days. Parker recalls the last concert he played on Salt Spring Island, when, afterward, he overheard an audience member say to his friend, “That’s the medicine we all need.”
“It was one of the greatest compliments,” Parker says. “It brings to mind this saying I saw on a billboard in Portland, a bit cheesy, but: ‘You cannot touch music, but music can touch you.’ It’s so true. It’s the best medicine right now.”
For more information, see https://vettamusic.com.
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