Archive for the ‘News’ Category

I was delighted to play pieces from my new album Intimate Studies to a packed music room at Bob and Elisabeth Boas’ home on the 26th of March. The evening was a great success and I look forward to the next concert of Czech piano music including Janacek’s On the Overgrown Path (as requested by the host) at 22 Mansfield Street next season. Hospitality of Bob and Elizabeth was as always exemplary and I thank them once more for making this launch concert possible and so memorable. Pictures from the launch follow below.

I have copied the first reviews of my new CD Intimate Studies.

The CD is available in stores now. Return to my site for regular updates on publicity, events and concerts around this release.

The reviews follow below.

Sir Charles Mackerras

I had the opportunity of listening to your excellent new recording “Intimate Studies” and I must say I admired it tremendously.

The Janácek “In the Mists” seemed to me to be played most beautifully with great feeling for the poetry of the mists being described, with an understanding of the underlying meaning of the work which is most impressive and all too rare.

The other Janácek pieces called “Intimate Studies” ( no doubt inspired by Janácek’s designation of his Quartet  ”Intimate Letters”) I find absolutely fascinating. I had actually never heard any of them before and short though many of the pieces are, they are all beautiful representatives of Janácek’s mature style. I am most grateful that you were able to introduce these pieces on your recording.

All in all you are to be congratulated on a magnificent CD which gives such a splendid overview of the 20th century Czech music. 

Sir Charles Mackerras. 

Evening Standard, 11 March 2009, Norman Lebrecht 

Lada Valesova, Intimate Studies ( Avie ) 

5 stars  

Mood music by four Czechs: Janácek, Suk, Martinu and, least known, Pavel Haas, a Janacek pupil who died in Auschwitz. Valesova, a professor at the Guildhall, comes up with unpublished Janacek sheets from archives, including a letter to his dead daughter.

Extraordinary stuff, magically played.

Musical Pointers (www.musicalpointers.co.uk), Peter Grahame Woolf

An important debut release by a very special Czech pianist, now teaching at London’s Guildhall School.

It is a carefully constructed and unique programme to which a great deal of thought was given, supported by generous sponsorship and support (a whole page of acknowledgments!). The disc is conceived in homage to four composers who “found time and a ‘calling’ to give themselves selflessly to the task of passing on their knowledge to the next generation of Czech composers”.

Especially valuable are some unknown little pieces by Janácek, but everything is played idiomatically and perfectly recorded in Bristol, over three days in April 2008. Production is exemplary, with notes by the pianist and Vanda Prochazka and a nice set of photos of the pianist.

I look forward to hearing Lada Valešová in live recital and in chamber music collaborations.