Saturday, December 14, and Sunday, December 15 at 2pm, I will be joining The Brooklyn Brandenburgers as a special guest in their 2019 Family Holiday Concert at the Old Stone House! Click here for tickets and more info!
I’m excited to share that I will begin teaching at the 92nd Street Y School of Music in September of 2019 as a member of their Classical Piano Faculty. Learn more about the 92nd Street Y and the Gilda and Henry Block School of the Arts at 92y.org!
I’m excited to announce that my arrangements of J.S. Bach, from the new Stepping Stones to Bach, to The Brandenburg Duets are now available for purchase from Naxos Sheet Music Publishing! Explore their new collection on publishing.naxos.com:
See the Naxos Publishing Collection
I recently decided to make simple piano arrangements of Bach’s most beloved non-keyboard works. Most existing Bach transcriptions, made by legends like Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninov, are difficult works made for professional pianists, but nowadays the number of amateur pianists is greater than ever. “Stepping Stones to Bach” are intended to fill the need for easier repertoire, suitable for adult music lovers who are learning to play for enjoyment and relaxation and don’t want to spend months mastering one piece. They will also be a great supplement to Bach’s own teaching pieces (Minuets, Little Preludes and Inventions) as recital and study pieces for children.
Masterpieces such as St. Matthew’s Passion, The Brandenburg Concertos, Cantatas and Cello Suites are familiar to most classical music lovers and their main themes sound wonderful on the piano. “Stepping Stones to Bach” will enable easy/intermediate level adult students to participate in music-making of this amazing quality. These transcriptions also serve as warm-up exercises, technique studies, sight reading examples and building blocks to learning longer works. I made sure to choose suitable short excerpts from the best and most popular works and to arrange them in such a way that they feel idiomatic to the keyboard and complete with a satisfying ending.
For children, my wish is that by playing these arrangements they will make inroads into the greater world of Bach. By learning and internalizing a melody, they will be prepared to understand the original work. For example, after learning the theme from Brandenburg Concerto #3, they will hear the orchestral version with a sense of familiarity and belonging, with focused attention and a readiness to hear how the theme develops. I hope to inspire more parents and music teachers to make deeper musical connections for the younger generation. To accompany this volume, I made a special “Stepping Stones to Bach” playlist on Spotify and ITunes featuring all of the music these selections came from. While your child or student is working on each piece, please make sure they get to hear the original sources.
Book 1 of 24 Stepping Stones is ready and a second one is well on the way. You may download 2 free samples illustrating the easy and intermediate levels by subscribing to my newsletter. Please let me know how you like them!
Introducing a funny short film: “The Brandenburg Duets: A
With Susan Sobolewski, piano
Producer/Director: Chandler Kauffman
Cinematographer/Editor: Daniel Jusino
Sound Mixer/Editor: Lizette Gesüden
Gaffer: Charles Billot
Colorist: Michael Macalincag
ArkivMusic released their 25 “most outstanding and memorable recordings from the past year” and have The Brandenburg Duets at #22!
See the recording – on sale now – and full list at ArkivMusic.com
Enjoy a new playlist on Spotify and Apple Music highlighting great Bach transcriptions:
Wednesday, August 15 at 12:10 p.m., Eleonor Bindman joins WRTI Philadelphia host Debra Lew Harder for an interview and performance of the Brandenburg Duets!
If you love the music of J.S. Bach, tune in on Wednesday, August 15 at 12:10 p.m. to listen to his Brandenburg Concertos in a way you’ve never heard before. Pianist Eleonor Bindman, praised by The New York Times for her “impressive clarity of purpose and a full grasp of the music’s spirit,” performs selections from her impressive piano 4-hand arrangement of the Brandenburg Concertos with host Debra Lew Harder. “Playing Bach’s music is deeply gratifying, and twice as joyful when the experience can be shared with a partner.” That belief led Eleonor to undertake the massive project of transcribing the Brandenburg Concertos for piano duet (4-hands.)
LIVE performance program
Eleonor and Debra will perform selections from “The Brandenburg Duets,” Eleanor’s arrangements for piano 4-hands of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos:
Donald Hunt gives ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ to Eleonor Bindman & Jenny Lin’s The Brandenburg Duets recording in Pianist Magazine:
“One of Bach’s crowning achievements was the Brandenburg Concertos, a huge orchestral feat for that particular period. Now vividly transcribed by pianist Eleonor Bindman for piano duet with Jenny Lin, the Brandenburg Concertos take on a new life. … The album is sequenced not in the order of the concertos, but in a cycle that best engaged the listener as if it were a recital. Out of the 6 concertos, Concerto No. 5 is undoubtedly the highlight as it already has a built-in harpsichord solo part for Bindman and Lin to sink their teeth into. What Bindman and Lin achieve as a dual partnership in the climactic cadenza of Concerto No. 5 is breathtaking in its sheer precision and vitality. … Created well in time before the 300th anniversary of the Brandenburg Concertos, the young talents of the piano world will now dive into what could eventually be standard repertoire for piano duos.”
The Cross-Eyed Pianist, Frances Wilson, featured Eleonor Bindman on her “Meet the Artist” series. The questions led to much reflection about what being a musician truly means.
TCEP: Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
My most recent recording, the newly transcribed set of “Brandenburg Duets” is a result of several painstaking years arranging all 6 Brandenburg Concertos by Bach for piano-4-hands. Embarking on a project of such magnitude taught me an important lesson on perseverance. I am very happy with the way the recording came out and grateful to my piano partner Jenny Lin and the Grand Piano label of Naxos Records for making the CD set a reality. The feedback has been tremendous so far as I am constantly being told by listeners that they just love how the music makes them feel and how the piano conveys the material somewhat more clearly than an orchestra in this case and brings the concertos into a new perspective. It feels great to have been able to pull this off and I can’t wait to get the arrangements published. ………
TCEP: Do you have a favorite concert venue to perform in and why? What is your most memorable concert experience?
I had an epiphany a long time ago while waiting to perform a harpsichord recital at a small venue on City Island, in the Bronx. In the middle of the usual, mild pre-concert anxiety, it occurred to me that the audience members were gathering to hear Bach at noon on a Sunday because it was important to them. They made the trip instead of taking a nap or watching TV. My nervousness and ego didn’t matter, what mattered was transmitting the music they wanted to hear in a manner worthy of the task. Since then the venues and other details became secondary to the privilege of being the medium for this singular venture.
WWFM: The Classical Network‘s David Osenberg interviewed Eleonor Bindman about The Brandenburg Duets for his “Cadenza” program, broadcast on June 28, 2018! Listen now:
Ilona Oltuski offers an in-depth feature of The Brandenburg Duets on GetClassical.org:
“A new score for the concerto, geared to the baroque polyphony, with typically four, clearly distinguishable voices, demanded some omissions of the many clusters of voices, to gain more clarity. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra’s ‘chamber’ sound, served as point of reference for Bindman’s newly textured hierarchy of the voices in its finalized newly achieved version, which projects clarity, while honoring the elegance of the original score. The translation of a concerto score for two pianists always bears the complexity of rivalry, of two instruments of the same sonority. It is much less of an intricate task to distinguish differing instruments. So to introduce a more variant sound production within a two-piano version, Bindman wrote differing expressive lines for both players. Particular modifications of the two- piano repertoire, like crossing hands, makes for an interesting audible vitality of blending and differentiating voices, while using the modern piano’s full range of a pianistic orchestration. In order to achieve a full and interesting sounding score, Bindman did not hesitate to lose some of the original score’s rudiments.
She also decided to modify certain sequences, based on their key settings and harmonic ranges, in order to enhance the overall listening experience. The result adds greatly to the two-piano repertoire, which thrives as a four-hand performance –no orchestra necessary.”
See the full feature on GetClassical.org