Talent of the Keyboard | His Future | Gustavo Miranda: "There is an audience that is passionate about piano"

"The more than 700 people (the total capacity of the room) witnessed the remarkable artistic effort of Gustavo Miranda, which clearly showed a crucial dialogue between, without going any further, cultures, arts and heritage."

With these words, Gonzalo Saavedra, critic of "El Mercurio," referred to the concert that this pianist recently offered at the Aula Magna of the Universidad de Santiago. There he played, almost 50 years after it was written, "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" (1975), by the American composer Frederic Rzewski.

Just a sample of what has been a few months of non-stop work which have led this national musician, born in 1991, to be recognized by the Guild of Art Critics of Chile. Among other milestones, in 2023 he also tackled Bach's "Goldberg Variations (BWV 988)" at the Teatro of the Universidad de Chile; It had its premiere in the pianist series "The New Generation", organized by the Cultural Foundation of Providencia and culminated with the praised performance of the complete series of Piano Sonatas by L.V. Beethoven. "In short, a performance that reflected the artistic plenitude of Gustavo Miranda, and without a doubt the best in years of this overflowing piano talent," wrote Jaime Torres, member of the Guild of Art Critics of Chile, regarding a recital he gave, in 2023, at the theater of the Corporación Cultural de Carabineros, with works by the Bonn genius.

"I am very grateful for the award that the Guild of Art Critics gave me. They also recognized me in 2013, for a concert in the Municipal Theater Great Pianists Series. I was living for more than 14 years in the United States and now, spending more time in Chile, I have been able to play more frequently in my country and share more repertoire, such as the complete Beethoven piano sonatas and that monumental piece that I performed at the Universidad de Santiago. I was the first pianist to play this work by the composer Frederic Rzewski in Chile," the performer tells "Artes y Letras" in the minutes prior to a panel he offered last Wednesday in the Sala Arrau of the Municipal Theater of Santiago. He will return to this historic stage this Friday, April 26th, and Saturday, April 27th, with Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. This will be a new milestone for Miranda, who has not performed at the Agustinas Coliseum since 2017, when he performed in the Great Pianists Series with the Sonata No. 29, Op. 106, "Hammerklavier", by Beethoven: for many the most difficult of the 32 sonatas of the composer who died in Vienna, in 1827.

"It is always exciting to reunite with this theater and, now, with a new audience. There are people who, after 15 years, have told me that they still remember when I played Robert Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 22 at the Sala Arrau. That's very overwhelming!" adds this outstanding former student of the prestigious Juilliard School in New York and star of the Corporación Amigos del Municipal.

Great Generosity

He defines himself as a "piano prodigy," since he started playing at 3, at 10 he won the International Claudio Arrau Competition in Quilpué, and six years later he traveled to the United States to join one of the most reputable conservatories at an internal level, under the guidance of Julian Martin.

"I grew up in Puente Alto, in a commune that I am very fond of because I spent my childhood there, but just as Claudio Arrau was born in Chillán, in the end, his interpretations transcended his city of birth. I feel the same has happened to me. I have played in America, Asia and Europe. Careers are not limited to origin," he maintains. In Chile, Gustavo Miranda began his piano studies with Miguel Ángel Jiménez and then continued with María Iris Radrigán, at the Music Institute of the Universidad Católica.

"Claudio Arrau, without a doubt, has been a great reference in my life. An inevitable figure, but I cannot fail to mention Miguel Angel Jiménez. I owe a lot to him, especially because he knew how to detect a talent in a person of that age, of 7 or 8 years old. He had pedagogical mastery and immense generosity," he says. Along with this, he delves into his origins on the keyboard and how from a very young age he began to take off, in the midst of a family nucleus not connected to classical sounds. "It is a very capricious, very complex situation. For me, they are exceptional situations that occur in life. There is my own talent and that has been recognized by the great teachers I had. I don't owe my talent to anyone."

Miguel Angél Jiménez recounts to "Artes y Letras" that beyond being a good student and the scholarships he received, "from a young age he showed an impressive talent. He was destined for genius. Very talented students have passed through my class, but with Gustavo I had the gift of having a genius on my hands. He has a unique temperament and you have to know how to understand him like that," he says.

Gustavo Miranda, who this year will also play in the First Piano Series at Teatro Zoco, considers that his instrument is going through a very good moment. "There is an audience. In my case it has been moving to perform concerts with full houses. There is an audience, passionate for the piano, passionate for music that has maximum intentionality. This is not a passive music, but a living one. That interest must continue to be cultivated in Chile. I also live music. I don't have schedules. That is how I am and how I feel it." The musician also highlights that in recent years, one of his hallmarks has been versatility. "I can play everything from early music on the harpsichord to pieces by composers of my age. The repertoire for piano is very rich and there is a lot that has not yet been shown in Chile," he says.

The experience of live music represents a key moment for him. "That is why I have not privileged recordings or teaching so much. I was an assistant professor during my doctorate studies in the United States but, for me, communication with the public is something that I cannot describe. There, we enter a psychoanalytic territory. It is something absolutely unconscious and what performing live does to me is indescribable. I see it as a very unique process," he confesses.

Throughout his career, he notes, Johannes Brahms has always been "very close to me. I played almost all of his work in the United States. Concerto No. 2, for example, I performed at Lincoln Center in New York." Regarding Concert No. 1, meanwhile, he expresses that it is a milestone, and "especially emotional. It is an emotional experience that transcends interpretation itself." Gustavo Miranda points out that the pieces of this artist, born in Hamburg in 1833, have several dimensions and values ​​that "in addition to being a natural genius of composition and being an innate talent, Brahms was a great musicologist. He studied early music in depth, Joseph Haydn and Bach. On his desk, he had scores of all these composers and he wrote down ideas, putting together his own language. He had a great internal connection with what came before him and that is important. Finally, he adds that the piece he will offer at the Municipal de Santiago is full of emotion, "because it is a concerto that premiered after the death of Robert Schumann and that greatly impacted Brahms: he wrote this concerto in memory of his great companion "The first movement is very tragic. The second is a kind of requiem with the Benedictus theme, and the final rondo is a very festive Hungarian dance, as if looking toward the future," concludes Gustavo Miranda.