Annemieke McLane

Pianist Annemieke (Spoelstra) McLane was born in the Netherlands and studied for her Masters in Piano Performance at the conservatory in Zwolle with Rudy de Heus. She received the Student of the Year Award for her final recital, for sensitive playing and well balanced programs. Besides her solo playing, she was collaborative pianist at the conservatories of Zwolle, Arnhem, Rotterdam, Amsterdam for different instrumentalists and vocalists. At the Sweelinck conservatory of Amsterdam she specialized in ArtSong Accompaniment. She received at age 21 the National Young Music Talent Award for best accompanist. Praised for her toucher and coloring. After her Master’s Degree she studied privately with Tan Crone in Amsterdam (who had studied with Rudolf Serkin and Nadia Boulanger.)

Annemieke was finalist in Paris for the Lily and Nadia Boulanger competition. She had masterclasses with Rudolf Jansen, Elly Ameling, Miranda van Kralingen, Benjamin Rawitz, Roger Vignoles, Tan Crone, Peter Serkin, Noel Lee, Shmuel Magen. Annemieke lives in Sharon, VT with her husband accordionist Jeremiah McLane and their son. She teaches at her home studio and performs internationally as soloist and collaborative artist. She was piano instructor at St. Michael’s College for 11years (2004-2015) and has been pianist for the Saint Michael’s College chorale, Thetford Chamber singers, Handel Society of Dartmouth College, Musical Theater Classes at Dartmouth College, Hanover High school. She coaches chamber musicians and vocalists. She recorded three solo recordings :“Toccare” (“Mesmerizing Schubert”), “Birds and Beethoven” (“All of it is a gem”) and “Bach & My Bicycle” (“ Annemieke McLane is an unusual pianist with her singing romanticism, it proves, it works beautifully.”)

Piano classics I

Baroque- Classical

1. Jean- Philippe Rameau (French, 1683- 1764)

Jean-Philippe Rameau (French: [ʒɑ ̃filip ʁamo]; 25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764) was a

French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French

composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the

dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his

time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin.

– Tambourin

– 1st Rigaudon (e minor), 2nd Rigaudon (E major), Double du 2eme Rigaudon (E major)

– Musette et Rondeau in E major.

2. George Friedrich Handel (German-English, 1685- 1759)

George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (/ˈhændəl/;[a] baptised Georg Friedrich Händel, German:

[ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhɛndl ̩ ] ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque

composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos.

Handel received his training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before

settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised

British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic

choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel’s music forms one of

the peaks of the “high baroque” style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development,

creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into

English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his

age.

– Suite in d minor:

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gigue

3. Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (Italian, 1660- 1725)

Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (2 May 1660 – 22 October 1725) was an Italian Baroque

composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most

important representative of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was a model for the musical

theater of his time, as evoked by Händel’s Italian works, deeply influenced by his theatrical

music. Eclectic, Scarlatti also worked on all the other common genres of his time, from the

sonata to the concerto grosso, from the motet to the mass, from the oratorio to the cantata, the

latter being a genre in which he was an undisputed master.

He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.

– Folia in d minor (Folies d’Espagne)

4. François Couperin ( French, 1668- 1733)François Couperin (French: [fʁɑ ̃ swa kupʁɛ ̃ ]; 10 November 1668

– 11 September 1733 was a French Baroque composer,

organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le

Grand (“Couperin the Great”) to distinguish him from other

members of the musically talented Couperin family. The four

collections for harpsichord alone are grouped into ordres, a

synonym of suites, containing traditional dances as well as

pieces with descriptive titles. They are notable for Couperin’s

detailed indication of ornaments, which in most harpsichord

music of the period was left to the discretion of the player. The

first and last pieces in an ordre were of the same tonality, but

the middle pieces could be in other closely related tonalities.

These volumes were admired by Johann Sebastian Bach, who

exchanged letters with Couperin, and later by Brahms and by

Ravel, the latter of whom memorialized the composer in Le

Tombeau de Couperin (Couperin’s Memorial).

– Les Papillons/the butterflies

5. Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Italian, 1685- 1757)

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, also known as Domingo or Doménico Scarlatti (26 October 1685

– 23 July 1757), was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer

chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style.

Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms,

although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas. He spent much of his life in

the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families.

– Sonata in E, K.380/L.23

– Sonata in g, posthumus

– Sonata in C, K. 159/ L.104

6. Johann Sebastian Bach (German, 1685- 1750)

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German

composer and musician of the late Baroque period. Bach enriched established German styles

through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic, and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of

rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach’s

compositions include hundreds of cantatas, both sacred and secular. He composed Latin

church music, Passions, oratorios, and motets.. He composed concertos, for instance for violin

and for harpsichord, and suites, as chamber music as well as for orchestra.

Italian Concerto, BWV 971

– Allegro/ Andante/ Presto

7. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (German, 1756- 1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart[a][b] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and

influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition

resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions

are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral

repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history ofWestern music, with his music admired for its “melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its

richness of harmony and texture”

– Sonata no. 16 in C, K.545: Allegro, Andante, Rondo

The early-music expert Jordi Savall has written that Couperin was the “poet musician par

excellence”, who believed in “the ability of Music [with a capital M] to express itself in prose and

poetry”, and that “if we enter into the poetry of music we discover that it carries grace that is

more beautiful than beauty itself”.