Internationally acclaimed pianist WALTER PONCE has performed around
the world as soloist with symphony orchestras, in solo recitals and in
collaboration with many renowned artists. Of his appearance with the
legendary Sir Georg Solti, the Chicago Tribune headlined "Pianist Shines
with Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- Walter Ponce is Magical in his Chicago
Symphony Debut."
For many years under the management of the renowned Wilford Division of
Columbia Artists Management (CAMI) in a roster that included pianists
Martha Argerich, Alicia de Larrocha, and Maurizio Pollini, Ponce has been
heard in concert halls of every major city of North and South America,
and in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Africa, with orchestras from Pasadena
(with Jorge Mester) to Filarmónica de Buenos Aires (at the Teatro Colón)
to the Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
His European debut took place in London's Wigmore Hall followed by a
remarkable New York City debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that
prompted the New York Times to conclude "Each music season brings its
quota of surprises, and Walter Ponce's recital might qualify as one of
the current winter crop... It all added up to an impressive showing."
Other New York City solo recitals include the Bosendorfer Artists Series,
Town Hall, Hunter College, and Carnegie Hall's "Emerging Artist Series"
about which Bernard Holland wrote in the New York Times "...a rendering
of Schubert's mystical and mysterious B-flat Sonata ... served as an
admonishment to the wicked and an example for the virtuous.” In his
review of a solo recital at Alice Tully Hall, New York Magazine's renowned critic Peter G. Davis wrote “Ponce's playing could hardly have
shown more discipline, muscular control, or imaginative use of the
piano's expressive resources. Better still is his ability to define and
articulate each score with such balanced precision and unforced
eloquence, creating a beautifully proportioned musical context that
allows the composer to speak naturally and spontaneously in his own
voice.”
At the invitation of Daniel Barenboim, Ponce was featured in Chicago’s
prestigious Orchestra Hall Piano series. Reviewing this recital, Dan
Tucker wrote in the Chicago Tribune “This was delectable playing done
with an electric crackle that Liszt himself would have applauded."
Walter Ponce has performed in collaboration with numerous distinguished
musicians including Stephanie Chase, Sydney Harth, Jean-Jacques Kantarow,
Mark Kaplan, Ani Kavafian, Jaime Laredo, Zara Nelsova, Elmar Oliveira,
Leslie Parnas, Alexander Schneider, Walter Trampler, the Cleveland,
Audubon, American, and Lenox Quartets, and guest appearances with Lincoln
Center’s Chamber Music Society. He has participated in festivals such as
Ravinia, Bermuda, Seattle, Caramoor, Aspen, Sintra and Evora in Portugal,
Tangiers in Morocco, and Cervantino and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.
At the Marlboro Festival, Ponce participated in the performance of
Stravinsky's Les Noces with pianists Richard Goode and Ruth Laredo with
Leon Kirchner conducting, Dallapiccola's Music for Three Pianos with the
composer and Murray Perahia, and the first Marlboro performance of
Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time with Felix Galimir, Nathaniel
Rosen and Richard Stoltzman.
TV stations across the United States and abroad have shown many of his
solo and duo recitals; nationwide broadcasts by National Public Radio and
worldwide through the Voice of America, and recitals for the BBC and
Radio Basel, Switzerland. In 1995, at the invitation of the
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Walter Ponce presented a solo
recital at the United Nations as part of the 50th anniversary
celebrations.
A busy advocate of new music, Ponce has given the world premieres of more
than two hundred works, including those by Hugo Weisgall, George
Rochberg, Karel Husa, William Bolcom, and Morton Gould. Composers Paul
Reale and Ezra Laderman have written piano concertos specifically for
Ponce. The latter was premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Ponce made the original recording of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale under the guidance of the composer.
Ponce has served as a member of the jury in numerous competitions
including the University of Maryland International Competition, Robert
Casadesus International Piano Competition, Washington D.C. International
Piano Competition and countless others. Recordings for Columbia
Masterworks, Library of Congress, CRI, Vox Cum Laude, and for "Close
Encounters With Music," the complete works for cello and piano by
Beethoven
with cellist Yehuda Hanani.
Born in Bolivia, Walter Ponce's musical beginnings took place in the
National Conservatory of Buenos Aires, Argentina, studying in that city's
vibrant musical environment that produced so many outstanding pianists.
It is also at this time that he first played for Alberto Ginastera, an
association that continued in New York City, when Ponce studied with him
his celebrated Piano Sonata. At 17 he came to the United States, one of
the youngest ever to receive a grant from the Department of State’s
Fulbright program, which continued for an unprecedented four years. In
New York he graduated from Mannes College with a Bachelor of Science
degree and from the Juilliard School with Master and Doctor of Musical
Arts degrees. His major teachers included Nadia Reisenberg and Sasha
Gorodnitzki, piano; Gustave Reese, musicology and doctoral dissertation
mentor, Arthur Balsam and Felix Galimir, chamber music; Felix Salzer and
Carl Schachter, theory and analysis; Luciano Berio and Roger Sessions,
composition. He was one of three students chosen by Juilliard to play and
study with Vladimir Horowitz (1967). At Marlboro he was coached by Rudolf
Serkin in several chamber music works.
Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York, Ponce is
presently Professor and head of the piano area at UCLA. In addition, he
has taught at St. John's University in New York City, C. W. Post College,
Bowdoin College, Colgate University and the Aspen Music School and
Festival. He has given innumerable master classes in colleges and
universities throughout the Americas, Europe, and Korea.
Following a performance at the Eastman School of Music’s Kilbourn Hall,
the music critic of the “City” of Rochester, New York, wrote "After
hearing Ponce I understand his reputation as a 'pianist's pianist.' This
recital was outstanding -the many piano students in the audience couldn't
have heard a better model.”
