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The American pianist, Andrew Rangell, was born in Chicago, but raised in Colorado. He studied in New York's Juilliard School of Music, obtaining a doctorate in piano. His teachers there included David Burge, Josef Raieff, and Beveridge Webster. He won the Malraux Award of the Concert Artists Guild, leading to his New York debut. In 1988 he received the Avery Fisher Career Development Grant, an award that is given on the basis the quality of the recipient's performances in regular concerts and recitals over a period of time, rather than as a result of a short period of competition appearances.
Andrew Rangell is best known for his performances of all thirty-two of L.v. Beethoven's piano sonatas, and for J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (BWV 988). In concert, he his repertoire ranges from Gibbons and Froberger to 20th-century composers such as Nielsen, Luciano Berio, Arnold Schoenberg, Janacek, and Christian Wolff. In 1991, at the high point of an unconventional and slow-to develop career his hand was severely injured.
Andrew Rangell has returned to performing after a seven year recovery. During the time of his rehabilitaion, he managed to make two CD's of "Intimate Works" for the Dorian label which received universal praise. As well, Dorian released a recording of concert performances of L.v. Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. The first year of his recovery featured six different programs presented in Boston with works ranging from J.P. Sweelinck and J.S. Bach to Frédéric Chopin, Schubert, Nielsen, Janacek, Wolpe and Charles Ives. In 2000 he completed a recording of J.S. Bach's six Partitas as well as the complete F. Chopin Mazurkas.
Appearances on the public radio program "Fresh Air" resulted in runs on record stores by listeners trying to locate Andrew Rangell's recordings. While he performs throughout the USA, he is particularly active in New York, where he appears frequently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Miller Theater of Columbia, and the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, and often tours throughout New England. |
