17th Annual Elizabeth Dunaway Burnham Piano Festival – Janice Weber

Janice Weber is a vivacious performer with a reputation for programing the most exciting and technically challenging selections – which certainly applies to her upcoming performance for OPA!  Her program includes works by Grieg and Liszt – a composer with whom she is particularly identified.

“Ms. Weber is … a concert pianist of cliffhanging panache and daredevil brilliance.”  Ellen Pfeifer, The Wall Street Journal

Her world premiere recording of Liszt’s 1838 Transcendental Etudes elicited acclaim from Time Magazine: “Liszt later simplified these pieces into the still ferociously difficult Transcendental Etudes (1852 version) for fear that no one else could play them. There may now be several fire-eating piano virtuosos who can execute the original notes, but few can liberate the prophetic music they contain as masterfully as Janice Weber does here.”

Ms. Weber recorded Liszt’s last Hungarian Rhapsody, one of only two living pianists to be included in a compendium of historic performances by nineteen legendary artists. This disc subsequently won the International Liszt Prize.

Her recordings also include Rachmaninoff’s complete transcriptions; with the Lydian Quartet, Leo Ornstein’s vast Piano Quintet; flute and piano works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert; and waltz transcriptions of Godowsky, Rosenthal, and Friedman.

Her Naxos recording of Leo Ornstein’s radical works introduced the charismatic composer to a worldwide audience. She is heard in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time on Ongaku Records and her newest disc, Cascade of Roses (Dorian Sono Luminus),features works of twenty-one composers from Adolf Jensen to Billy Mayerl.

A summa cum laude graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Janice Weber has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, National Gallery of Art, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. She has appeared with the Boston Pops, Chautauqua Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Hilton Head Orchestra, Sarajevo Philharmonic, and Syracuse Symphony.   She has performed at the Bard, Newport, La Gesse, Husum, and Monadnock summer festivals and has twice toured China under the auspices of the American Liszt Society.

She was a member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory for twenty-seven years and has taught at MIT and New England Conservatory.

Ms. Weber is also a published author.  Her novels, most of which have something to do with music, have a worldwide following.  She also produced the tones for Ivory, the worldwide bestselling virtual piano software.

She is a Steinway artist.