Stephanie McCALLUM
piano

Stephanie has appeared extensively as a soloist in the United Kingdom, France and Australia, and has toured Europe with The Alpha Centauri Ensemble. She has appeared as soloist in many festivals, including Brighton, Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Festival of Sydney, Sydney Spring and Mostly Mozart. She is a founding member of the contemporary music ensembles AustraLYSIS and Sydney Alpha Ensemble: she has been joint artistic director of the latter since its inception. She has played and recorded with ELISION Ensemble and the Australia Ensemble, and has performed and broadcast as recitalist, chamber performer and concerto soloist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Stephanie appears as soloist on two recently-released CDs by the Sydney Alpha Ensemble, Strange Attractions, and Clocks (works of Elena KATS-CHERNIN) and last year released a new solo CD, Illegal Harmonies: The 20th C Piano. Stephanie's most recent solo recording is a two-CD release from ABC Classics of all the piano sonatas of Weber. Stephanie recently performed the notorious Lemma-Icon-Epigram by Fernyhough--a work which she will later record for ELISION Ensemble.

May 1999

Weber: The Complete Piano Sonatas and Other Works (ABC Classics 462 763-2)

"Stephanie McCallum plays them with immense technical brilliance, great sensitivity to their potential for varied colour (and touch) and unflagging spirit  . . .  the lightning speeds of the final movements of No. 1 in C (Weber called L'infatigable) and No. 4 in E minor (La Tarantella) leaves the listener breathless (though not this pianist!)."
--John CARMODY Sun Herald 31 March, 1999

" . . .  a stunning release  . . .  in every sense a triumph  . . .  an extraordinary demonstration of Romantic pianism  . . .  The implicit message of this recording is that here is the music of an underrated and misunderstood genius. After hearing McCallum's sympathetic, unashamedly Romantic interpretation of the generous selection, it's hard not to agree."
--Martin BUZACOTT 24 Hours May 1999

Alkan and Magnard (TP 081)

Soundscapes Editor's Choice for October/November 1996

"It would be hard to imagine anyone doing better justice to this music than Ms McCallum. She is a big-boned player with a cracker-jack technique and a penetrating intelligence. She plays with a gripping intensity that won't quit, but she also knows where to let the music breathe."
--American Record Guide July 1998

"I found myself spellbound -- it's not too strong an expression -- by this music, disappointed when it stopped and moved by its eloquence."
--Andrew FORD 24 Hours September 1996

Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano (MBS 24CD)

nominated for the 1992 ABC FM Record of the Year

" . . .  a remarkable performance. There can't be many pianists who can play this diabolically difficult music as well as Stephanie McCallum. She negotiates, projects, and shapes the concerto, especially its fabulous first movement (twenty-eight minutes), into a thrilling experience  . . .  an outstanding rendition of a work as overwhelming as any piano music ever written. Over and over this pianist brings out details which make it more amazing than ever, while her total approach is convincing throughout the 121 pages and nearly fifty minutes of this unique, utterly stupefying music."
--Paul RAPOPORT Fanfare November 1992

"The quality of McCallum's playing and her effective transmission of music to which she has a passionate allegiance make this disc noteworthy in any company."
--Roger COVELL Sydney Morning Herald 8 September 1992

Alkan, Opus 35 Studies (TP 055)

Nominated for Cannes MIDEM awards 1996

" . . .  a formidable and insightful pianist, who gives us a very good idea of what the music is all about, ie transcendental technique at the service of ecstatic yet utterly disciplined vision.  . . .  Vibrant splendour that seems to presage Rachmaninov, Scriabin and late Faure in a single transcendent amalgam. Music like this, as well served as this, should be self-recommending."
--Calum MacDONALD London Hi-Fi News and Record Review April 1995

"Rarely do I find a record so irresistible that I listen to it over and over  . . .  This is such a record  . . .  I can't imagine a lover of romantic pianos music not going for this. Stephanie McCallum is a thoroughly convincing champion of this music  . . .  Not only are her fingers up to the quite formidable technical task, but she has the right temperament. Her playing has real character and elan."
-- American Hi Fi May/June 1995

"McCallum has a formidable pianistic armoury  . . .  a most impressive recital."
--Jeremy NICHOLAS Classic CD London, September 1995

"Le pianiste australienne interprete ces etudes avec un feu, un enthousiasme et un sen du cantabile  . . .  L'Allegro barbaro est le plus sauvage de la discographie.. Quelle fete du piano et quel style juste!"
--Francois LUGENOT Bulletin de la Societe Alkan No. 29

Notations (TP 037)

"McCallum is an incredible advocate. Her transparency and dynamic energy fit the idiom of this music like a glove and the sound is impeccable."
--American Hi Fi May/June 1995

" . . .  always characterised by brilliant, steely finger technique and an unswerving and intelligent dedication to the music  . . .  Anyone who plays Alkan and Xenakis with equal mastery deserves all the accolades we can throw her way. Brava!"
-- Andrew FORD 24 Hours September 1996

Live Concerts

" . . .  a revelation. A stunning account of [Alkan's] Allegro Barbaro, a study in octaves from opus 35 was reminiscent of Horowitz on a good day."
--West Australian 11 August 1998

"I went principally to hear the brilliant Sydney pianist, Stephanie McCallum, who played Weber's Concert Piece in F minor with them and was extremely pleased with my decision. She raced up and down the keyboard dazzlingly and in the more reflective moments showed a superb technical and expressive independence of left and right hand.

"She's another great Australian musician whose insufficient renown in her own country is out of proportion with her abilities."
-- Sun Herald 11 August 1996

"Her playing of this exciting work [Alkan's Concerto for Piano Solo]  . . .  is one of the glories of Australian pianism."
--Sydney Morning Herald 29 January 1988

" . . .  A gifted artist  . . .  Boldly beginning with a refined yet well coloured reading of Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, she went on to tackle Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata headlong, emphasising its quirkiness as well as its sheer driving power with admirable clarity, weight and thoughtfulness  . . .  Saint-Saens' Toccata, opus 111 No 6 concluded an impressive debut with Miss McCallum's playing all colour and brilliant light."
--Stephen PETTITT The Times London

" . . .  Her whole programme was bold and fresh  . . .  Her special strengths are her clean, muscular technique and her confident grasp of extended musical wholes. Her Weber had an apt dramatic flair  . . .  The Moto Perpetuo was exhilaratingly speedy and sure. She sounded utterly sympathetic in Butterley's Uttering Joyous Leaves  . . .  Her Alkan set amounted to a `tour de force´  . . .  a sense of rounded purpose informed all of it. In her immensely capable hands both the outer etudes made great impressions  . . .  Alkan's pianism was madly professional and intricate (no lover of the Romantic piano should be unfamiliar with it, for it carries a certain ideal of the instrument to a magnificent extreme)."
--David MURRAY Financial Times London

"No review of recent events would be complete without mention of Stephanie McCallum's gargantuan undertaking at the Wigmore Hall on 6th December  . . .  she tackled Alkan's mammoth Three Etudes, Op. 76 for the right and left hands separately and for both hands reunited  . . .  for Miss McCallum the ascent to such austere pinnacles of the virtuoso repertoire is an engrossing wonderfully worthwhile task."
--Bryce MORRISON Music and Musicians London