2025 marks the ten year anniversary of the Steinway Piano Series. I’ve described it as “one of the secretly best concert series in Portland,” and I still stand behind that despite the proclamation’s clunky construction. Twice a year, the Series hosts notable pianists for concerts and masterclasses. The masterclasses are valuable for young musicians, and the concerts are consistently great. 

The history of the Steinway Series is wrapped up with another great Portland-based series, Portland Piano International. PPI morphed out of the recital series at Portland State University under the tutelage of Harold Gray and became a separate organization unaffiliated with PSU in 2005. In 2015, Dr. Susan Chan, then Professor of Piano at Portland State University (now Professor Emeritus), started the Steinway Series with support from local and regional donors and patrons to complement Portland Piano International’s concert series, while remaining affiliated with Portland State. 

The series brings pianists from around the world to Portland for performances, masterclasses and sometimes lectures. Some guests are people Dr. Chan knows personally or professionally. For instance, Dr. Chan and HieYon Choi both studied with Indiana University’s György Sebök, though they had not met in person prior to Choi’s recent Steinway Series appearance. Dr. Chan says the series provides a chance for her to learn from their performances and how they carry themselves professionally. The name isn’t incidental either. Steinway and Sons of Portland is one of the sponsors of the series, and Portland State University is one of the country’s many All-Steinway schools. 

In past years, Dr. Chan also gave a masterclass as part of the Steinway Series. She commanded much respect at Portland State: she was one of the only professors in the School of Music and Theater students addressed as “Dr. Chan,” rather than by first name. 

Dr. Chan encourages the Steinway Series pianists to perform music that “speaks to their own roots,” with music that extends beyond the classical repertoire. For students, this offers a broader perspective of what music one can perform as a concert pianist. The classics are still there, of course, but augmented and placed within a broader context of a globalized, musical world. Dr. Chan herself has done this in her career as a concert pianist, commissioning and recording new works by Chen Yi and Zhou Long, for instance. 

Steinway Series concerts tend to have a lot of thematic unity as a result. Each concert seems to have an explicit or implicit theme. For example, back in 2023 Inna Faliks performed a program almost entirely of living composers, including Fazil Say, Veronkia Krausas, Richard Danielpour, Ljova Zhurbin, and Maya Miro Johnson. 

Dr. Chan spoke glowingly of the Series’ 2021 guest, William Chapman Nyaho. Nyaho is known for performing and recording music by African and African Diaspora composers. In addition to the masterclass and recital, Nyaho also gave a lecture on the diversity of piano music, which gives insight into his journey with African and African Diaspora music. (As part of this lecture, he gets the audience to clap “a common rhythm in Nigeria” in what we would call 19/8 time.) 

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One thing I’ve found remarkable about Nyaho’s recordings is how well it shows the diversity within “African” and “African Diaspora” music. No culture is a monolith, and no composer’s music is a direct expression of their ethnicity. His album Asa features an impressive breadth of music: Fred Onovwerosuoke’s quasi-minimalist grooves in Studies in African Rhythm, Halim El Dabh’s richly ornamented Coma Dance, Florence Price’s jubilant tunes in Dances in the Canebrakes, and Wallace Cheatham’s impressionistic and jazzy Three Preludes are some highlights. 

In May 2024 pianist Tom Hicks presented a program of various types of “night music.” Among these were some of Chopin’s Nocturnes, Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand, Debussy’s Reverie and Clair de Lune, some Notturnos by Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The theme of “night music” extended beyond the choice of repertoire and into his stage presence and interpretations. For instance, he took a more restrained approach to the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata. The third movement is often a blistering showpiece for virtuoso pianists, at the expense of the whole sonata’s dark and moody sensibility. Hicks avoided this, emphasizing the work’s effect. 

The most recent Steinway Series guest, HieYon Choi, performed Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata and Sonata No. 32 in C Minor alongside Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. The theme here was virtuosity. Beethoven and Ravel alike pushed piano technique to their limits one hundred years apart from each other. Beethoven pushed Bachian counterpoint to new extremes, explored the piano’s dynamic range between thunderous chords and mysterious chorales, and demanded great feats of endurance for his extended form. Ravel’s impressionistic piano music requires drawing melodies out from the middle of dense textures and incredible arpeggios across the whole range of the instruments. Virtuosity can sometimes get a bad rap: all flash and no substance. These pieces by Ravel and Beethoven (along with much of Liszt’s music and Chopin’s Études) show virtuosity to be a powerful vehicle for musical expression. 

Choi, in contrast with Nyaho, chose to perform classic works rather than underrepresented ones. Beethoven and Ravel’s piano music are firmly within the repertoire, but they nonetheless represent Choi’s voice. She released the complete set of Beethoven Sonatas earlier this year, recorded over the past decade. It would be short-sighted to reduce one’s musical world to their ethnicity or place of birth, and great music can transcend these boundaries. 

At her masterclass the next day, we got to see some of Choi’s demeanor and teaching style. She spoke with a quiet voice, pulling the audience in while she guided a young student on the opening of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 24 in F# Major. In minutes, with a couple poetic suggestions and technical considerations, the student transformed the sonata’s simple theme into a touching depiction of love and embrace. Similarly, Choi asked a student to “try to shake the earth” with the fanfare chords from the Emperor Concerto. 

Choi’s masterclass encouraged the students to use their imagination and creativity to inform their performances. Statements she made seemingly off-the-cuff had a poetic charm to them: “Every human being, every life, has its purpose. Likewise, every note, every sound, has its own life.” It’s almost a line from Rumi or Lao Tzu. She wanted the students to project their sound out into the audience, and to let their high notes ring out “like stars in the sky.” 

Student reactions to the program seem generally enthusiastic. One student had this to say in a thank-you letter to Dr. Chan: 

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“It has been a tremendous opportunity for me to be able to study with various renowned pedagogues and pianists through the master classes. Performing in the master classes also helped develop my professionalism in performing and absorbing the new materials that the artists asked me to do right away…The guest artists’ performances were very profound and inspiring…I enjoyed every minute of it.”

One alumnus, Thomas Crouch, is now a DMA candidate at James Madison University. While studying with Dr. Chan, Crouch helped organize the Steinway Series concerts and masterclasses. He told me he learned a lot from his participation in the masterclasses and got to connect with the guests personally during their stay. To him it was a valuable opportunity to network and learn from professionals. 

On the other hand, one PSU pianist I spoke to said he didn’t get much out of the masterclass he participated in, but enjoyed the concert nonetheless. Not everything is a hit. The masterclasses still provide a great learning opportunity, even if it’s not related to technique or performance. Maybe the takeaway is sometimes how not to do things. 

This fall’s guest is Brazilian pianist Ronaldo Rolim. Dr. Chan said of Rolim, “we have been in contact since he joined the faculty of University of Puget Sound in Tacoma in 2022. We both attended Yale University although at different times. With his significant contributions to the Northwest music scene and in his native Brazil, I thought he would be a tremendous inspiration for our students and community as pianist and educator.” 

The concert, titled “Poetic Resonances,” features solo piano music by Scriabin, Ravel, Chopin, Florence Price and de Falla. Rolim recently recorded the Wartime Triptychs by Karol Szymanowski as well. Rolim’s performance will be part of PSU’s Music at Midday concert series, starting at 12:15 on Friday October 17. The masterclass will be right afterwards at 2 pm. Both are free and open to the public.