H a p p y   a t   t h e   P i a n o
Review in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, German, April 7, 2006

Diana Fanning loves the Romantic and Impressionist musical colors.

Brunnthal -- Concerts in the Brunnthal music hall have a very special quality since Christoph Amtmann does not, as others do, collaborate with established agencies, but instead follows his own path. His good contacts to US-American cultural institutions enable him to present American artists and allow insights into their musical-artistic development.

Only rarely do the big American names ring a bell around Munich. This is why Amtmann can often pleasantly surprise his audiences. According to the program notes, Diana Fanning is "an artist who is a highly popular, regular performer in American concert halls and in the media," but here, she is not even known as an insider-tip. However, her solo recital in Brunnthal showed her to be a pianist of great musicality who does not need to show off her natural virtuosity. Thus, the evening started out on a modest yet distinguished note, with Mozart's Fantasy in d-minor KV 397. Most every advanced piano student gets to play this work which accounts for its modesty; yet, as a compositional engagement with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's piano fantasy, Mozart's KV 397 is one of his great musical works. The melodic principle is the focus of Mozart's composition, and it is the sudden mood changes that keep the audiences captive. Diana Fanning took a very accentuated approach to expression and thus showed how Mozart, starting his fantasy with arpeggios just like Bach, surpasses his model quickly, breaking through to his own idiom and message.

Diana Fanning did a beautiful rendition of Robert Schumann's "Davidsbündlertänze" op. 6. It was jovial and humorous musical story-telling that the pianist offered, the story of the ficitious "Davidsbund," a romantic-ideal artists' community consisiting of "Florestan and Eusebius," the two souls that Schumann harbored within himself, musical story-telling that created blissful moods. In a letter to his bride Clara, Schumann wrote: "These dances contain a lot of wedding-thoughts . . . if I have ever been happy at the piano, it was while I composed them . . . " It was unexpected to encounter this much undistracted warm-hearted German Romanticism in an American artist.

Diana Fanning likes to play Leos Janacek, and she recently recorded a beautiful CD with Janacek's piano cycle "On an Overgrown Path". In Brunnthal, she offered a convincing interpretation of Janacek's momentous "Sonata 1. X. 1905." In the sonata's two movements, titled "premonition" and "death," the composer captured a tragic episode in the riots in the city of Brno on that October day. As a very well-received encore, Diana Fanning played a movement from Janacek's suite "In the Mist."

The next work on the program was a piano sonata by the 52-year old American composer Monica Houghton, a work dedicated to Diana Fanning. This sonata clearly shows American postmodern music to be as unimpressed with the accomplishments of the so-called "modern" music as ours. The four movements of Houghton's sonata followed Janacek's programmatic sonata seamlessly.

The evening's final piece, Claude Debussy's "Estampes," a cycle of musical moments from different parts of the world, clearly showed Diana Fanning to be a master of mood impressions and impressionist coloring.

O n   e n c h a n t e d   p a t h s
Review in the Munchner Merkur, Munich, Germany, April 8, 2006

Pianist Diana Fanning conjures up exotic mood impressions.

Hofolding -- Several times already, Diana Fanning has been the featured artist in Christoph Amtmann's concert enclave, the Brunnthal music hall in the Hofoldinger Straße. And each and every time, solo recitals with American pianist Diana Fanning have seized the audience with a veritable deep magic. Diana Fanning presents gentle, yet clearly accentuated piano playing, developing into passionate rebellion in Robert Schumann's "Davidsbündlertänze." Under her hands, Claude Debussy's "Estampes" come to life as wonderfully exotic mood impressions, endowed with all the exotic sound colors that the piano can give.

Diana Fanning's delicate yet determined rendition of Mozart's Fantasy in d-minor KV 397 emphasizes the work's (vocal) sonority. And instead of indulging in the monochrome beautiful sound, she endows Janacek's Sonata 1. X. 1905 with mysteries that we can only encounter on enchanted paths.

Composed in 1998, the American composer Monica Houghton's piano sonata which she dedicated to Diana Fanning is still composed in the neoclassical and tonal mode. Again, the pianist stunned her audience with the rich spectrum of subtle colors and sound nuances that she revealed in this new composition. This is the key to this artist's moving authenticity, especially in her interpretation of works by Mozart and Schumann, an authenticity that other artists leave us wanting from time to time.