In addition to his regular appearances as a conductor on major concert series, Frey is very frequently called upon to replace conductors who have canceled their engagements, often at the last minute, and is known for being able to completely learn entire concert programs virtually overnight and follow with performances of great depth.[1]
In January 2008, during an interview broadcast on Radio Cairo while conducting in Egypt, Frey stated that "Music is a peaceful island in a river of sadness."[3]
Frey has been described as "a witty, urbane figure whose wide-ranging genius is evident in the immense breadth of his accomplishments and activities in so many musical genres, and in his performances onstage and in conversation offstage".[1] The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Studs Terkel referred to him as "a Renaissance Man".[4] In a later interview in The Guardian celebrating his 95th birthday, Terkel discussed his own "diverse and idiosyncratic taste in music, from Bob Dylan to Alexander Frey, Louis Armstrong to Woodie Guthrie".[5] Frey has also been called "a raconteur, a young Oscar Levant" by American writer and Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor,[6] "his generation's Noël Coward",[7] "everybody's favourite dinner guest",[8] and that "he seems like a classic character from the golden age of the Broadway musical".[9]
He often plays his solo piano recitals with a lamp next to or on the instrument providing the only stage light (and often the only lighting in the concert hall as well), and an oriental rug underneath the instrument to "create an intimacy between my audience and the music, as if everyone were in my living room listening together".[10]
A resident of Berlin, Germany, Frey has been frequently invited by the city's diplomatic community to perform for heads of state including President Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama, and former German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, among others.[11] He is a prominent member of Berlin's intellectual and artistic communities.[1]
He is Artist-in-Residence of the Gaulitana Festival, a major month-long international music festival held on the island of Gozo in Malta.[12]
Frey is also an Honorary Citizen (Cittadino Onorario) of the city of Bari, Italy. He received this honor in a ceremony immediately following a performance he conducted with the Orchestra Sinfonica della Provincia di Bari in 2009.[13]
In 2022, Alexander Frey received three knighthoods: Knight of Malta (KM, SMOM), Knight of the Order of Saint John (KStJ), and Knight of the Guardians of Peace (Cavaliere dei Guardiani di Pace), Italy.[14]
Alexander Frey is of Greek and Swiss (Alsatian) descent with family currently residing in Greece, Mulhouse and Paris.
Conducting
Alexander Frey was Principal Conductor of the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra from 1996 to 2004, and during that time was the only American music director of an Italian symphony orchestra. He was appointed conductor of the Bohemia Symphony Orchestra (later named the Stern Chamber Orchestra) in Prague, Czech Republic from 2000–2006. In 2022, he was appointed Music Director of Orquesta Cum Jubilo del Camp de Tarragona in Spain.
From 1992 to 1996, he was Music Director of Germany's most renowned theater, the Berliner Ensemble, founded by Bertolt Brecht, where he collaborated with the celebrated stage director Peter Zadek. Frey was the first American to hold a position at the Berliner Ensemble, as well as being the theater's first non-German Music Director; his historic predecessors who held the same music directorship included the composers Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Paul Dessau. While there, Zadek and Frey's artistic collaboration made theater history by producing several revolutionary and innovative productions. They adapted Vittorio De Sica's film Miracle in Milan (Miracolo e Milano) for the stage using the actual entire dialogue script from the film. Frey devised the idea of restoring the entire original film score and performing it live throughout the play using exactly the same music cues as in the film, marking the first time this technique was ever used. He repeated this method for a subsequent production in Austria of a stage version of the film Arsenic and Old Lace. For Miracle in Milan, Frey and the production were nominated for a Berlin Theater Critics' Prize. In addition to directing the music for 7 other large productions at BE, Frey also produced and directed the Berliner Ensemble's A Paul Dessau Evening, a multimedia retrospective of the musical and dramatic works of the theater's music director of the 1950s.
He frequently played recitals with the renowned Grammy Award-winning tenor, Jerry Hadley. Frey has performed chamber music with violinist Ruggiero Ricci and the Vermeer Quartet, among others. Ricci and Frey performed New York City's official concert commemorating the tricentennial anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, given in a sold-out Alice Tully Hall on the actual day of the composer's 300th birthday. He has performed duo concerts in Europe with American writer and A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor. In 2001, Frey gave live performances for the BBC (with the legendary soprano Marta Eggerth) when the two artists gave recitals together in American and Europe which included sold-out performances in London's Wigmore Hall and in New York at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. He also performed an all-Verdi program for RAI in Italy.
Alexander Frey was the first organist to perform an entire symphony of Gustav Mahler as a solo work for organ. This historic achievement resulted in Frey's live performance of the organ transcription Mahler's Symphony #5 (transcribed by Jerry Kinsella) being cited as one of seven performances listed as "the most important organ-related events of the 20th century" by The American Organist magazine.
Alexander Frey was the first pianist to perform the complete piano works of Leonard Bernstein in public, and he has given the world premieres of Bernstein's Five Anniversaries, Thirteen Anniversaries and Valse Gaea. He has performed the cycle throughout Europe, Asia and the United States.
In 2012, Frey performed 4 sold-out organ recitals in one weekend at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The concerts consisted of music of France as part of the celebration of the re-opening of the museum's newly renovated French galleries.
In Barrie Gavin's documentary film, Erich Wolfgang Korngold-Adventures of Wunderkind: A Portrait and Concert, Frey performs several solo keyboard works and the first public hearing of Korngold's second symphony, which exists only in a manuscript piano score. Most of the background piano music in the film is also taken from Frey's performances of the composer's music.
Recording awards
A highly honored recording artist, Alexander Frey has received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (formerly known as the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, one of Germany's highest recording honors), ECHO Klassik Prize, Choice of the French Media Critics, Best Recording of the Year (Fi Magazine), Best Original Cast Recording of the Year-2005 (Borders Music), Favorite Record of the Year-2005 (ArkivMusic), the Bronze World Medal of the New York Festival, BBC Critics Choice, Record of the Month (MusicWeb, UK), Best Instrumental CD of the Month (Galaxie Magazine, Canada) and Best CD of the Month (Best New Classics). His recording of Korngold's Between Two Worlds for piano and orchestra (on the Decca label) was listed by Gramophone Magazine as one of the 250 Greatest Recordings of All Time.
June 2005 marked the release of a new CD of Frey conducting the world premiere recording of Leonard Bernstein's Peter Pan, which Frey restored from the composer's manuscripts, including almost an hour of music previously unheard. This historic recording features Broadway star Linda Eder in the role of Wendy, and Daniel Narducci singing the role of Captain Hook. The CD reached #8 on the BillboardClassical Music Chart®, becoming the third highest selling musical theater recording during the weeks following its release, making Frey a Billboard® Top 10 Artist as both conductor and pianist. It also became the best selling recording of Koch International Classics (now called Entertainment One), the record company which produced it. Frey's CD of the complete solo piano music of Leonard Bernstein (also on Koch International Classics) is considered to be the definitive performance of that music.[16] His ongoing project is recording the complete piano works of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Koch International Classics) and he is regarded as the leading interpreter of Korngold's keyboard music. Alexander Frey's recordings are on the Koch International Classics (Entertainment One), Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, RCA Red Seal and Bach Guild labels.
Contemporary music and the music of Hollywood
Frey has maintained a strong commitment to both contemporary music and the film music of Hollywood which has been evident in the many world and regional premieres he is given. At the 2009 "Hollywood in Vienna Festival" held in Vienna, Austria, Frey gave the first public live performance of John Williams' music to Jean-Jacques Annaud's film Seven Years in Tibet when he played a piano transcription of the complete score to that movie. He also performed the world premieres of Max Steiner's Wiener Lob and a large-scale piano transcription of David Arnold's music for the film Independence Day in concert with Arnold in attendance. In Mexico, Frey conducted the Latin American premiere performances of both Bernard Herrmann's music for Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo and Franz Waxman's music for the 1941 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He also gave the first public performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music for the 1944 film Between Two Worlds, as well as the European premiere of the Suite fromSchindler's List, composed and arranged by John Williams. In Barrie Gavin's documentary film, Erich Wolfgang Korngold-Adventures of Wunderkind: A Portrait and Concert, Frey performs the first public hearing of Korngold's second symphony, composed in Hollywood at the end of the composers life and exists only in piano score, in addition to playing several solo keyboard works and most of the background piano music.
Frey was Musical Advisor to the Hollywood in Vienna Festival from 2007–2013.
Radio biography
An hour-long radio program about Frey's life and work, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, was broadcast on The Studs Terkel Program, in 1997 throughout the United States.[4] The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday. On this program, Terkel interviewed guests as diverse as Martin Luther King, Leonard Bernstein, Mort Sahl, Bob Dylan, Alexander Frey, Dorothy Parker, Tennessee Williams, Jean Shepherd, and Big Bill Broonzy.[17]
Education
Frey studied piano for many years in Chicago as a protégé of the pianist, harpsichordist and teacher Gavin Williamson (1898–1989), one of the last direct links to 19th-century pianism, and who was a pupil of Arthur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska, and Ethel Leginska. His organ teachers in the Chicago area were Richard Webster and Edward Mondello. He received the Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees (both with honors) from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he studied organ with Robert Glasgow, conducting with Gustav Meier and composition with William Albright and William Bolcom. Further conducting studies were with Leonard Bernstein and John Mauceri.
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References
1 2 3 4 "Alexander Frey". Culture Today, February 2007
↑ Radio Cairo Interview, December 31, 2007. Cairo Egypt
1 2 "Between 1952 and 1997, his one-hour Studs Terkel Program aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago, upon which he interviewed pianist-composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, symphony conductor Alexander Frey, civil-rights activist Martin Luther King, journalist Dorothy Parker, dramatist Tennessee Williams". www.gayandlesbianhumanist.org/archive/November 2008/Gossip.htm
↑ Gary Younge, "Let Me Tell You A Story". The Guardian, January 23, 2008.
↑ Garrison Keillor: GK's Travel Blog from American Media, www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/travel/2004_02.html
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