Valentina Kameníková - piano - 2 CD

Valentina Kameníková, born Valentina Michajlovna Wax, was an outstanding Czech pianist and music educator of Ukrainian and Jewish descent. From 1959 to 1961, she completed her postgraduate studies in piano performance at the Prague AMU under Professor František Rauch. Since 1963, she taught at the Prague Conservatory, and from 1970, she served as an associate professor at the Prague AMU. "I first met her in the late 1970s in the conservatory canteen. As a bewildered graduate from Karlovy Vary applying for admission to study piano performance, I felt a mix of admiration and fear towards her, and when I watched her (to put it mildly) somewhat inelegantly slurping hot tripe soup and barking unpublishable expressions at her nearby student between bites, I felt a warm sense that she was just a person of flesh and blood. Her quirky way of interacting with people, her clairvoyant musical sensitivity, her distinctive, often harsh teaching methods, and her complex personal and professional fate all destined her to significantly influence the life of the Czech piano community from the 1960s to the 1980s. And because she passed away prematurely at the very beginning of the digital age, her portrait is primarily intended for the younger generation who did not experience her and who may wonder why...