Pianist Sara Davis Buechner
Film Music and Japan, Two of Sara Buechner's Passions
A brief look at Sara Buechner's career as a touring concert artist and lover of film music.
Film Music has been one of Sara Davis Buechner's loves since she was about ten years old and was given an 8 mm. movie projector. Trips to the local library brought forth such treasures as old Charlie Chaplin silent films to which Sara would improvise background music. This led, in later years, to Sara having several engagements doing just that...playing for movies. In case that should sound strange for a classical pianist of Buechner's stature, the American composer Aaron Copland wrote an article in which he said that film music was very important and should be taken more seriously. Copland himself won an Academy Award for his film score for "The Heiress." Buechner has performed in recital many works by film composers, notably those of Bernard Hermann (1911-1975) and Miklos Rozsa (1907-1995).
Musical Education
Sara, who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1959, began her studies there with a local piano teacher, Renaldo Reyes, as a normal part of her education. Reyes immediately recognized her potential and guided her through the early years of study with care, preparing her well for the next phase of piano study. On her sixteenth birthday her father drove her to Greenwich Village in New York City and left her to pursue studies at the Juilliard School of Music with Beveridge Webster. Further study with the Czech pianist Rudolf Firkusny (see Rudolf Firkusny ) from 1980 to 1984, led her into a concert career that has seen her playing with orchestras and in solo recitals in all the major cities of the world.
Japanese Music and the counrty itself have always held a fascination for Buechner, and now she visits several times a year, staying for two to three weeks at a time. While in Japan Sara gives recitals in Osaka, Kyoto and other cities. She is able to speak basic Japanese and is now serious about learning the language. Buechner speaks about the huge body of Japanese works which are virtually unknown in the west...compositions by Yoshinao Nakada, Toru Takemitsu, Akera Miyoshi and Akio Yashiro. She also mentions the composer Akira Ifukube who began his career as a student in Paris and later wrote the music for "Godzilla." His Piano Sonata won a major prize and the composer Daruius Milhaud was quite taken with its Bartok-like feeling interwoven with Japanese folk melodies.
Teaching and Performing take most of Buechner's time, and she says that keeping a balance is sometimes difficult. She has been on the piano faculty at the University of British Columbia in Canada for the past five years and enjoys her work there. Audiences also enjoy Sara's informal chats before her concerts...chats that reveal her sense of humor and bring the listeners closer to the music that is about to be performed.
Sara Davis Buechner agrees with her teacher Rudolf Firkusny that "Music is first and foremost about sound. If one cannot produce a beautiful tone at the keyboard then nothing else matters." And this beautiful sound is what has brought Sara to an exciting project with Orchestra London (Ontario), when In October of 2010 she will be the soloist in a series of recordings encompassing all the Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Mozart.
For further reading about classical pianists see Pianist Elaine Greenfield, Pianist-Composer Mana-Zucca and Pianist Andreas Thiel.
Source: Personal conversations with Ms.Buechner, March, 2008.
