CCMusic.com

The linguistically mixed title Festas Suramericanas (Portuguese- Spanish) already suggests that this recording by Andreas Woyke with piano music by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera takes us into the realms of Brazil and Argentina. The release combines eruptive wildness and fragile tenderness of this strongly folklore-influenced music to untamed joy of life! The German pianist, Andreas Woyke, had an education shaped by various international influences - the Argentine pianist Aldo Antognazzi taught him in Siegen. In Cologne and Vienna he studies with the Russian pianists Pavel Gililov and Rudolf Kehrer. That time he won a number of international prizes: 1st prize at Brahms-Competition Hamburg, 1st prize at Austro Mechana in Vienna and 2nd prize and recital prize at UNISA Transnet competition in Pretoria. Andreas Woyke currently works as a freelance concert pianist living in Graz and teaches piano and chamber music at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (university for music and the performing arts) there. Between 2001 and 2010 he had been a regular guest teacher at the "Musik zentral" music festival in the Steiermark region of Austria, where, as well as giving conventional master classes, he managed an improvisation course specializing in jazz improvisation.