ailed
as "a master pianist" (Andrew Porter, The New Yorker), David Holzman has won
acclaim both for his recitals and his recordings. Among his honors and
awards have been recording grants from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the Alice B. Ditson Fund and the Aaron Copland Foundation.
Commissioning grants have come from such organizations as Reader's
Digest-Meet the Composer and New Jersey Council on the Arts. Concentrating
on modern keyboard masterworks, Holzman has premiered hundreds of works by
composers from around the globe and has made first recordings of many of
them.His debut recording, a CRI stereo LP, was called "one of the great piano discs of the decade" (Peter G. Davis, New York Magazine) and established his reputation as one of the most exciting interpreters of Twentieth Century repertoire. His latest CD, Stefan Wolpe: Compositions for Piano (1920-1952), on the Bridge label, has received equal acclaim and won Holzman a Grammy nomination as well as an Indie Award and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Among several glowing reviews, Christopher Ballinrinp of International Record Review praised the "revelatory insight and passionate conviction"of Holzman’s interpretations and Matthias Kriesberg in The New York Times lauded the "introspective virtuosity"of his pianism. Other CDs appear on the Albany, Centaur, Naxos, and Capstone labels. He was recently named a NYFA Artist in support of his upcoming Bridge CD, which features music of Ralph Shapey and Roger Sessions.
Holzman's recital of the music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Donald Martino was chosen by The New York Times as one of the highlights of the 1991 season. His 1998 recital at New York's Merkin Hall included the music of such composers as Elliott Carter, George Perle and Stefan Wolpe. In praising the concert, Preston Trombly of WQXR stressed the vividness of Holzman's performance. The Carter Sonata of 1945 in particular was singled out as "being made to sound as though it were written yesterday." Performing throughout the world, Mr. Holzman has given lecture-recitals at the Museum of the Diaspora in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the African Museum in New Jersey, among other distinguished venues. He has often been featured at festivals such as Darmstadt; Leningrad Spring; the Wolpe Festivals in Toronto, Chicago, and New York; the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna; the Alternativa Festival in Moscow. He was featured in the Festival Internacional De Musica Nueva Siglo XXI in Veracruz, Mexico, and performed in the Old First Church Concert Series program sponsored by the San Francisco Jewish Music Festival. Most recently he performed in the Black Mountain Festival in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and at Goethe House in New York City.
Born in New York in 1949, David Holzman received his BM magna cum laude from Mannes College of Music where he studied with Paul Jacobs. Completing his studies with Nadia Reisenberg at Queens College, he was a finalist in the Carnegie Competition of St. Germaine-en-Laye. As a chamber musician, he has played with most of New York's major ensembles and esteemed soloists such as Patricia Spencer and Rolf Schulte. An active lecturer, he has introduced general audiences to complex and foreign styles, given several talks on pianistic issues of Twentieth Century music, and presented numerous formal analyses of individual works. His essay "On Performing Battle Piece" is included in a recently published collection honoring Stefan Wolpe's centennial. His introductory essays to Wolpe's piano works appear in the Peermusic editions of these works. Holzman is currently Professor of Piano at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University.
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