David Dubal (born

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

) is an American

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

lecturer Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...

, broadcaster, and

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

Musician and painter

Dubal has given

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

recitals and master classes worldwide, and has also judged international piano competitions (including the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition). He recorded several

albums An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

jointly with pianist Stanley Waldoff for the Musical Heritage Society, and four

compact discs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of holding of uncompr ...

of these recordings have been released on the ArkivCD label. (His album of

Aram Khachaturian Aram Ilyich Khachaturian (; 1 May 1978) was a Soviet Armenians, Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Music of the Soviet Union#Classical music of the Soviet Union, Soviet composers. Khachaturian was born and rai ...

solo piano works has never been given a compact disc release, although it has been archived at

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

.) Dubal appeared in the 2013 Dutch film ''Nostalgia: The Music of Wim Statius Muller'', commenting on the musical compositions of Wim Statius Muller, who was Dubal's teacher at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

. Dubal taught at the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...

from 1983 to 2018, and at the

Manhattan School of Music The Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is a private music conservatory A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music a ...

from 1994 until 2015. Dubal's drawings and paintings have garnered attention and praise. In 2020, a book titled ''Selected Paintings and Drawings of David Dubal'' was published by TIMP Universal, New York.

Author

Dubal has written several books, including ''The Art of the Piano'', ''Evenings with Horowitz'', ''Conversations with Menuhin'', ''Reflections from the Keyboard'', ''Conversations with Joao Carlos Martins'', ''The Essential Canon of Classical Music'' (an encyclopedic guide to the prominent composers of the

Western canon The Western canon is the embodiment of High culture, high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly cherished across the Western culture, Western world, such works having achieved the status of classics. Recent ...

), and ''Remembering Horowitz'' (with 125 essays by accomplished pianists and a disc of

Vladimir Horowitz Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (November 5, 1989) was a Russian and American pianist. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all time, he was known for his virtuoso technique, timbre, and the public excitement engendered by his playing. Life ...

and Dubal in conversation). He also wrote and hosted ''The Golden Age of the Piano'', an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...

-winning documentary produced by Peter Rosen. Several of his articles on music have appeared in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'', and ''

The New Criterion ''The New Criterion'' is a New York–based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Roger Kimball (editor and publisher) and James Panero (executive editor). It has sections for criticism of poetry ...

''.

Lecturer

Dubal is currently the host and instructor of the weekly ''Piano Evenings with David Dubal'' series, held at Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church in New York City. Dubal "provides historical and musical context for each week's repertoire selections, performed by a rotating lineup of acclaimed pianists." Dubal has lectured numerous times at New York's

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

since the 1980s, to include lectures on Beethoven, a 200th birthday lecture on

Frederic Chopin Frederic may refer to: Places United States * Frederic, Wisconsin, a village in Polk County * Frederic Township, Michigan, a township in Crawford County ** Frederic, Michigan, an unincorporated community Other uses * Frederic (band), a Japanese r ...

and

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...

in 2010, three lectures in 2011 on Russian Romantic composers, and four lectures in 2012 on

La Belle Époque LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...

. He gave three lectures (on Chopin,

Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most pro ...

, and the history of the piano) at the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Dubal has given interviews on the subjects of the great pianists, music history and tradition, and the century of social change to the Snapshots Music and Arts Foundation, and these interviews are available to hear at their website.

Current and recent broadcasting activity

Dubal is the host of ''The Piano Matters'', a program of comparative piano performances that can be heard on WWFM and other US radio stations. He also hosts ''Reflections from the Keyboard'', a weekly exploration of piano recordings, heard on

WQXR-FM WQXR-FM (105.9 FM) is an American non-commercial classical radio station, licensed to Newark, New Jersey, and serving the North Jersey and New York City area. It is owned by the nonprofit organization New York Public Radio (NYPR), which also op ...

. In the late 1990s, Dubal hosted a series of radio programs titled ''The American Century'', focusing on musical works of the 20th century written by

American composers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

. Many episodes of this series have been archived at YouTube.

Music director of WNCN-FM

From 1971 to 1994, Dubal served as music director of New York City classical music radio station WNCN-FM. In 1975 and 1976, he hosted a regular program of comparative performances titled ''A Musical Offering'', focusing on the piano music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt, and more than a hundred of these programs have been archived at YouTube. In 1980, his series of interviews with

, ''Conversations with Horowitz'', was awarded a

George Foster Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in ...

. In the early 1980s, Dubal interviewed

Claudio Arrau Claudio Arrau León (; February 6, 1903June 9, 1991) was a Chilean and American pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque music, baroque to 20th-century classical music, 20th-century composers, especially B ...

for a series titled ''Conversations with Arrau'' consisting of six programs on the great pianist's life and career. In 1985, he interviewed

Yehudi Menuhin Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin (22 April 191612 March 1999), was an American-born British violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. ...

at the WNCN-FM studios; much of this conversation was used in the book ''Conversations with Menuhin''. Dubal also hosted a series of WNCN-FM programs titled ''For the Love of Music'', in which he interviewed pianists, including

Murray Perahia Murray David Perahia ( ; born April 19, 1947) is an American pianist and conductor. He has been considered one of the greatest living pianists. He was the first North American pianist to win the Leeds International Piano Competition, in 1972. ...

, Mitsuko Uchida, and Alexis Weissenberg, composers, including John Corigliano, Phillip Ramey, William Mayer and

Laurent Petitgirard Laurent Petitgirard (born 10 June 1950, in Paris) is a French classical composer and conductor. Biography Laurent Petitgirard was born in Paris on 10 June 1950. He studied piano with his father Serge Petitgirard, a pupil of Alfred Cortot and ...

, and other prominent people in the arts, including

Quentin Crisp Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt; – ) was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of his life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, he was an artist's model, hence the title of h ...

, Shlomo Mintz, and Wanda Wiłkomirska. More than a hundred of these interviews have been archived at YouTube.

Honors

Dubal was honored by composer Virgil Thomson with a musical portrait titled "David Dubal: In Flight"; it has been recorded by pianist Jacquelyn Helin, pianist Craig Rutenberg, and a version orchestrated by Thomson was also recorded. An analysis of "David Dubal: In Flight" can be found in

Anthony Tommasini Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief c ...

's book ''Virgil Thomson's Musical Portraits''. In 1986, Dubal was recognized for his work at WNCN-FM with an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for broadcasting. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY ) is a system of Public education, public colleges and universities in the New York (state), State of New York. It is one of the List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, larges ...

References

External links

Piano Evenings with David Dubal
website
Archived episodes of ''The Piano Matters''
(at WWFM.org website)
Archived episodes of 'For the Love of Music' (and more)
at YouTube *, IKIF, 20-Jul-2008
Episodes of 'A Musical Offering' devoted to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier
at YouTube
Episodes of 'A Musical Offering' devoted to Beethoven's piano sonatas
at YouTube
Episodes of 'A Musical Offering' devoted to Brahms's solo piano music
at YouTube
Episodes of 'A Musical Offering' devoted to Chopin's music
at YouTube
Episodes of 'A Musical Offering' devoted to Liszt's piano music
at YouTube
Episodes of 'The American Century', devoted to 20th century American music
at YouTube *David Dubal on

Discogs Discogs ( ; short for " discographies") is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. Database contents are user-generated, and described in ''T ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dubal, David Living people Classical music radio presenters Emmy Award winners Juilliard School faculty Manhattan School of Music faculty Ohio State University alumni Jewish classical pianists American male classical pianists Musicians from Cleveland Classical musicians from Ohio 21st-century American classical pianists 21st-century American male musicians Year of birth missing (living people) Juilliard School alumni