The World Ballet Pianists Day

The World Ballet Pianists Day

Dear friends and colleagues,

I would like to announce an important project that I have been working on for a long time: 

The creation of "World Ballet Pianists Day"!

After a long historical and musical research, trying to find the official first "Ballet Pianist" of the ballet classes history (almost impossible because there are no clear information about that after the violin era), I found a high level solution: the birth anniversary of a great pianist, Alexander Siloti.

Why Siloti?

He was one of the pioneering concert pianists closely associated with dance, particularly with Tchaikovsky, owing to their familial ties. Tchaikovsky was his Harmony teacher and asked Siloti to write the piano version of Sleeping Beauty, so the first printed edition appeared in 1899.

Siloti is a very important artistic reference for our work because he wrote the first professional transcriptions of famous ballets, (another great one is Glazunov's Raymonda, as well as Mozart's Idomeneo ballet music). 

Siloti was also the cousin of Rachmaninoff (that transcribed the Sleeping Beauty for 4 hands).

At the beginning of the collaboration between pianists and dance world, Siloti epitomized the perfect blend of a traditional pianist and one working in the dance world.

The chosen date is his birth anniversary: October 9, 1863 (Gregorian calendar)

There is ample time to organize various initiatives for this significant event, crucial for all generations of ballet pianists who have shaped the history of music for dance. We are the true pillars of dancers' artistic education, often authors of splendid compositions.

This dedicated day is a tribute to Ballet Pianists, because they are an incredibly unique artistic category of pianists. 

Without them and their music, the world of dance would not be the same, losing the beacons of his inspiration.