If you’ve been baking cookies (or basting turkeys, or rolling out pie crusts) over the past weeks, I’m sure you’d understand why I chuckled when I read these lines in my book club’s current pick:

Yes, just like that the transition has happened! Oranges, yellows, browns and everything pumpkin are out, wintery reds and greens, twinkly lights and candy stripes are in, and the season of crafting and cooking has officially begun. In this sense, the world hasn’t changed all that much in the last 200 years. Yes, we now have a festive Starbucks menu and Advent calendars with everything from cheese to Keurig cups behind their little doors, but indoor entertainment, friendship and coziness are still the staples of the season. So it was for Schubert, so it is for us!

If our gossipy headline made you open this email, consider yourself seen and understood! As far as iconic romances go, the love affair between the celebrated novelist, memoirist and journalist Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, more commonly known by her pen name, George Sand, and the pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin is the stuff of legend. Right up there with Antony and Cleopatra, Victoria and Albert, Taylor and Travis (…), the consumptive and sickly Frédéric’s almost decade-long entanglement with the dashing, cross-dressing intellectual still fascinates fans and scholars to this day, resulting in a cornucopia of fictional mythologizing and long trails of historical research.

Dear friends of PPI,

I’m writing to you from Brussels, Belgium, where I’ve just started a new Beethoven odyssey – the full sonata cycle over two seasons! It’s a tremendous joy to return to this music, and being at the Flagey Building is a treat in itself. (It’s a stunning Art Deco building, originally functioning as the radio broadcasting house – evidently designed with acoustics in mind, and widely considered a central cultural hub.) This being Belgium, food is never far either, with three restaurants nestled in the building itself, from the wonderfully lively Café Belga – great for a pre-concert sandwich or cake! – to the more sophisticated (that is, grown-up!) Les Variétés and Barracuda.

(Yes, we are still celebrating that Eric Lu won the Chopin Competition and looking forward to his sold-out performance for PPI on November 16th!) 

If there’s one thing about human culture that I find absolutely fascinating, it’s our paradoxical relationship with competition.  On the one hand, we cannot overstress the importance of everyone being a winner (there’s no “I” in “team”!) on the other, our quest for individual excellence and relentless one-upping has never been more pronounced. Whether in business, technology, sports or even innocent hobbies (competitive knitting, anyone?), we’ve thoroughly ingrained the belief that striving for individual greatness is what ultimately proves our human worth.

(According to AI, that’s how one would say “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” in Polish. I’m not sure that’s correct, but words are failing me to express my giddy elation, and incorrect Polish is as good as gobbledygook English in cases of flabbergasted speechlessness, I’m sure.)

Let’s reflect together for a moment about what a great musical fall it has been already. In exactly one month, we’ll be halfway into our season when we welcome Eric Lu to Portland and before we know it, it will be 2026 and we’ll start counting down to summer again! That is why today, instead of immediately jumping into “what’s next”-mode, we want to take a moment to breathe, sit back and celebrate the concerts we just wrapped up. (We hope you don’t blame us for wanting to cue Elton John’s I’m still standing here – two concerts over just nine days is a rather heavy load for a small team, but we think we’ve crushed it!)

Is it just me, or is one of the marks of middle age to suddenly possess the ability to turn every prospectively happy event into reason for anxious rumination? “Let’s go on a trip over winter break!” quickly turns into a concerned mental tallying of available leave days (not to mention pangs of guilt about the kids’ worryingly meagre college fund.) “Why not throw a big birthday party?” instantly provokes palpitations, linked not only to the implied stress of hosting, but also myriad social conundrums (if we invite so-and-so, we also have to include so-and-so …) Even things as simple as going out to a restaurant with friends, getting a new book group together or finding a movie to watch with my husband on a Friday night (all fun and relaxing ideas, right?) have inherent gordian knot potential: The restaurant inevitably has to please vegans and carnivores; the Doodle poll between working moms lands on a Sunday afternoon sometime mid-2027; by the time we’ve watched seventeen previews, one of us is usually asleep.

Like doting parents with a large brood of children, we at PPI take great pride and joy in each and every one of our artists. So many unique perspectives, personalities and predilections, so much endless variety within the scope of pianistic excellence. While we truly hold a special place in our hearts for each and every pianist we host and don’t play favorites, we cannot help but feel that profound surge of “look at our first baby walking!”-pride when our curator takes the stage. The individual crafting the season is, after all, the creative force behind the narrative arc and artistic vision of all the individual recitals.

There are many magical elements from the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins that I wish could have morphed into my adult reality. The ability to clean up with the click of my fingers, for example. Also, the freedom of escaping drab routine by jumping into a beautiful chalk drawing on the sidewalk. These are extreme feats of fantasy, though, and even as a child, I could sense that demanding that kind of magic from the universe may be pushing the limits.

While the constant craving for digital dopamine is taking over our world (see this excellent recent opinion piece in the NYTimes) and many performing arts organizations are pulling out every possible stop to meet the ever-growing demand for personalized, digitally augmented and immersive experiences, we’ve been spending a lot of time at the PPI office, thinking about what value and significance a nineteenth-century performance model (the solo piano recital as we know it today was essentially “invented” by Liszt in the 1800s and never revised) still has to offer in today’s harried, hurried society.

If you were in Lincoln Hall this past Sunday and were there to feel the communal wave of glee by the time Evren Ozel played his encore, you’ll know exactly what I mean: Listening to a recording at home while you’re cooking, popping in your AirPods while working out, or tuning in to your favorite radio station on your morning commute is simply not the same kind of musical experience as sitting in a hall surrounded by other people, watching a one-off event unfold in real time.

Some may call it confirmation bias; I call it serendipity: that wonderful influx of somehow related ideas and phenomena that keep popping up once one’s thoughts board a certain train. Planning a trip to Italy? Why, suddenly all the wines in Fred Meyer seem Italian. Thinking about buying a kitten? Bet you’re seeing cute fur-balls everywhere. Recently binge-watched a Scandinavian family drama on Netflix? Just look at all the other subtitled series that now get suggested! (Wait … that’s an algorithm, not serendipity!)

Wouldn’t it be deliciously entertaining if we could visually portray creative energy as scoops of ice-cream? Doing a stick-figure doodle equals one scoop plain vanilla. Writing a rhyming quatrain gets you a double scoop with sprinkles. Singing your own song with piano accompaniment … that’s a mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone, thank you very much.

A week or so ago, I had a fabulously un-classical experience, sitting in the second row at a live performance of the sensational Cuban ensemble, the Buena Vista Orchestra. What struck me (even more than their beaming keyboard player, Andy Abad Acosta, opening with Chopin’s Minute Waltz) was the fact that, despite their expressive faces, their fluid moves and their evocative melodies, something was lost on me due to the fact that I didn’t understand the Spanish lyrics of any of the songs. (Not just lost on me, but lost on the entire audience, who had a decidedly hard time cooperating when the lead singer kept urging the crowd to sing más fuerte to lyrics they could only vaguely mumble.) Sure, you’d have to be living under a rock if, as a modern American, you’re unable to catch the odd “amigo”, “corazon”, “por que” and “amor” – but how does one fully grasp the storytelling aspect of vocal music without understanding the words? The music, alone, is simply not enough. 

Months ago, while brainstorming possible names for PPI’s new bipartite recital structure, the concept “Timeless” came up to describe music that stays relevant, keeps inspiring, never ages. The image that immediately sprung to my mind, was this one: A curious little terrier peering into the horn of a gramophone, once iconically adorning The Gramophone Company’s records, later belonging to EMI.

PPI’s traditional audience are no strangers to talented pianists. Over the course of any given season we quite literally get a glimpse into the finest pianists of today and tomorrow, as our vision and mission clearly states. But with Charlie Albright (our “Piano Beach” soloist this past February, slated to be our second “Boundless” performer in May 2026), we hit on something (for us!) quite new, quite bold and, dare we say, boundless in its creative and artistic scope. Like an accomplished older sister furtively envying her younger sister’s carefree ease, Charlie embodies everything classical music in the 21^st century  secretly wants to be: playful, experimental, fun! Which is why we created the “Boundless” series: A space where we hope to really tap into the feeling Charlie inspires in all of his audiences – one of genre-bending and audience-engaging impishness, while retaining the highest standards of virtuosity.

Besides, obviously, the language of the piano, there are quite a number of tongues flying around the PPI office. Bill converses comfortably and flamboyantly in French and Italian (excitedly, jokingly and musically enunciating the word “im-bo-tig-liat-tore” – bottler of wine – when he starts spinning yarns about the Trasimeno Music Festival), Robin is equally at home in Advanced Telephone Tact as in English (not to mention fluent in Organizational Expertise), while I try my best to keep my South African English and American English grammar rules in separate mental compartments, away from the Afrikaans, Dutch, German, French and Greek vocabulary. Throw in the general polyglot nature of the “International” in our name, and what we have at our disposal is an vast dictionary of terminology to articulate our experiences. Which makes being at a loss for words all the more unusual, and yet, inescapable, when confronted with the types of genius we encounter in our interactions with our artists. Let’s just say that my jaw nearly dropped on the floor when I recently opened Instagram, to hear Filippo Gorini confidently address his audience in Japanese. Is there anything in the world that this guy cannot do? (The answer, to my mind, is no.)

If the Austro-German Romantics don’t really float your boat, you’ll be happy to hear that we hear you! There may be the perception that, to love classical piano, you have to go weak-kneed for Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, but not all pianists are cut from Sturm-und-Drang cloth, and the mighty fortress of piano repertoire has many, many rooms. What a delight, then, to have Tamara Stefanovich’s PPI recital to look forward to on February 8^th, 2026!