Volume 29 Issue 1 | September 2023

CLASSICAL AND BEYOND
Mahani Teave, NPR Tiny Desk Concert, 2021.
beethoven
FIDELIO
SEPT 29—OCT 20
TRUE TO THE
HUMAN BEING
PAUL ENNIS
Here on the island, there’s artistic blood in everybody. I mean,
everybody somehow sings and dances and carves and – or plays an
instrument. And there’s nothing more natural and more true to the
human being than art and music. – Mahani Teave
Mahani Teave [Tay-AH-vay] – who makes her
Koerner Hall debut at 3pm on October 1 as part
of her first North American tour – is the sole
professional pianist on one of the most remote, inhabited
islands on Earth, Rapa Nui (Easter Island). There she
heads the island’s only music school. She’s living a
remarkable story.
Born 40 years ago to an American woman and a Rapa Nui
musician,Teave spent her formative years on the far-flung island,
3600 km from Chile. At six, Teave took ballet lessons and studied
the piano; the music that accompanied the ballets became her introduction
to classical music. (Among her piano heroes are Emil Gilels,
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignaz Friedmann and Dinu Lipatti.) When the
teacher left the island, Teave was nine and her considerable talent
was noticeable. The family moved to Valdivia in southern Chile where
she studied for six years. On her way to audition for a music school in
Cologne, she attended a masterclass by Cleveland Institute of Music
(CIM) faculty member Sergei Babayan (Daniil Trifonov’s mentor),
whose mastery so impressed her that she chose Cleveland instead.
After studying at CIM and Berlin’s Hans Eisler Music Academy and
winning the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition in 1999
and later being selected as a Steinway & Sons artist, Teave seemed set
for a sparkling international career. Instead, concerned with the lack of
music training in her homeland, she returned to Easter Island, establishing
in 2012 a tuition-free school for classical and traditional music.
Her story continued in 2018, when a Seattle-based software magnate
and collector of rare violins visited the school where he was astonished
by the enthusiastic students and Teave’s skill at the piano. Discovering
that she had never made a recording, he arranged for her to make an
album in Seattle, the proceeds of which go directly to her school. The
result was Rapa Nui Odyssey, a recital of Bach, Handel, Chopin, Liszt,
Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, as well as a traditional Rapa Nui song. It
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