Poised, passionate launch of American Piano Awards with Avery Gagliano
Avery Gagliano got the Premiere Series of the 2025 American Piano Awards off to a robust start Sunday afternoon at the Indiana History Center. Avery Gagliano now studies with Schiff. She is the first of five finalists to be presented here in solo recitals plus a concerto performance, one each month through February. That will be followed by adjudicated chamber-music performances, then a finale featuring the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in April after which the top prize will be awarded. After her Curtis Institute of Music training, the 23-year-old pianist from Washington, D.C., has just started studying with Sir Andras Schiff in Kronberg, Germany. Immediately with her program opener Sunday — J.S. Bach's French Suite No. 4 in E-flat — some suggestions of Schiff's Bach style, the Bach-on-piano standard for me in recordings to counter the powerful Glenn Gould approach, were apparent. There was the suave legato displayed in the Allemande, then the vivid definition of the le