Pianists in Conversation with Andrew Eales
Ivana Gavrić has attracted international acclaim for her interpretations of a broad range of repertoire and storytelling programming, her playing described as ‘electrifying’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘impressive, insightful…ravishing’ (Washington Post).
We are delighted that Ivana will be our special guest recitalist at the Milton Keynes Piano Celebration 2025.
And on the eve of the release of her sixth album, Throwback to Dance, it has been a pleasure to catch up with her for a chat about her piano journey so far (we first met when we both taught at The Thinking Pianist course last year)…
Prelude • Beginnings
Andrew: Thank you for agreeing to talk to Pianodao!
Can we start by talking about your early piano education? Thinking back to your young childhood in Sarajevo, can you pinpoint your earliest memorable musical experience?
Ivana: This is quite hard, as music was such a part of my everyday life as a child. My mother, Zrinka Gavrić, is a pianist, and she was playing a lot of Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, Prokofiev, all the time, so that repertoire is the soundtrack to my childhood. However, I do remember, quite clearly, being finally considered old enough aged 5 to be taken to the opera. I went to see Carmina Burana with my mum and grandmother. I can remember it was an important and special occasion, the music powerful and loud, and enjoying stepping on the marble floor of the opera house in my new black ballerina shoes!
AE: That must have been quite an experience and obviously made a lasting impression! Were you already playing the piano at that point? Was your mother your first teacher?
IG: I started piano lessons aged 6, before I started ‘normal’ school, as children began primary school in Sarajevo aged 7. My mother was very wise to never officially teach me herself, but of course she did all the hard work at home, practising with me every day. I studied with one of my mother’s friends initially, and after a couple of years moved to her own teacher, Professor Mušanović, who taught at the senior school. My mother also masterminded the logistics of getting me to music school on the other side of the city and back 4 times a week, with all grandparents involved. All pupils had piano lessons twice a week, as well as solfeggio/musicianship twice a week!
AE: That’s a huge commitment, and quite a contrast to the more casual approach that is typical in the UK. I wonder what your thoughts are about that, and what advice would you give to parents wanting their children to start lessons?
IG: That is a very good question, and a difficult one to answer. Yes, I experienced a more intensive, music education to what most children in the UK have access to. It wasn’t just because my mother was a professional musician. Many pupils attended a music school alongside normal school.
If I’m really honest, I don’t think that the more casual approach typical in the UK works, or at least not for children who do want to take it seriously, regardless of whether they then go on to be professional or not. It is too much for an instrumental teacher to manage to teach all that is required in the usual 30 minutes lesson.
I think the underlying problem is that for some strange reason we don’t take music as a serious subject here in the UK. It’s something that is done on the side, and if one is good, it’s put down to ‘talent’. Quite the contrary, like any language, art or sport, one needs to work very hard at it, daily, and be taught the many different facets of this music ‘hobby’. More and more, music and instrumental lessons are becoming a hobby that only the privileged have access to. What is available varies so much on where you live.
I’m not sure I can give advice. I would stress that it is a commitment for the whole family when a child learns an instrument, but at the same time one which will provide them with a lifetime of fulfilment on so many levels, so it is worth the investment!
AE: I think a lot of teachers will agree and identify with that statement, making it all the more fascinating to talk to somebody who benefited from such an amazing foundation.
IG: What I didn’t mention is that although music education is not perhaps taken so seriously in the UK outside specialist schools, there is an incredibly rich amateur music scene! I don’t think it exists anywhere else quite like this. It is brilliant that amateurs of all levels enjoy active music making, and that it is credit to the more casual but also open system!
Development • Relocation
AE: Those are really interesting observations! Which bring me to the question of how your piano education developed once you came to the UK?
IG: When I came to the UK aged 12, I didn’t speak any English. It was a really hard time for obvious reasons, and so music and the piano provided solace. It also was a language I could communicate in, so it helped me integrate into my new country and society.
I was soon awarded a place at Junior Guildhall, and the music inspector for Haringey Council, Leonora Davies, took me under her wing and offered me performance opportunities linked with the council Music Service. This was local at first, but then led to my first tour to Amsterdam in ‘95, playing orchestral piano, and then a concerto with the orchestra in ‘97 around the UK and in Spain.
At 17, I had to decide whether to pursue music further, and if so, whether at music conservatoire or at university. That was a really hard choice, as I obviously wanted to play, but I decided that a university degree, followed by a master’s at a Conservatoire would be the safest and most secure for a future. I was lucky enough to get a place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, and afterwards at The Royal College of Music. I then decided to try a freelancing career, and I’m still trying it!
AE: And succeeding very well, I would say! But looking back at your journey, it is difficult to imagine the trauma of being uprooted as a child in those circumstances. For you to find sustenance in music, and such support for your continuing education here in the U.K. is wonderful to hear.
Reflecting on how you adapted to the UK piano education experience, did your new teachers set you on a different path, do you think, and what were the standout positive things you learnt during those teenage years and beyond?
IG: Yes, I think the difference in teaching was quite noticeable, even on my first day at the Junior Guildhall, as I was asked to sit at the piano and play a piece of music I had never seen before: that was my introduction to sightreading! We didn’t study that in Sarajevo, or not so early on anyway. Quite the contrary! I would sometimes have to memorise each hand separately of a new piece (a Bach Invention for example) and only then be ‘allowed’ to play it hands together! Obviously, this has its own advantages, but sight-reading is something that I missed out on in my early years, which is a great shame.
Another was chamber music and orchestral piano. I feel so fortunate to have experienced playing orchestral piano parts from the age of 14 or so. A pianist’s life is a solitary one, and it was just incredible to perform Shostakovich Symphonies and works by Copland, which I would not have known so early on otherwise.
Collaboration
AE: And of course, this proved to be so important in terms of preparing you for the freelance career that has followed, in which you have worked with so many others.
Can you tell us about this side of your professional performing life, the collaborations which proved especially important and special?
IG: Aside from my instrumental lessons at the Royal College of Music, the most important were Roger Vignoles classes, and then the Britten Pears Young Artists programme, when I briefly worked with singers. Learning from singers how to shape a phrase and how to breathe is something that has really helped me in all music-making. We sometimes forget to breathe (musically) as pianists!
Another unexpected collaboration that proved significant for me came the day after I graduated from the RCM, when I was invited to work as a hand double of a film. This turned out to be Juliette Binoche playing a pianist from Sarajevo, by complete coincidence! I had got the job purely based on a photo of my hands. Anthony Minghella, the director, was in tears when he found out, and he later invited me to play for the soundtrack. So, my first recording experience was in Abbey Road Studio 1, all on my own, playing Bach, produced by the Oscar-winning composer Gabriel Yared! It was such a great learning curve and an incredible experience. The fact that I love recording is probably due to this lucky start.
I have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to make music with leading European orchestras. My favourite performances have to be playing the Grieg Concerto with Philharmonia and Oliver Gooch at the Royal Festival Hall a couple of years ago, or Beethoven Emperor with the RPO and David Hill at the Royal Albert Hall. It is exhilarating to play with these brilliant musicians and in these enormous halls! It is hard to sleep for days afterwards…!
Having said that, I get the greatest musical satisfaction from playing concerti with chamber orchestras, as it feels like chamber music, just on a slightly larger scale. Mozart K271 with the Trondheim Soloists was just a dream, as was an all-Janáček festival I curated with the Aurora Orchestra at Kings Place in 2011.
A relatively new collaboration, which I thoroughly enjoy is with another pianist, Tim Horton. We met at the Dartington Summer Festival where we both taught, and it soon became apparent that we shared musical tastes and really liked each other’s playing. Our first concerts on two pianos were as part of Music in the Round series and at The Thinking Pianistmasterclass. It’s been great playing The Rite of Spring and Rachmaninov First Suite, and next year we will be performing Ravel’s La Valse and Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances.
AE: You’ve also collaborated, in a sense, with the composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Would you like to talk about that?
IG: Yes, Cheryl and I were contemporaries at Cambridge where we became friends. When I was getting ready to record my Grieg Piano Works album, I thought that it would be nice if she wrote a Lyric Piece inspired by Grieg for me.
Her ‘Contemplation’ was so lovely that I then asked her to write 3 further homages to composers I felt a close connection to: Janáček, Schubert and Ravel. She did it with great flair and wit; in each one she captured the composer perfectly, while also making them very much her own pieces. Some of your readers might be familiar with her ‘In the Dew’ which has now been selected as an ABRSM Grade 8 piece. It’s so wonderful that now thousands of people around the world will hear and play her music, and I’ve even taught this piece myself, which is a lovely feeling!
After this, we took our collaboration to the next level and I asked Cheryl to write a Piano Concerto for me, in homage to the Haydn D major Concerto which I adore. I had read that one of the themes in the Haydn Finale was thought to be of Bosnian or Croatian origin in the past, despite the Rondo alla ‘ungharese title. Obviously, this tickled my fancy, and although I don’t think there is any evidence for this, I thought that it would be nice to have a piece of classical music which does include a melody from my part of the world, something positive after a recent dark history.
And so Cheryl wrote ‘Between the Skies, the River and the Hills’ using a beautiful folk song ‘Kad ja podjoh na Bentbašu’(the unofficial anthem of Sarajevo), in her Finale, while also paying homage to Haydn in her own special way.
You can hear both concerti on my album ‘Origins’. Cheryl also wrote cadenzas for the Haydn, also using the Bosnian song, so now there is a Bosnian song in the concerto for sure!
My new album ‘Throwback to Dance’ features Frances-Hoad’s new Dance Suite for piano. This was not written for me, but it fits the theme of the album perfectly, so I had to include it too.
Throwback to Dance
AE: ‘Throwback to Dance’ is, I believe, your sixth studio album, and it’s released this month. Once again, you explore repertoire that hasn’t been overplayed, pairing contrasting works that mutually illuminate each other. Do tell us more.
IG: On the new album, I explore how composers use old dance forms to create new paths. There are a number of threads running through the album, but the primary focus is on Grieg’s influence on Ravel, which not many people are aware of. Grieg was a visionary composer through the use of folk music, evocation of nature, suggestion of bitonality and early neoclassicism. He was a leading figure for the young generation of composers looking for an alternative to the Germanic canon.
Tchaikovsky greatly admired Grieg, Bartók wouldn’t be Bartók were it not for the last set of pieces by Grieg called Slåtter Op72, in which he hints at bitonality as he evokes the sounds of a Hardangerfiddle’s sympathetic strings (we know that Bartók had a copy!). And Ravel stated that, next to Debussy, Grieg was the biggest influence on him and the younger generation of French composers. Ravel even started work on a set of variations on a theme by Grieg, but sadly this remains in sketch form.
I had been thinking of programming Grieg’s Holberg Suite with Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin for a while, and when I read about an endearing meeting between the two in Paris, I knew I had to do it. Apparently, Ravel played Grieg’s Norwegian Dance to Grieg when they met, while Grieg stomped and jumped around the room joyfully, exclaiming that it was wrong, that it needed to be a peasant, a more rustic dance! The image of these two petit men is charming and so of course, I have included one of the Norwegian Dances on the album.
Grieg’s Holberg Suite celebrates the playwright, but also all things Nordic. Ravel also set out to write a French suite, celebrating French music from Couperin to Saint-Saëns. He suite changed focus with the arrival of WW1, and he renamed it Le Tombeau de Couperin and dedicated each movement to a fallen friend. But the nationalistic trait and neoclassicism is shared with Grieg’s Suite.
Also on the album is ‘Remembrance’ (Erinnerung) by Dora Pejačević, a composer whose origins I share, and whose music was unjustifiably lost after her death… until now! She’s enjoying a great revival in this country, which is fantastic. This piece gives more of a nod to the ‘Throwback’ than ‘Dance’ but I couldn’t resist including it, in hope that listeners are intrigued to explore her other works.
Pejačević has a special harmonic language, always held together with a beautiful melody. She and Ravel also share a surprising experience in that they were both paramedics in the Great War, extraordinary for somebody of her class, as she was a Countess!
Also on the album are two works by Cécile Chaminade which I think are real gems and which pay homage to both Grieg (in female form, Norwegiènne) and the throwback to dance theme.
Performance
AE: A really exciting programme, thanks for sharing those fascinating insights! You’ll be promoting the album with concerts of course, including your upcoming performance at the MK Piano Celebration, where you’re our special guest this December.
Coming full circle, prior to your evening recital this event includes daytime concerts for children and adults at all stages in their piano journey. To conclude our conversation, what are your tips for those preparing to perform for the first time?
IG: Ah, everyone remembers their first concert, it is such a special experience and memory! I’d suggest that you start working towards it hard now, so that as the concert approaches you know you’re ready, you’ve done all your practice, and you know the music as well as you can.
Make sure you get a good night’s sleep the night before and eat well on the day. I tend to avoid carbs just before a concert as it makes me sleepy; but fish, veggies and fruit, especially grapes and bananas are good. As the performance gets nearer, try to visualise how it would feel afterwards if it had gone really well. Hold on to that feeling, it will go well and it will all be over in a flash once you’re actually playing (the waiting part tends to feel like ages!). Then breathe, enjoy sharing your music and your hard work with the audience and have fun!
AE: I think that’s great advice for all our performers, young and not so young! Thank you so much, and it’s been great talking to you. Good luck with the album and tour!
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