Pianists promote classical music to younger listeners

Coral Solomon

Canadian Israeli pianists Coral Solomon and Michael Berkovsky formed a musical partnership after they started dating some two years ago.

Raised in Toronto, Solomon, 23, has won several piano competitions and has played in Europe with more than a dozen orchestras since her late teens.

Berkovsky, 34, a Juilliard School graduate who has performed around the world, is a sought-after piano teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould School in Toronto.

“We were friends for a long time,” Solomon said. “I knew him since he came to Toronto five years ago and we were very close with the families. A little longer than two years ago, we started going out and we began to play together.”

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Berkovsky remembers first meeting Solomon just after he moved here from the United States and was hired to accompany her. “She was doing a concerto composition and she required a second pianist to accompany her,” he said.

About his musical partnership with Solomon, he said pianists often collaborate with other musicians, including other pianists. “I collaborate with a lot of my friends, so it was quite natural.”

Michael Berkovsky
Michael Berkovsky

Berkovsky, who got his doctoral degree in the United States at John Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory, was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1990. His family came to Toronto in 2001. Solomon’s parents, who are from Romania, met in Israel, where she was born. Solomon and her family moved to Canada in 2004.

Berkovsky said he responded about a year ago to an invitation from the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation, which was looking to present Israeli artists.

“I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for Coral and me,” he said.

As a result, they ended up officially premiering their duo at a concert presented by the foundation.

Aiming to promote classical music to young audiences in the Jewish community, Berkovsky and Solomon have developed an educational concert that fuses Jewish-Israeli themes with classical music.

At a recent performance at Toronto’s Beth Tikvah Synagogue, they presented their program, featuring romantic music, selections from musicals and jazz. The 60-plus minute performance included Jewish and non-Jewish composers, among them Brahms, Ravel, Mendelssohn and George Gershwin. The duo also played music from Fiddler on the Roof and the melody of Hatikvah, from Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem Bohemia.

“The audience enjoyed it. They were bopping along and dancing, and there were lots of smiles at the end. It was fun for us as well,” Solomon said.

This summer, after she finishes her master’s degree in music at Boston University, they will be available to perform their educational concert.

“We want to expose younger audiences to classical music. The music is very enjoyable and it’s in a setting where it’s very audience friendly,” Solomon said.

Speaking from the perspective of a music educator, Berkovsky said fewer Jewish children have an interest in classical music these days.

“A lot of our younger Jewish kids for some reason are not as involved with music as they used to be in my parents’ generation,” he said.

“Hopefully, now that Coral will be moving back here, we will be able to develop an audience here.”

For more information, contact Solomon and Berkovsky through their Facebook pages.