Root for them: Two young pianists return to Longview after impressive 2023 recital

Idahoan Abriana Church and Angelina Mitrianu, who fled Ukraine, are becoming regulars in local classical music scene

Please help me get word out about this recital, which takes place next Sunday, Aug. 4.

It's so important to me for three reasons:

1. I love classical music and want to keep its flame burning. I still think it is the greatest of all music, so ennobling, rich and varied.

2. A recital like this perpetuates the memory of my good friend and piano teacher Martin Kauble.

3. These two young women are astounding pianists deserving of support. As aspiring concert artists, they are pursuing wickedly difficult dreams. I once heard a competitor at the famous Tchaikovsky piano competition say that learning brain surgery is easy by comparison to mastering the piano. No one pays you to practice. Mastering the piano requires thousands of hours of solitary practice and sacrifice. And even if you're exceptional, you need luck to win the notoriety needed to earn a decent living.

So root for these two young women, and please help me get word out about this recital. And certainly try to attend if you can.

What: Piano recital by Abrianna Church and Angelina Mitrianu

Where: Northlake Baptist Church, 2614 Ocean Beach Highway, Longview

When: 4:30p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4; doors open at 4 p.m.

Admission: Free-will offering to help Abrianna and Angelina pursue their piano studies.

Abrianna Church and Angelina Mitrianu, young classical pianists who dazzled a Longview audience in a joint recital a year ago, will bring their talent and charm to town again on Sunday, Aug. 4.

Church, 25, has performed in Longview six times previously. Sunday’s appearance will be the second local performance for Mitrianu, 16, of Vancouver. She and her family fled Ukraine at the outset of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Church’s connection to the area is through her friendship with the late Longview piano teacher Martin Kauble, who died suddenly in 2022. He was not her teacher but brought her to the community to showcase her talent.

One of Church’s previous local performances — dedicated exclusively to the works of Franz Liszt — was especially memorable for its virtuosity and musicality.

The Idaho native met Mitrianu through a benefit concert for Ukraine in Portland last year. She asked Mitrianu to join her in the scheduled Longview recital the following weekend.

That recital — a homage to Kauble — won glowing praise for both the quality of the performance and the variety of the music.

Like that recital, this year’s performance will take place at Northlake Baptist Church, starting at 4:30 p.m. There is no charge, but free-will offerings will be accepted to help Church and Mitrianu continue pursuing their studies.

Church and Mitrianu will play works by Johann Sebastian Bach, four etudes by Frederic Chopin, the famous “Pathetique” Sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy’s “Reflets dans l’eau” (Reflections on the water) and works by Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin.

The recital also will include a etude by the Ukrainian composer and pianist Victor Kosenko (1896-1938) . His work continues the 19th-Century Romantic style while mixing in slavic folk songs.

Church has performed recitals featuring such demanding pieces as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor.

Church began her musical studies at age six. In 2022, she graduated from The Master’s University, a Christian liberal arts school located just north of Los Angeles. She has won several piano competitions, including an honorable mention at the 2021 Los Angeles International Liszt Competition.

These days she has returned to Idaho, where she is concentrating on teaching, judging other piano competitions and figuring out how to advance her career while paying student debt.

Deeply religious, Church sees her work as a means to glorify God and “do all the good I can do for fellow man.” She has collaborated with other musicians to set biblical scripture to music, including setting Matthew’s gospel account of the birth of Christ to music.

Mitrianu was born in 2008 in Donetsk, Ukraine, and has studied the piano since she was six. At the age of 8, she won first place in the International Competition in Italy.

She performed with an orchestra the first time when she was 9., and she won the Grand-Prix award uin the all-Ukrainian competition “Voice of the country."

She also participated in a TV show for talented kids (“The coolest”) in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. She has participated in more than 50 piano competitions in Ukraine and Europe.

Mitrianu says she loves sharing music because it brings audiences peace and hope, beauty and joy, inspiration and courage.