Julius Schmidt was born in 1975 and grew up in Mount Prospect, Illinois, U.S.A, a suburb of Chicago.
Beginning lessons on the piano at age three, Julius Schmidt's life has been a life of music. He played violin for many years both as a solo instrument playing concertos of Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, and more, as well and as in chamber music, and also performing in many different youth orchestras. For several years he also played viola, and for many years played clarinet in an orchestra, in several school bands, and in chamber music including the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas, as well as a solo instrument playing the Mozart and Weber concertos.
Yet his main instrument and his greatest love was always the piano. He was performing, under his first teacher, Haydn and Mozart Sonatas by the age of nine, and Beethoven sonatas by twelve, followed quickly by Bach, a Mozart Concerto, Chopin, and much more. His second teacher introduced him to Mendelssohn and Scarlatti, and taught him how better to play the music behind the notes, being greater and deeper than merely the notes themselves.
He has since put much effort into the study of piano, delving away from the Modern School of playing. His in depth study of the book "The Great Pianists" by Harold C Schonberg, and his subsequent search and study of older recordings led him towards what has been described as a far superior style of playing than is to be found amongst the pianistic norm.
His love of pianistic improvisation goes back as far as his earliest memories. He has always been improvising, though for most of his life only in the privacy of his home, or for his closest family. In the summer of 2006, when he was by a piano with nearby recording media (a Fostex mr-8 with internal mono microphone) he was enthused to try recording several sittings of improvisations for his own listening, but after some exposure of these recordings to some friends and acquaintances, he was smitten by the great impression that they had, and so encouraged recorded a second set of Improvisations at the same piano (This time using a much higher quality stereo microphone) during the months of December 2007 and January 2008. These were much more successful, and they have been greeted with great enthusiasm. His recordings have spread from England and Scotland, to South Africa and the U.S.A. and Canada and more. It was mainly the success and popularity of these recordings that has encouraged him to start a web site.
His attempts at musical composition began at the age of sixteen, and were very hard for him. He found it very difficult to take his ability at improvisation and subjugate it to the rigors and demands of regular composition. He persevered and slowly improved. Then, at the age of twenty-six, while trying hard to solve several problems with compositional form as he had been taught it, he came across the book "The Classical Style" by Charles Rosen, which opened up his eyes to the very problems he was then dealing with, and after much thought, study, and application, completely rewrote his entire compositional style and form, and created something altogether different and greater. Since then he has been busy refining and using the results of his experimentations, and growing in his compositional prowess, resulting in a Piano Sonata and Piano Trio, and he is currently working on a Piano Quartet.
All of this work put into composition, plus myriad other pursuits of necessity and interest, have seriously hampered his time and energy for practice, plus the inexperience and nervousness in recording have combined to make the recordings here of less than perfect execution technically. Though, he has been oft told that his listeners would much prefer his playing, with technical mistakes, to others playing without technical mistakes. It is the encouragement and love of his interpretations received from many others that have brought him to offer some of his recordings of the works of the masters here in this site.
These recordings came from the desire to have access to his interpretations, vastly differing from other accounts available, and thus he was encouraged in a sitting during the summer of 2004 to record them. He was shown much positive admiration and love of these recordings, and thus, in the same sittings in 2006 that made the first set of improvisations mentioned above, also made a second set of recordings of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Clementi. His time being short, and the recordings being unprepared, he was forced to record only works that he had been familiar with for many years, and that did not pose the necessary technical brilliance that required much practice, of which he was sorely lacking. His apologies are extended for this inconvenience, yet he is only submitting these works before the public's ear from that great positive response and desire of all those who have heard them. He hopes the listener can hear through the lacks found in these recordings to hear the uniqueness and depth found within them.
Julius B Schmidt
Biography
Julius Schmidt was born in 1975 and grew up in Mount Prospect, Illinois, U.S.A, a suburb of Chicago.
Beginning lessons on the piano at age three, Julius Schmidt's life has been a life of music. He played violin for many years both as a solo instrument playing concertos of Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, and more, as well and as in chamber music, and also performing in many different youth orchestras. For several years he also played viola, and for many years played clarinet in an orchestra, in several school bands, and in chamber music including the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas, as well as a solo instrument playing the Mozart and Weber concertos.
Yet his main instrument and his greatest love was always the piano. He was performing, under his first teacher, Haydn and Mozart Sonatas by the age of nine, and Beethoven sonatas by twelve, followed quickly by Bach, a Mozart Concerto, Chopin, and much more. His second teacher introduced him to Mendelssohn and Scarlatti, and taught him how better to play the music behind the notes, being greater and deeper than merely the notes themselves.
He has since put much effort into the study of piano, delving away from the Modern School of playing. His in depth study of the book "The Great Pianists" by Harold C Schonberg, and his subsequent search and study of older recordings led him towards what has been described as a far superior style of playing than is to be found amongst the pianistic norm.
His love of pianistic improvisation goes back as far as his earliest memories. He has always been improvising, though for most of his life only in the privacy of his home, or for his closest family. In the summer of 2006, when he was by a piano with nearby recording media (a Fostex mr-8 with internal mono microphone) he was enthused to try recording several sittings of improvisations for his own listening, but after some exposure of these recordings to some friends and acquaintances, he was smitten by the great impression that they had, and so encouraged recorded a second set of Improvisations at the same piano (This time using a much higher quality stereo microphone) during the months of December 2007 and January 2008. These were much more successful, and they have been greeted with great enthusiasm. His recordings have spread from England and Scotland, to South Africa and the U.S.A. and Canada and more. It was mainly the success and popularity of these recordings that has encouraged him to start a web site.
His attempts at musical composition began at the age of sixteen, and were very hard for him. He found it very difficult to take his ability at improvisation and subjugate it to the rigors and demands of regular composition. He persevered and slowly improved. Then, at the age of twenty-six, while trying hard to solve several problems with compositional form as he had been taught it, he came across the book "The Classical Style" by Charles Rosen, which opened up his eyes to the very problems he was then dealing with, and after much thought, study, and application, completely rewrote his entire compositional style and form, and created something altogether different and greater. Since then he has been busy refining and using the results of his experimentations, and growing in his compositional prowess, resulting in a Piano Sonata and Piano Trio, and he is currently working on a Piano Quartet.
All of this work put into composition, plus myriad other pursuits of necessity and interest, have seriously hampered his time and energy for practice, plus the inexperience and nervousness in recording have combined to make the recordings here of less than perfect execution technically. Though, he has been oft told that his listeners would much prefer his playing, with technical mistakes, to others playing without technical mistakes. It is the encouragement and love of his interpretations received from many others that have brought him to offer some of his recordings of the works of the masters here in this site.
These recordings came from the desire to have access to his interpretations, vastly differing from other accounts available, and thus he was encouraged in a sitting during the summer of 2004 to record them. He was shown much positive admiration and love of these recordings, and thus, in the same sittings in 2006 that made the first set of improvisations mentioned above, also made a second set of recordings of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Clementi. His time being short, and the recordings being unprepared, he was forced to record only works that he had been familiar with for many years, and that did not pose the necessary technical brilliance that required much practice, of which he was sorely lacking. His apologies are extended for this inconvenience, yet he is only submitting these works before the public's ear from that great positive response and desire of all those who have heard them. He hopes the listener can hear through the lacks found in these recordings to hear the uniqueness and depth found within them.
(from jbsmusic.net)