“It all started”, Agustin Anievas reflected thoughtfully, “just after my third birthday . . . There was a musical evening at my parent’s home, and I awoke that night, asking my mother, Why is Chopin’s music so sad?  My mother, a piano teacher was quick to start my piano studies, and by the time I was four, I played my first recital, as one of her students.”  

“As a young boy, my New York education was augmented by my piano studies, but I somehow managed to find a handball or stickball game whenever I had to run an errand (I think my mother sent me intentionally, instead of allowing me play time), and when I was twelve, she and I spent some months in Mexico, where I played in many cities, and was the first child ever invited to give a recital at the Palace of Fine Arts, based on the recommendation of Mexico’s pre eminent musicians, Carlos Chavez and Manuel Ponce.  I was seventeen when I won The Little Orchestra Society Competition in New York, which afforded me with my first New York Appearance with Orchestra at Town Hall.

Of Mexican and Spanish descent, and a graduate of the Juillard School, where his teacher and mentor was Adele Marcus, Mr. Anievas went on to garner many prizes as a young artist, including the Chicago Michaels Award, the 1959 Concert Artist Guild, and is much admired and regarded as the First Winner of the Dimitri Mitropoulous Competition. 

He has frequently appeared in New York’s concert venues, and his orchestral appearances encompass the rich gamut of the musical life in the United States, and all around the world.  His discography includes Angel and EMI recordings of Schubert, Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms, as well as the recently reissued centennial recordings of all the Rachmaninoff Concertos and Preludes.    

He has frequently appeared in New York’s concert venues, and his orchestral appearances encompass the rich gamut of the musical life in the United States, and all around the world.  His discography includes Angel and EMI recordings of Schubert, Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms, as well as the recently reissued centennial recordings of all the Rachmaninoff Concertos and Preludes.    

In addition to an active performing career, Mr. Anievas served as Professor of Music and chairman of the piano department at New York’s Brooklin College Conservatory of Music, and retired in 2000 from teaching to address the personal and musical issues of performance in today’s musical world.

“Getting older”, Mr. Anievas says, “Gives me the advantage of a new perspective and a deeper insight into my feelings as a musician.  The bravura, virtuosity, and intensity of my earlier playing has evolved into a more mature introspective approach to music, with greater attention to melody’s detail and nuance . . . Rather than ‘Bring the House Down’, I like to hear the silence of an audience truly appreciating the beautiful turn of a phrase”.