PRESS
As Composer
“Berkowitz's
virtuoso Concerto,
for bass trombone and chamber ensemble, creates a stark,
dramatic
atmosphere by way of transparent instrumental textures. The technical facility,
agility,
wide tessitura, and ability to express and
shape melodic lines requires the soloist to expand
the
traditional expectations and language of more familiar brass solo literature.
The
Concerto by Berkowitz is one of the most original, challenging, and worthy
vehicles
I have recently heard for bass trombone.”
founder
and first president of the International Trombone Association, bass
trombonist,
and author of The Annotated Guide to Trombone Literature
As Pianist
Soloists Shine at Mozart's Birthday Recital
”The group of soloists all played admirably....But pianist and composer
Aaron L. Berkowitz,
a second year student at the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was the clear standout.
His performance of the
Adagio movement from Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 23” was novel
in all the best ways.
Foregoing the sumptuous melodic slush favored by many pianists who
look for any available
opportunity to jerk Romantic tears from a sympathetic audience,
Berkowitz crafted lines that
were detached, but wrenchingly so. Playing like the person who
learns of the death of a
loved one and does not know how to tell the rest of the family,
his performance was
intensely moving.”
Swan Songs
“One of the more exciting
classical events of the summer recently took place before an audience of not
more than eighty,an intimate gathering recalling the private concerts
of Biedermeier Vienna. The young
baritone Richard Giarusso and fortepianist Aaron
Berkowitz, both graduate students in musicology at Harvard
performed Schubert’s last
song cycle, Schwanengesang, at G. J. Askins’ antiquarian bookshop in the Eclipse Mill
in North Adams, a recital
organized by Williamstown Early Music. Mr. Giarusso
has been growing familiar in North
County as a conductor. His
recent performance of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion won high praise, and he has
conducted
individual acts from Mozart
operas for the New Opera. The no less extraordinary Mr. Berkowitz brings his
composer’s
insight and broad experience
with historical instruments. A third contributor to the evening’s resounding
success
was Rodney Regier, the distinguished maker of historical keyboard
instruments, who contributed his replica of
Viennese fortepiano of the
1820’s.
Voice, instrument, and pianist, three-quarters surrounded by the capacity
audience, as Schubert and his fellow musicians
would have been at his own “Schubertiads,” were perfectly balanced in the long, narrow
industrial space of wood, concrete,
brick, and glass,
well-damped by Mr. Askins’ books. There was no need
to make allowances for acoustics....
....musically convincing .....worked marvelously in “Taubenpost,”
a fascinating interplay of declamatory caesurae and musical flow,
so sensitively executed by
Mr. Berkowitz.”