Stephen Beus is one of today’s most compelling interpreters of the music of Nikolai Medtner. He has a particular affinity for Medtner’s deeply philosophical and technically demanding works, championing a composer whose genius is only now receiving the wider recognition it deserves. He approaches Medtner with a rare combination of intellectual clarity, poetic imagination, and formidable virtuosity. Rather than treating the music as an exercise in complexity, he reveals its remarkable lyricism, architectural coherence, and emotional depth.
Medtner (1880–1951) wrote for the piano in a language that asks for both extraordinary technical command and deep intellectual engagement: Russian Romantic expressiveness, complex contrapuntal textures, poetic intimacy, large-scale architectural thinking, and a virtuosity that never settles for display. Those are precisely the qualities that define Beus at the keyboard — powerful technique, refined tonal control, and the ability to reveal the inner logic of difficult repertoire.
Medtner called many of his shorter works “Forgotten Melodies”, a title that reflects his belief that music holds timeless ideas waiting to be rediscovered. His sonatas, his Skazki — the Fairy Tales — his concert études and his concertos all ask the performer to balance complexity with spontaneity. For Beus, this is repertoire in which virtuosity serves expression, and in which every voice, every harmonic turn and every rhythmic detail belongs to a larger emotional narrative.
A Beus–Medtner program draws a line between three worlds: the Russian piano tradition of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, the intellectual rigour of Brahms, and the poetic imagination of Schumann. Beus is an ideal interpreter of this music because he brings the rare combination it demands — virtuosity, architectural intelligence, and the ability to turn complexity into poetry. Medtner was admired in his own lifetime by musicians as exacting as Rachmaninoff, and this evening is an invitation to hear why.
"Spectacular... it was like he had placed the orchestra in the middle of a gigantic centrifuge and pushed start.”
-Copenhagen Post
“Strikingly original... an interpretive voice all his own” (Fanfare Magazine). In the space of four months, American pianist Stephen Beus won first prize in the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, first place in the Vendome Prize International Competition (Lisbon) and he was awarded the Max I. Allen Fellowship of the American Pianists Association (Indianapolis).
As a result of winning the Juilliard School Concerto Competition Mr. Beus made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra and James DePreist, playing Prokofiev Concerto No. 3. He has also performed as guest soloist with the Gulbenkian Symphony (Lisbon), Oxford Philomusica, the Tivoli Symphony (Copenhagen), the Tbilisi National Opera Orchestra, the Northwest Sinfonietta (Seattle), the Royal Philharmonic of Morocco (Casablanca), the Vaasa Symphony Orchestra (Finland) as well as with the Hamburg, Indianapolis, Nashville, Santa Fe, Utah, Fort Worth, Tucson, Yakima, Bellevue, Salt Lake, Eastern Sierra, Corvallis, Jacksonville, Texarkana and Walla Walla Symphonies.
Equally active as a soloist, Mr. Beus has performed at Wigmore Hall, the Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot (Paris), Merkin Hall, the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Central Conservatory (Beijing), Teatro San Carlo (Naples), Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), the Queluz Palace (Lisbon) and has performed for the Dame Myra Hess and Fazioli Salon series (Chicago), the International Keyboard Institute and Festival (New York City), and has given recitals across the United States as well as in Kazakhstan, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Georgia, China, France, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Morocco.
Born and raised on a farm in eastern Washington, Mr. Beus began lessons at age 5 and made his orchestral debut four years later. He went on to win numerous national and international competitions throughout his youth, capturing the attention of both audiences and critics.
Mr. Beus holds degrees from Whitman College, The Juilliard School, and Stony Brook University, and his teachers have included Leonard Richter, Robert McDonald, Gilbert Kalish, Christina Dahl, and Paulette Richards. He has recorded on the Endeavor Classics, Harmonia Mundi, and Centaur Records labels. Stephen Beus is a Steinway Artist and currently teaches at Brigham Young University.
