Barry Douglas: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

June 3, 2016 by TOM HUIZENGA • Barry Douglas knows a few things about handing down traditions. In this Tiny Desk performance, he passes along the musical heritage of his Irish homeland in the form of old Celtic songs he’s arranged for solo piano. Douglas has also been on the receiving end of tradition. If you set up a kind of for pianists, Douglas could claim a pretty impressive pedigree. One of his teachers, Felicitas LeWinter, studied with a pupil of Franz Liszt. Another of his tutors, Maria Curcio, was taught by Artur Schnabel, whose teacher’s teacher was a man named Beethoven. All that training helped Douglas take home the gold medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Douglas starts with the oldest of the songs, “The Coolin,“ which in its original language (An Chúileann) translates to “The Fair-Haired Girl.“ The lyric can be traced back to about 1641, while the melody itself, some argue, is even older. He dresses the tune in Baroque trills and a theme and var