The pianist and Composer Leonora Milà was born in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona, 1942) in a family with a strong bonding with music, as her father, Josep Milà, was an outstanding cellist of the Pau Casals Orchestra and, as well, of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Orchestra in Barcelona. As a pupil of the pedagogue Maria Canals, Leonora Milà was considered a “child prodigy” after giving two concerts in 1949 at the Palau de la Música Catalana, where she performed, at the age of only six years, own works and W. A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto KV 488 with the Barcelona Orchestra.
The Catalan artist’s international career began at age twelve, when she performed in a London BBC program, playing works for piano by Enric Granados and Manuel de Falla. This performance opened her the doors of the British capital, to which she returned a year later, in 1955, for a performance at the Royal Albert Hall with Noches en los Jardines de España, by the composer Manuel de Falla, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the conduction of Rudolph Dunbar.
As a winner of the Concurs Internacional d’Execució Musical Maria Canals (Barcelona) 1996 and finalist of the Concorso Internazionale di Musica G. B. Viotti (Vercelli, Italy), Leonora Milà has combined the composing and the performing aspect along her professional career. Extensive tours throughout Europe, the USA and Asia made her become the first Spanish artist who performed in the Republic of China (1979), where she recorded a disk with the China National Symphony Orchestra (1988), as well as the first composer who premiered a ballet in St. Petersburg. It’s about Tirant lo Blanc, a novel about knights and knighthood written by Joanot Martorell in the XVth century, which Leonorà Milà set to music and the Russian dancer and choreographer Iuri Petukhov choreographed to a ballet with two hours of duration. For this work, Milà won the Premi Internacional de la Cultura Catalana [International Prize for Catalan Culture] that she was awarded in Valencia in 1995. Subsequently, Tirant lo Blanc was premiered at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in 1996, with the St. Petersburg State Ballet. The cinema director Antoni Ribas was in charge of filming this ballet, which was broadcasted on Spanish television and edited as a DVD for its commercialization.
Leonora Milà’s three concerts for piano and orchestra, the successful piano habaneras CD, the songs for voice and piano on texts by poets such as J. W. von Goethe, Salvador Espriu and Joan Maragall, and two short ballets called Pintor Lee and Drame a Trois, recorded by the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra of Mussorgsky Theatre excel amongst this artist’s extensive oeuvre, that includes more than a hundred compositions.
Leonora Milà has more than thirty published CDs, both in recital and with internationally renowned orchestras, with a repertoire based on works by great European composers such as Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Her version of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier by J. S. Bach is outstanding and has been considered as a referee by the critics. Her performances of the works by the classical Spanish composers Manuel de Falla, Enric Granados, Isaac Albéniz and Joaquín Turina received the unanimous acknowledgement of the audience. The works by Leonora Milà are published and distributed by International Music Company, New York, amongst others.
www.leonoramila.com