As it turns out, Inna Faliks’ television debut was also a debut for Marc Vitali, segment producer for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. As Vitali reports on Artbeat: Inside the Arts Blog: “In 1994, Inna was one of the stars of WTTW’s annual program, The Illinois Young Performers Competition. At the age of 15, she performed Tchaikovsky with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. … [T]hat story was the first story I ever did that made it to air.”
Inna was 15 at the time of the segment, as Vitali says, “a teenager brimming with talent and charm,” whose playing developed into the artist and teacher we know today. Vitali calls her a “concert pianist of the highest order” whose playing “can be as dramatic or as subtle as a great stage actor.”
Read the complete post (and view a video of teenage Inna) here. And taking Vitali’s tip, “if you want to hear the piano played with power and grace, Faliks has just released a new recording of Beethoven masterworks on the MSR Classics label.”