Chopin: Sonata in B-flat Minor, Op. 35
Grieg: Sonata in E Minor, Op. 7
Debussy: Suite Bergamasque
Chopin: Twelve Etudes, Op. 10
Antonio Pompa-Baldi is an award-winning concert pianist and professor of music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1999 he won the Cleveland International Piano Competition, and in 2001 received the silver medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist and has recorded 15 CDs featuring music of Josef Rheinberger, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, and Hummel.
Angel Ramón Rivera, lecturer
2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Alexander Scriabin's death. One of the most daring composers on the early twentieth century, Scriabin developed in a fertile context in which he was exposed to much piano music, in particular that of Chopin. It is not coincidental that every piano piece he wrote in the first half of his brief existence paid homage to Chopin - be it by explicit references in the titles he chose for his pieces, which are clear evocations of forms Chopin himself preferred, to the obvious references in the tonal scheme he followed in the Twenty-four Preludes, Op. 11, which mirror Chopin's own Twenty-Four Preludes, Op. 28.
Pianist and pedagogue Angel Ramón Rivera illustrates the genius and peculiarities of Scriabin's early years, accompanied by the young artists of The Chopin Institute in performances of etudes, preludes, waltzes, mazurkas, polonaises, nocturnes, and impromptus.
Mike Lee, lecturer
Acclaimed fortepianist and scholar Mike Lee brings to light the relation between Mozart’s musical language and the expressive capacities of the kinds of (historical) instruments that were at his disposal. Beginning with the notion of musical topics that is foundational to Mozart’s musical style, Mr. Lee suggests that their successful communication depends on the actual shaping of the “surface” features of music in performance, such as articulation, rhythm, timbre, and gesture. In the context of Mozart’s musical language (and late 18th-century musical style more generally), such surface features relate intimately to the instrumental capacities of the time.
After a brief comparison of the contrasting technical and expressive features of Mozart’s late eighteenth-century Viennese fortepiano (a copy of Mozart’s Walter piano will be featured at this presentation) and the modern Steinway, Mike Lee then shows how Mozart ingeniously deploys his (sometimes seemingly restrictive) instrumental resources to create an endless array of dramatic scenarios between the solo pianist (often featuring himself) and the orchestra in select excerpts from his piano concerti.
Roberto Poli, lecturer
After a long journey from Vienna, filled with hope and provided with letters of introduction to some of Paris’s most significant musical figures, Chopin arrived in the French capital on October 5, 1831. In the eighteen years he spent in Paris, he changed address nine times.
Pianist and scholar Roberto Poli traces Chopin's life in the Paris of the 1830s and '40s in a photographic narration of the places that characterized the composer's life - from the wondrous views of the city he admired from the balcony of his first apartment on Boulevard Poissonière to the last painful days at his last home on Place Vendôme.
featuring the artists of The Chopin Institute
Antonio Pompa-Baldi, teacher
With a terrific roster of pianists, CHOPIN AND HIS WORLD celebrates the music that Chopin enjoyed playing in duo with his friends and students - not only the works of his adored Mozart, but also Schubert and Moscheles, whose music he played in public several times with Liszt and Moscheles himself.
This concert also underscores how the composers' timelines intertwined: Chopin was fourteen years old when Schubert wrote the Divertissement Hongroise - a favorite of Chopin’s; Liszt penned his well-known Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 as Chopin had to endure the tragic break-up with George Sand; and Schumann wrote his pieces, Op. 85 in October 1849, just as Chopin exhaled his last breath. The young artists of The Chopin Institute join forces with the guest artists of The Chopin Symposium in solo, four-hand, and two-piano works.
WORKS FOR TWO PIANOS / FOUR HANDS:
Mozart: Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos, K.448, I. Allegro (1782)
Schubert: Divertissement Hongroise for Piano Four Hands, D 818, III. Allegretto (1824)
Mozart: Sonata in F Major for Piano Four Hands, K.497, I. Adagio-Allegro (1786)
Schumann: Ballszenen, Op. 109, II. Polonaise; VI. Mazurka (1849-51)
Mozart: Adagio and Allegro in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, K.594 (1790)
Schumann: Selections from Twelve pieces for Piano Four Hands for small and big children, (1849)
Moscheles: Grand Sonata in E-flat Major for Piano Four Hands, Op. 47 (1819)
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp Minor (transcription by Richard Kleinmichel, 1886)
SOLO WORKS:
Chopin: Scherzo in B Minor, Op. 20 | Ya-Fei Chuang, piano
Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Op 102 (1845), IV. Un poco agitato, ma andante
Schumann: Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26 (1836), IV. Intermezzo
Chopin: Mazurka in F Minor, Op. 63, No. 2 (1846)
Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 (1845-46)
Gila Goldstein, piano
Halina Goldberg, lecturer
As listeners of Chopin’s music, we vacillate between embracing the elusiveness of meaning in his compositions and seeking narrative specificity. Outwardly, we follow Chopin in rejecting explicit programs for his works; at the same time, as teachers we often resort to verbal cues to describe the music, and as performers we envision specific imagery or progressions of certain emotional states that help us convey the dramatic trajectory of a piece to our audience. Likewise, there is no dearth of scholarly and literary prose (and poetry) that seeks to ”explain” Chopin’s music.
Chopin scholar Halina Goldberg's goal is not to provide some clandestine programs for Chopin’s compositions, but rather to offer a glimpse into the world of middlebrow descriptive piano genres that were familiar to Chopin and his audiences but have been lost to us. In her lecture, Ms. Goldberg will discuss topical gestures, patriotic tunes, and narrative strategies that were used in these pieces. Her presentation will provide a context in which we can better understand how Chopin constructed his musical narratives and communicated them to his listeners.
The life, career, death, and letters of Fryderyk Chopin - an in depth look of the man, pianist, and composer
David Dubal, lecturer
A composer of matchless genius, from his youth in Warsaw to his arrival in Paris to his turbulent relationship with George Sand, Chopin's existence was punctuated by a lively correspondence with friends, family members, students, and publishers.
Pianist David Dubal brings us on a journey through the most salient episodes of Chopin's life, narrated through letters, accounts, reminiscences, and the music that forever changed the history of piano.
Beethoven: String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29, ” Storm,” I. Allegro moderato
Aria for mezzo-soprano TBA
Aria for soprano TBA
Rossini: Duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano “Perche’ mi guardi” from the opera Zelmira
Chopin: Concerto in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 21, I. Allegro maestoso
(with Chopin’s original accompaniment of string quartet)
Kalkbrenner: Introduction, March interrupted by a Storm and followed by a Polonaise for six pianos
(transcribed for two pianos, eight hands by Roberto Poli)
Solo for oboe TBA
Chopin: Variations on Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano” for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 2
(transcription for piano and string quartet by Roberto Poli)