St. Mary’s College of Maryland musician-in-residence Brian Ganz will continue the 2014-15 Arthur and Alice Fleury Zamanakos free noon concert season on Tuesday, Nov. 4, in the Auerbach Auditorium, St. Mary’s Hall, with a program entitled “Beethoven in Ecstasy: Sonata in E major, Op. 109.” The program resumes his popular “PianoTalk” series and features a behind-the-scenes exploration of Beethoven’s late masterpiece, followed by a full performance of the work. For more information, call (240) 895-4498 or visit the Music Department’s website at www.smcm.edu/music/concert_schedule. The program is free and open to the public. St. Mary’s College is located at 18952 E. Fisher Road, St. Mary’s City, Md. 20686.
“We often associate Beethoven with the music of his middle period, the so-called ‘heroic,'” said Ganz. “There is so much more to Beethoven than ‘Sturm und Drang.’ This sonata shows Beethoven reaching for an experience of utterly transcendent beauty, a kind of ecstasy in sound. Just listening to it can be a transformative experience. With this PianoTalk, I hope to give listeners a sense of how Beethoven achieves that.”
Ganz has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Baltimore and the National Symphonies, the City of London Sinfonia, and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo. He has performed in many of the world’s major concert halls and has played under the baton of such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Jerzy Semkow and Yoel Levi. A critic for La Libre Belgique wrote of Ganz’s work: “We don’t have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy.”