ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. – St. Mary’s College of MD Musician-in-Residence Brian Ganz will offer a free PianoTalk at the college on Tuesday, March 10 at 11:20am. The program is entitled “Chopin’s Lullaby,” and will take place in the Recital Hall of the Dodge Performing Arts Center on the college campus. Ganz will discuss and perform Chopin’s Berceuse (French for “Lullaby”), Op. 57. For more information call (240) 895-4498.
“Many people do not even know that Chopin composed a lullaby,” pianist Ganz said. “We all know how rapturously beautiful the composer’s nocturnes can be, the way they capture the magic and serenity of nighttime. Well, his Berceuse goes a step further, and evokes that delicious moment when we let go of consciousness and drift peacefully into sleep.” The French word Berceuse literally means ‘cradle-song’, and Chopin’s Berceuse is his only work in that genre. “In this PianoTalk we will gaze deeply into the structure of this enchanting work, which is actually a kind of theme and variations,” pianist Ganz continued. “How does Chopin take a simple melody of about 20 notes and decorate and re-decorate it so that in its most ornate variation, there are 140 notes where before there were only 20? This is among many questions we will explore in this PianoTalk.”
Ganz will offer future PianoTalks at the college on March 31 and April 15. The March programs will take place at 11:20am, but the April 15 PianoTalk will be an evening program, at 8pm.
All PianoTalks will be held in the Recital Hall of the Dodge Performing Arts Center. Ganz’s only full length recital of the semester will take place on April 2 at 7pm in the Center’s main Concert Hall. All of Ganz’s programs at the college are offered free of charge.
Ganzis on a questto perform all of Fryderyk Chopin’s 240 works that he began in 2011. The final concert in the series will take place at Strathmore Hall in Bethesda, April 11 at 7:30 pm. “Chopin’s music is the language of my soul, and I have dreamed since childhood of someday performing all of his works,” said Ganz, who is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. He is expected to be the first to perform every piece of music Chopin ever wrote.
Ganz has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National 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.”