Blaise Bryski to give two concerts celebrating the music of Clementi

Blaise Bryski

The Department of Music resumes its daytime concert series, "Midday Music at Lincoln," today, Jan. 30, from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m. in the Neylan Rehearsal Hall, B-20 Lincoln Hall. Each Thursday throughout the semester (except during spring break), Cornell faculty and students will present free, informal chamber music concerts. Cornell doctoral candidate and fortepianist Blaise Bryski kicks off the schedule with works by Italian-born composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). Other concert highlights include fortepiano performances by Augustus Arnone (Feb. 6) and Malcolm Bilson (April 10); two-piano works by David Borden (Feb. 20); jazz with the Paul Merrill Quartet (March 27); and vocal programs by guest artist Felicia Lipson (Feb. 13) and soprano Judith Kellock (April 17).

Bryski also will perform four piano sonatas by Clementi on Feb. 3 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. This year marks the 250th anniversary of Clementi's birth, and many organizations and artists are marking the occasion with special events. Prior to his Feb. 3 concert, Bryski will travel with the Broadwood fortepiano to the City University of New York for a "Clementi Keyboard Extravaganza," a one-day celebration featuring a concert, lecture and panel discussion. Bryski is one of 12 pianists invited to perform.

In 1766 Englishman Peter Beckford heard Clementi play and paid Clementi's father to allow him to take the boy to his English country estate for intensive musical studies and to serve as his house musician. He stayed there for seven years, taking advantage of the relatively isolated Dorsetshire setting, practicing harpsichord and producing his first compositions. Clementi then moved to London and began concertizing and publishing his works. In 1780 he began a concerto tour that included Paris (where he allegedly played for Marie Antoinette) and Vienna, where he engaged in the famous keyboard contest with Mozart in 1781.

Those who took piano lessons while young may remember Clementi's Sonatinas, but his musical legacy also includes more than 100 piano sonatas, many works for four-hand piano, two completed symphonies, four incomplete symphonies, the Piano Concerto in C and many smaller works for piano.

For information on the music department's concerts, visit the Web site: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/music/concerts.html.