Music offerings showcase works of many of classical music's greats

The works of Bach, Hayden, Beethoven, Mozart and other classical music greats will be heard this week at three free programs sponsored by the Department of Music.

Annette Richards, university organist and assistant professor of music, will present a concert in Sage Chapel Friday, Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. This program explores the influence in 19th century Germany of the great organist-composers of the German Baroque, Dietrich Buxtehude and J.S. Bach.

Richards will be joined by the Cornell Chamber Singers, directed by Vineet Shende. The vocal ensemble will perform a motet by Johannes Brahms in the first half and one by Felix Mendelssohn in the second half of the program.

Richards will perform works by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bach, Buxtehude and Liszt.

The London-born Richards, educated at Oxford University and Stanford University, is a specialist in music of Italian and North German Baroque. She has won prizes at international festivals and competitions, including the 1986 Oundle International Organ Festival and the 1992 Dublin International Organ Competition. Her scholarly achievements have been no less impressive; she was the Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center in 1993/1994, and last year was a fellow at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica, Calif.

Cornell visiting fellow Daniel Kim, a third-year graduate student at Harvard University, will present a violin recital Sunday, Feb. 22, at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Kim, a visiting fellow in the physics department, will perform the music of Dvorak, Bach, Brahms and Prokofiev. Kim studies violin with Linda Case, concertmaster of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, and chamber music with Professor John Hsu. He will be accompanied by pianist Victor Kam, a first-year physics major who is studying piano with Xak Bjerken.

Fortepianist Malcolm Bilson will perform works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Bilson, the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music, recently released a 10-CD set of all the Beethoven Piano Sonatas performed on period instruments.