Cornell's Department of Music presents two concerts in Barnes Hall this weekend. The first, on Saturday, Sept. 11, at 8 p.m., features conductor Edward Murray, associate professor of music at Cornell, along with guest performers Patrice Pastore, a vocalist from Ithaca College's School of Music, and pianist Michael Salmirs, on the faculty at Syracuse University and the University of Binghamton. They will be joined by an instrumental ensemble and the Cayuga Vocal Ensemble (CVE), a community group.
The concert features music by Carlo Gesualdo, Luigi Dallapiccola, Edward Cohen and Andrew Imbrie. Gesualdo, a Renaissance composer, and Dallapiccola, a 20th-century master, may seem an unlikely pairing, but both composers are passionate Italians with an intense lyrical style and fondness for highly colored chromatic writing. The piece by Cohen sets to music the poem The Otter by England's poet laureate, Ted Hughes, and will be performed by the male voices of CVE supported by a chamber ensemble of six instruments. Salmirs will round out the performance with Imbrie's Short Story, considered one of the major piano works of the last few decades.
The concert received partial funding from the Cornell Council on the Arts.
On Sunday, Sept. 12, also at 8 p.m., fortepianist Malcolm Bilson and soprano Judith Kellock, Cornell Department of Music faculty members, will present a program of Schumann's "lieder" by and piano sonatas by Schubert. Bilson will open the concert with Schubert's Sonata in E Major, D. 459, followed by the composer's Sonata in F-sharp Minor, D. 571, and will close with the Sonata in C Major, D. 279. In the program's second half, Judith Kellock will sing Schumann's Liederkreis, op. 39, in which the composer set to music some of the poems of Joseph Eichendorff.
Bilson's recent activities include concerts in Seattle, Budapest and Hong Kong. He continues his series of the complete Schubert Piano Sonatas for Hungaroton Records. The latest disc includes the "incomplete" sonatas being premiered on this program.
This summer, Kellock performed the music of contemporary composer Peter Schat in Amsterdam. In October she will travel to Milwaukee to record all the vocal chamber music of Cornell Department of Music faculty member Roberto Sierra.
Concerts are free and open to the public. For information and tickets, call 255-5144 or visit the department's web site: www.arts.cornell.edu/music/concerts.html.
| Cornell Chronicle Front Page | | Table of Contents | | Cornell News Service Home Page |