Happy 250th birthday, Wolfgang! Happy 100th, Dmitri! Three Monday evening chamber music performances by Ithaca College faculty will celebrate the 2006 milestone birthdays of those two great composers. The concerts will take place at 7:00 p.m. on September 11, 18, and 25 in the Hockett Family Recital Hall in the Whalen Center. They are free and open to the public.
“There is a double intent behind the organization of this three-concert event,” says pianist Charis Dimaras, associate professor of music performance and artistic coordinator of the series. “The first is to celebrate the birthdays of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Dmitri Shostakovich. We also wanted to take works of these great composers that are not customarily associated with each other and put them side to side.”
The focal point of the three concerts, Dimaras adds, is the presentation of Shostakovich’s three famous string sonatas with piano.
“Around them, however, we are also programming several other important works of these two musical giants. Some are quite well known while others are rarely heard in concert.”
Dimaras will kick off the series on Monday, September 11, with a performance of a Mozart piano sonata. He will then join soprano Deborah Lifton in five of Mozart’s German lieder. The program will end with Dimaras and violinist Susan Waterbury performing Shostakovich’s violin sonata.
Soprano Deborah Montgomery-Cove will open the September 18 program with two French text settings by Mozart and then sing a rarely performed, highly virtuosic concert aria. Other performers include Elizabeth Simkin playing Shostakovich’s ever-popular Cello Sonata, violinist Susan Waterbury performing a Mozart violin sonata, and guest soprano Linda Larson, in collaboration with Waterbury and Simkin, singing Shostakovich’s “Seven Poems of Alexander Blok” in its Russian original. Dimaras will accompany throughout.
Violist Debra Moree will join pianist Jennifer Hayghe in a Sept. 25 performance of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata. Hayghe will also play Mozart’s last piano sonata before joining violinist Susan Waterbury and cellist Elizabeth Simkin in a performance of Shostakovich’s second piano trio.
The Ithaca College School of Music offers some 300 free concerts each academic year. More information on these performances is available by calling (607) 274-3717 or visiting www.ithaca.edu/concerts.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20060907090330647