Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

Saturday, November 17, 2012

7:30 PM

Leffler Performance Ctr, Elizabethtown College

Featured Monster: Goldberg Variations by Bach
For over 25 years Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals and chamber music throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She is artistic director of the Vail Music Festival as well as Curator for Chamber Music for the Mainly Mozart Festival. She performs with leading orchestras around the world and is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her recordings include the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas, and, most recently, Gershwin’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra. Ms McDermott studied at the Manhattan School of Music.

Bach’s music has been called “the sound of God’s thought.” In the Goldberg Variations, Bach spins 30 miraculous variations from a simple theme – the supreme musical example of fashioning a silk purse from a sow’s ear. More info

Joel Fan, piano

Saturday, February 23, 2013

7:30 PM

Leffler Performance Ctr, Elizabethtown College

Featured Monster: Piano Sonata Op. 106 Hammerklavier by Beethoven
Joel Fan’s engaging personality, technical assurance, lyricism and sheer musicality win over audiences everywhere. He collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma as a member of the Silk Road Ensemble and has appeared as soloist with orchestras throughout the world. Joel began his performing career with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, as a winner of the Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert Auditions. His teachers have included the composer Leon Kirchner and Leon Fleisher. Joel's website

Gilles Vonsattel, piano

Saturday, March 16, 2012

7:30 PM

Leffler Performance Ctr, Elizabethtown College

Featured Monster: Piano Sonata #2: Concord 1840-1850 by Ives
Winner of a 2008 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2002 Naumburg International Piano Competition, Gilles Vonsattel has appeared as soloist with the Boston Symphony and San Francisco Symphony. He is also an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The Boston Musical Intelligencer said Mr. Vonstattel’s Boston Symphony debut “was a pure triumph, piercing the veil and grabbing the audience by the lapels.” Mr. Vonsattel received a B.A. in political science and economics from Columbia University and a M.M. from The Juilliard School. Gilles' website

Emanuel Ax, piano

Tuesday, March 19, 2012

8:00 PM

Leffler Performance Ctr, Elizabethtown College

Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in French. Ax captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

Ax has been an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist since 1987. Recent releases include Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’ Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. Ax has received Grammy awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Ax also contributed to an International Emmy-winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In recent years, Emanuel Ax has turned his attention toward the music of 20th-century composers, premiering works by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner. He is also devoted to chamber music, and has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Mr. Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern.

Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities. Program
Beethoven – Sonata in A Op. 2 No. 2
Beethoven – Sonata in C minor Op. 13 “Pathetique”
Chopin – Sonata No. 3 in B minor Op. 58 Manny's website