Internationally acclaimed pianist Brian Ganz will present his 12th annual concert in his quest to perform the complete works of Frederic Chopin on Saturday, February 25 at 8pm at Strathmore’s Music Center. Celebrate with “An Evening of Chopin Chamber Music with Brian Ganz and Friends”. 2023.
Ganz will be joined by Carter Bley, Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic and Laura Colgate, Concertmaster of the National Philharmonic. The artist has created a seldom heard trio in G minor for piano, violin and cello, Op. is.
Ganz began his exploration of “Extreme Chopin” in January 2011 in a sold-out recital in partnership with the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Music Center in Strathmore. Since then, he has maintained a solid concert schedule, representing his unique niche as perhaps the only pianist to perform Chopin’s oeuvre. “There’s little about Chopin that Brian Ganz doesn’t know. His joy and amazement with this music seems to grow evidently endlessly with the passage of time.” Young people through 17 are free. For military and veterans he has a 20% discount. Strathmore is located at 5301 Tuckerman Lane in North Bethesda. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit nationalphilharmonic.org or call 301.581.5100.
“I have been a huge fan of Carter Bray for many years,” said the pianist. And I am very happy to be working with Laura again.There is something unique about music production for me in the dynamic of the musical dialogue between the three musicians.
Ganz and others will perform a total of four chamber music works, two before the intermission and two after the intermission. He and Bray first perform an introduction in C major and a brilliant polonaise for cello and piano. 3 (1829-30). Later, the violinist Colgate composed a trio for piano, violin and cello in his G minor Op.8 (1828-29). After an intermission, Ganz and Bray performed the Grand Double Concerto for Cello and Piano on the theme of Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable B.70 (1831) and the famous Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 65 (1845-46).
“Chopin is so closely associated with solo piano music that it’s easy to forget that he also wrote first-rate chamber music,” Ganz said. For example, the sonata is “very difficult for both artists to play. In fact, it is almost clumsily written for the piano. There are many fast chord passages, for example, which are not often found in Chopin.It is amazing that he was still growing at that point!” In fact, the Sonata was the last work Chopin published before his death in 1849.
Unlike the mature sonatas, the trio was composed when Chopin was in his late teens. To this day, it is rarely played. “I didn’t really know it as a listener until I started working on it,” Ganz said. I am in love with this work.I find it haunting, intriguing and mesmerizingly beautiful.It has renewed my reverence for Chopin’s genius.”
Carter Bray was appointed Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic in 1996. Since then, he has performed with the orchestra almost every season as a soloist. Bray has also appeared as a soloist with most of the major orchestras in the United States, performing under the direction of such eminent conductors as Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkov, Serge Commissioner and Christoph von Donani. He is a member of the New York Philharmonic String Quartet, Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets, Lincoln He has appeared regularly with the Chamber Music Society of the Center and has performed at the Spoleto (USA and Italy) and the Santa Fe and La Jolla Chamber Music Festivals. . Brey attended the Peabody Institute and Yale University, where he was a Wardwell Fellow and a Haupt Scholar. His cello is a rare JB Guadagnini made in Milan in 1754. He has won the Rostropovich International Cello He has won competitions, Gregor He has received the Piatigorsky Memorial Prize, Avery Fisher His Career His Grant, Young His Concert He has been an Artist He has won the Michaels Award. Bray was also the first musician to win an Arts Council of America Performing He Arts Award.
Laura Colgate has performed worldwide in Europe, Asia and North America, performing on stages including multiple appearances at the Barbican Center, Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. She is concertmaster of the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was previously concertmaster of the Greenville Symphony and El She Paso Symphonies in South Carolina. She has performed frequently on behalf of several major orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her festival appearances include the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra (Germany), the Verbier Festival Orchestra (Switzerland), the Britten-Pears Young Artists Program (Aldeburgh, UK), and the McGill International String Quartet Academy (Montreal). )And so on. She has performed with world-famous conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Semyon Bychkov, Rafael Hrubek de Burgos and Herbert Blomstedt. Colgate received her doctorate from the University of Maryland School of Music. In March 2018, she co-founded the Boulanger She Initiative, an advocacy group for women composers based in Washington, DC.
Ganz is well on his quest for “Extreme Chopin” to become the first artist to perform all 250 of Chopin’s works, attracting more than 2,000 concert audiences since its inception in 2011. , Ganz said, “There is something beautiful in everything Chopin wrote. In my journey through Chopin’s oeuvre, I will play all the notes that Chopin composed. It includes all the works he composed up to the point of maturity.”
Ganz sometimes brings an entire collection of Chopin’s music to the performance so that he can accommodate requests from the audience. “It was a lifelong goal to study all the notes Chopin composed,” Ganz said. The Washington Post, in an enthusiastic review of the Complete Chopin Recital Ganz at the Polish Embassy, wrote: truth. “
In 2010, Ganz was invited to Poland by renowned conductor Miroslaw Blaszczyk.
Plays with Filharmonia Slaska and Filharmonia Pomorska. A visit to Chopin’s hometown had a great influence on Ganz. “Chopin is a Polish national treasure. His face is painted everywhere, sometimes without a name, without a caption.It is as if he is the air that people breathe. It was the air I breathe,” said Ganz. “I visited the church where his heart is in Warsaw. I visited the monument where outdoor concerts are held under his graceful statue. The whole experience was a pilgrimage for me.”
Ganz’s inspiration for Chopin began at the tender age of 11. In an article about the project, the Baltimore Sun wrote: The debris hit Brian Gantz like a bolt from a stormy sky. Ganz reflected on the moment, saying, “How can it hurt when it’s so beautiful? It was the moment I wanted to say Chopin hurt me.”
Ganz won first prize at the Marguerite-Lon-Jacques-Thibault International.
Silver medal and 3rd prize at the Paris Piano Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Belgium International Competition. As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of London, the Sinfonia, The Parisian Rochester, Lamoureux, Leonard Shen Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Yoel Levy, Jerzy Semkow and Musti. Slav Rostropovich. She graduated from the Peabody Conservatory and studied with Leon Fleischer. Her teachers in her early years included Ylda Novik and Claire Deene.
A gifted teacher himself, Gans is an artist-in-residence in the piano department of St. Mary’s College, Maryland and recently retired after 21 years in the piano department of the Peabody Conservatory. He is the artist editor of Schirmer’s version of Chopin’s Prelude (2005). Highlights of pre-pandemic performances include Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Alba Music Festival in Italy and the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Strathmore, Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 466 with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Billings Symphony Orchestra. Includes Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto (current). available on YouTube), and his solo recital for the Distinguished Artists Series in Santa Cruz, California. In September 2019, he debuted as an actor and playwright at the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian’s National Asian Art Museum. The play imagined a dialogue between American artist James Whistler and a musician exploring the relationship between Debussy’s music and the artist’s 10 O’Clock Lecture. The play includes some of the lectures themselves, along with performances of Debussy’s music and composers under his influence. Most recently, Mr. Ganz performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 488 with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra at the newly opened Capital One Hall in Northern Virginia. Ganz was also a member of the jury at the Long He Thibaut Competition in Paris.
As the music center of Strathmore’s resident orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra presents a time-honored symphonic masterpiece under Maestro Piotr Gajewski and a monumental choral masterpiece under the direction of National Philharmonic Choir Artistic Director Stan Engebretsson. Introducing world-famous guest artists.
To purchase tickets for performances and for information about the Philharmonic’s upcoming season, visit nationalphilharmonic.org or call the Strathmore Ticket Office at 301.581.5100.