THE PIANO MUSIC OF CHOPIN TAKES CENTER STAGE

February 2007

The piano studio of Professor Arthur Greene will present the complete solo piano works of Fryderyk Chopin chronologically, from his earliest surviving work, a polonaise written at age seven, through his last mazurka penned in 1849, in a concert series running March 6 through April 14, 2007. The concert dates are March 6, 13, 20, 24, 31 and April 7, 10 and 14th.  All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. with a pre-concert talk and will take place in the Britton Recital Hall in the E.V. Moore Building at 1100 Baits Drive in Ann Arbor.  In conjunction with the final concert, an afternoon Chopin Symposium will take place on Saturday, April 14 beginning at 1:30 p.m. in Britton Recital Hall.  The Symposium will feature Jeffrey Kallberg, one of America’s leading Chopin scholars and author of Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre, as well as U of M’s Mark Clague, Nadine Hubbs, and Wayne Petty.  All concerts and the symposium are free of charge and do not require tickets.  There is a weblog for listeners to record their impressions and comments.

Professor Greene’s students come from the United States, Canada, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, and Ireland.  Professor Greene feels that “rather than presenting just one person’s approach, here we will have a diverse array of backgrounds, providing a kaleidoscope of personalities. I’ll be playing some on each concert, but I have given my students most of the well-known masterpieces.  For me, the most exciting things about this project are the chance to unearth fascinating and great music that never gets played, to explore Chopin to the fullest, and the chance to share the presentation of it all with my beloved and incredibly talented students.”

All of the performances will be recorded and distributed through the University of Michigan store on iTunes.

This event is sponsored in part by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, the University of Michigan Center For Russian and Eastern European Studies, the Copernicus Endowment and Hammell Music of Michigan.

Click here for more information.