Ganz to Perform Chopin Piano Recital at SMCM

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Musician-in-Residence Brian Ganz will perform his only full-length recital of the semester in a free program to be held at the Dodge Performing Arts Center. (Photo by Jay Mallin)

Pianist Brian Ganz will perform his only full-length piano recital of the semester at St. Mary’s College of Maryland at 7pm Thursday, December 11.

The free program, which will take place in the main auditorium of the Dodge Performing Arts Center on the college campus, will feature works of Fryderyk Chopin. In addition to programmed works, including Chopin’s great Barcarolle and “Heroic” Polonaise, Mr. Ganz will invite the audience to request their favorite pieces of Chopin.

For more information, call 240-895-4498.

“It’s no secret that Fryderyk Chopin is my ‘musical muse,'” Mr. Ganz said. “In this program at the college I will offer a few excerpts from the final program of the project, coming in spring, but I will also turn the programming over to the audience and invite their Chopin requests. I can’t necessarily pull any work of Chopin out of my proverbial hat, but when I invite requests there are usually more hits than misses, and it is always great fun.”

Mr. Ganz, the St. Mary’s College musician-in-residence, is on a quest to perform all of Fryderyk Chopin’s 240 works.

“Chopin’s music is the language of my soul, and I have dreamed since childhood of someday performing all of his works,” said Mr. Ganz, who is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. He is expected to be the first to perform every piece of music Chopin ever wrote.

He has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National Philharmonic, the Baltimore and the National Symphonies, the City of London Sinfonia, and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo. He has performed in many of the world’s major concert halls and has played under the baton of such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Jerzy Semkow and Yoel Levi. A critic for La Libre Belgique wrote of Ganz’s work: “We don’t have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy.”