Ganz to Play Free Piano Recital Dec. 5 @ SMCM

St. Mary’s College of Maryland musician-in-residence Brian Ganz will perform a full-length piano recital at 7pm Thursday, December 5, at the Dodge Performing Arts Center on the college campus.

The free program will feature two piano sonatas, Beethoven’s beloved “Appassionata” Sonata and Chopin’s virtually unknown “Sonata No. 1 in C minor.” Rounding out the program will be four popular mazurkas of Chopin.

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“I am thrilled to be playing these two sonatas back to back,” Mr. Ganz said. “The Beethoven is perhaps the greatest sonata ever composed for piano. It is universally revered as a masterpiece. The Chopin, on the other hand, is so rarely played it can honestly be considered unknown. Yet it has so much beauty, so much richness and excitement to offer! And as it comes right after the Beethoven on the program, one hears the latter’s influence on the young Chopin, who was only a teenager when he composed this first of his sonatas. I can promise listeners an amazing discovery of a work that deserves to be much better known than it is.”

Mr. Ganz 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 Mr. 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.”