These FIVE lectures will focus on inimitably great composers whose works for the piano are universally admired as outstanding examples of Romanticism, the vast 19th Century phenomenon which shook the world of music to its roots & established new standards of expression both on paper & in performance. Each evening will feature masterpieces of music & masterful interpretations of them – to enhance your perception & enjoyment.

Lecture 1 CHOPIN – the poet of the piano, whose alchemy transmuted the silvery beauty of opera’s bel canto melodies into the pure gold of his Nocturnes, the folk dances of his native Poland into dashing Mazurkas & Polonaises, the mere keyboard exercises of his predecessors into the world’s most exciting Etudes, & whose imagination created new types of forms called Ballades, Scherzi & Sonatas.

Lecture 2 LISZT – the overwhelmingly influential giant of his era, who invented the piano recital, whose pianism eclipsed all others, whose nationalistic impulses created a new genre (the Hungarian Rhapsody), who composed the greatest piano sonata since Beethoven, whose complex nature defied analysis for decades, whose late works heralded the future & whose generosity exceeded that of any composer of his day or before.

Lecture 3 SCHUMANN – the standard bearer of post-Beethoven musical taste in Germany, the earliest champion of Chopin & Brahms, the successor to Schubert as a song writer, the master of miniature character pieces (in suites of incomparable originality), the creator of Germany’s greatest musical journal, the husband of his century’s most distinguished woman pianist, & a madman.

Lecture 4 BRAHMS – the third “B” – an uncompromisingly serious composer, a towering architect of musical forms both monumental & miniature (whose largest piano works were among his earliest, whose smallest were among his last), the esthetic successor to Schumann, the first composer to study the works of past composers with musicological fervor, & the author of the world’s most disarmingly simple lullaby.

Lecture 5 OTHERS – fascinating composers from one side of Europe to the other (Alkan, Franck & Saint-Saëns from France, Sgambati & Busoni from Italy, Balakirev & Mussorgsky from Russia, for example) to show the range of other approaches to Romanticism at the piano from the most subtle to the most virtuosic, with examples of pianists who were born in the era & who lived into the age of recording.

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