May 3, 2010

Pianist Michael Berkovsky is featured artist in free Saturday concert

Canadian/Israeli pianist Michael Berkovsky, 2008 winner of the Yale Gordon Concerto Competition, will be the featured performer in this weekend’s free Discovery Series concert presented by the Shriver Hall Concert Series. Berkovsky is stepping in for cellist Hans Kristian Goldstein, who was forced to withdraw because of an injury. The event takes place at 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 8, in the Baltimore Museum of Art auditorium.

Berkovsky made his U.S. debut at Avery Fisher Hall in New York with the Juilliard orchestra and since then has played solo recitals in Ireland, Costa Rica, Japan, Italy, Israel, Canada and the United States.

His program will include Beethoven’s Sonata No. 17 in D minor, The Tempest; Liszt’s arrangements of Schubert’s Ständchen and Gretchen am Spinnrade; Liszt’s Vallé d’Obermann; Mozart’s Sonata in A minor, K. 310; Wild’s arrangements of George Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” and “The Man I Love”; and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

The concert series hopes to reschedule Goldstein’s debut performance.