September 7, 2010

Peabody season opens Sunday with organ and guitar recitals

The 2010–2011 concert season at the Peabody Institute will open on Sunday, Sept. 12, with two recitals by guest artists, each a virtuoso on his instrument. The weeks that follow will offer concertgoers the first public performance at Peabody on a recently acquired 17th-century violin, the season’s first orchestral concert and the first recital in Peabody’s distinguished Adalman series.

Daniel Zaretsky will give an organ recital at 4 p.m. on Sept. 12 featuring works by J.S. Bach, Ernst Kohler, Eugene Gigout, Louis Vierne and others. Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, Zaretsky studied at the Leningrad and Kazan state conservatories and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. In 1991, he won the Russian National Organ Competition and received the third prize in the Speyer International Organ Competition in Germany. He currently serves as organist of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall.

Also on Sept. 12, Benjamin Verdery, professor of guitar at the Yale School of Music, will perform at 6:30 p.m. at the Towson campus of the Peabody Preparatory. The recital, a benefit for the Preparatory’s Guitar Department, is part of the 2010 Fret Festival, a daylong celebration of the guitar.

At 3 p.m. on the following Sunday, Sept. 19, the chair of the Peabody Conservatory’s Strings Department, Keng-Yuen Tseng, will give the first public performance at Peabody on the Kostoff Maggini, a 17th-century violin made by Brescian master Giovanni Paolo Maggini and recently donated to Peabody by Karl Kostoff, a one-time professional musician and former staff member at the university’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The first orchestral concert of the Peabody season will take place at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 28, when the Peabody Symphony Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major and Duo Ye No. 2 by contemporary Chinese composer Chen Yi. The soloist for the Mozart concerto will be junior Gleb Kanasevich, winner of the Peggy & Yale Gordon Concerto Competition. Hajime Teri Murai, the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Director of Orchestral Activities, will conduct.

There will be eight concerts in the Sylvia Adalman Artist Recital Series this season, starting on Tuesday, Oct. 5, with a performance by Conservatory faculty artist Alexander Shtarkman, piano. The program includes Mozart’s Sonata No. 12 in F major, Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales and Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, an arrangement for piano by the composer of music from the ballet.

The Sylvia Adalman Artist Recital Series is available as an eight-concert subscription. Adalman subscribers also receive discounted parking and may attend the Sept. 19 recital by Keng-Yuen Tseng as a free bonus concert. More information about this subscription option and others is available at www.peabody.jhu.edu/subscribe.

Most tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for students with ID. Tickets for the Verdery benefit concert are $20; admission to the Fret Festival workshops and concert is $35 ($30 for Preparatory students and parents).

For more information, call the Box Office at 410-234-4800. For the complete Peabody calendar of events, go to www.peabody.jhu.edu/events.