TONES AND TALES INTERSECTIONS OF 19TH-CENTURY PIANO MUSIC AND THE WRITTEN WORD

HUNTER – On Saturday, October 15 at 2:00 PM, historical pianists Stephanie Schmidt and Robin Morace present a two-part program of nineteenth-century music inspired by or connected to literature. In the first part, the Piano Performance Museum’s wonderfully sensitive Clementi square piano (1803-5) suggests an author known to have played a similar instrument: Jane Austen (1775-1817). Her novels and personal correspondence are rife with musical references, emphasizing the importance of the pianoforte to women of her time. We can even surmise what Jane may have played thanks to the eighteen volumes of sheet music in the Austen Family Music Books collection held by the University of Southampton, including music copied by the author herself. Stephanie has chosen, from this collection, a varied program of sonatas, dances, and arrangements for piano solo and duet. Interspersed with the music of Schobert, Mazzinghi, Kiallmark, and others will be short spoken excerpts from the public and private pen of Austen herself.

In the second part of the concert, Robin Morace will play several movements from Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16 as well as Franz Liszt’s Ballade No. 2 in B minor. As its title suggests, Schumann’s cycle of character pieces draws on the fictional musician Johannes Kreisler, who appears in several novels and stories by E.T.A. Hoffman. Schumann himself described Kreisler as “energetic, wild, and witty,” and his musical vignettes evoke the full kaleidoscope of Kreisler’s personality, from mania to melancholy. While the title of Liszt’s piece is purely generic and indicates no particular literary point of reference, one of Liszt’s pupils, Martin Krause, claimed that the Ballade No. 2 is in fact based on the Greek myth of Hero and Leander. The poet Friedrich Schiller, whose work Liszt knew and had previously adapted, introduced the story to 19th century German readers through a poem that he subtitled “ballade.” All the key elements of the myth can be found in Liszt’s music: the listener twice hears a musical painting of Leander swimming across the Hellespont to reach the tower where his lover Hero resides before Liszt depicts Leander’s tragic final crossing during a winter storm.

This concert is free and will be held at the Piano Performance Museum in the Doctorow Center for the Arts, 7971 Main Street, Hunter, NY. Reserve your seat at www.catskillmtn.org.

About Catskill Mountain Foundation
The Catskill Mountain Foundation’s (CMF) aim is to provide educational opportunities in the arts for youth and lifelong learners, to bring the experience of the arts to the Catskill community, and to support artists and art organizations in the development of their work through residencies. Since its founding in 1998, CMF has presented hundreds of music, dance, and theater performances; screened over 1,000 films to tens of thousands of audience members; provided studio arts classes to thousands of students of all ages; and served thousands of art-loving patrons in the Catskill Mountain Foundation Gift Shop. The Catskill Mountain Foundation operates the Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter, the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, and the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in Maplecrest, NY.

Since 1998, CMF has raised, generated, and invested close to $16 million in facility development and an excess of $42 million in programming operations, for a total investment in the Catskill community of over $58 million. Catskill Mountain Foundation is supported in part by New York State Council on the Arts, the Greene County Cultural Fund administered by the Greene County Legislature, The Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation, The Royce Family Foundation, The Samuel and Esther Doctorow Fund, The Orville and Ethel Slutzky Family Foundation, Platte Clove Bruderhof Community, Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation, The Greene County Youth Bureau, Marshall & Sterling Insurance, All Souls’ Church, Stewarts Shops, Windham Foundation, and by private donations. CMF believes that the arts can transform the lives of those touched by it and can transform the community. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.