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Faculty Select Series Presents Pianist Tony Weinstein, March 15

Faculty Select Series Presents Pianist Tony Weinstein, March 15

March 10, 2016

Artists frequently treat with thinly veiled condescension the innocent request to name their favorite composers and the pieces they hold dearest. In designing the program for his solo Faculty Select Series recital on Tuesday, March 15, DePauw faculty pianist Tony Weinstein shunned this unseemly attitude and simply picked his favorite pieces by his favorite composers. The 7:30 p.m. concert in the Green Center’s Thompson Recital Hall includes signature works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Prokofiev. 

Weinstein, director of the DePauw School of Music’s Accompanying Center, will open his program with J. S. Bach’s baroque Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903. One of the most productive composers to have ever lived, Bach has been described by musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky as “a master comparable in greatness of stature with Aristotle in philosophy and Leonardo da Vinci in art.” 

Likewise an admirer of one of the most influential musical figures from the period following Bach, Weinstein will perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s demanding Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 (or  “Appassionata” sonata), written between 1804 and 1806, a time in which Beethoven was coming to terms with his progressively deteriorating hearing loss.

Johannes Brahms’s Three Intermezzos, Op.117, completed in the summer of 1892, are included among the pianist’s all-time favorites. The German composer described the musical miniatures as the “Lullaby of my Suffering” and used to keep these pieces with him during the evening hours of his meditation. 

To conclude the program, the Ukrainian-born pianist has chosen a virtuoso Russian work, Sergei Prokofiev’s brilliantly bold and extremely difficult Toccata in D Minor, Op. 11.                        

General admission to the Faculty Select Series is $5. Tickets for seniors, children and all students are free thanks to season sponsors Judson and Joyce Green. For online purchases, visit www.music.depauw.edu. The Green Center box office is also open one hour prior to every performance.

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